Bell to cut rural broadband rollout by 20% in response; Other carriers equally disappointed, angry
MONTREAL – Bell Canada spent the weekend crunching numbers (update: Rogers did the same) and announced today that last week’s CRTC decision to slash the rates paid by independent third party internet access (TPIA) providers – retroactively, too – will have a cost which will be paid by rural Canadians.
Bell said Monday morning it has estimated the impact of the CRTC’s decision to lower wholesale fees, retroactively, to be $100 million, and in order to pay for that, it will reduce…
Continue Reading
GATINEAU – In a long-awaited decision, the CRTC today set final rates for wholesale access to the high speed wired networks of Bell, Cogeco, Eastlink, Rogers, SaskTel, Shaw, Telus, and Vidéotron.
The process had started in May 2015 and interim decision was rendered in October 2016. That said, this is a fight that has been going on for more than a decade.
The rates released today (which are paid by independent third party ISPs like TekSavvy and Distributel) are lower than the interim rates and retroactive to 2016. The monthly capacity rates are 15% to 43% lower…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – The organizations responsible for enforcing the Accessible Canada Act (one of which is the CRTC) announced today the establishment of the Council of Federal Accessibility Agencies.
The Accessible Canada Act became law on June 21, 2019 and requires the member organizations of the Council “to work collaboratively to refer federal accessibility complaints to the right organization and to foster complementary policies and practices,” reads the press release.
The council is made up of
The Chair and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Transportation Agency
The Chair and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
The Chair of the…
Continue Reading
THE NEXT BIG LEAP in wireless telecommunications is coming.
The current standard for mobile networks is what the tech industry calls fourth generation, or 4G. But this will soon be overtaken by fifth generation, or 5G, wireless technology. 5G offers increased data transfer speeds and will connect many more devices with almost no delayed response when receiving and sending information.
One might think the issues surrounding the development of 5G would focus on questions like whether the government should build a nationalized 5G network, or the possible health impacts of additional radio-frequency radiation. However, one issue has come to dominate the 5G…
Continue Reading
GATINEAU – When the CRTC awarded a national, multilingual multiethnic discretionary service with mandatory carriage on basic to Rogers in May 2019, it surely knew its decision would not be met with unanimous agreement.
So, nobody was surprised when CORRCAN Media Group, Ethnic Channels Group, Independent Community Television Montreal and TLN Media Group each appealed the decision to the Federal Cabinet, an option which is provided for in the Broadcasting Act.
On August 9th, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) filed with the Clerk of the Privy Council comments in support of the four petitions asking…
Continue Reading
ON AUGUST 7, THE Globe and Mail published an opinion piece by the University of Ottawa’s Michael Geist, entitled “Election 2019: Return of the Netflix tax debate”. The Writers Guild of Canada has long differed with professor Geist on the subject of cultural policy, but in this case he not only reaches conclusions with which we strongly disagree, but gets a number of his facts wrong in the process.
First, Geist implies that the government convened the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review panel because a $500-million commitment from Netflix for production in Canada “failed to stem…
Continue Reading
GATINEAU – As Cartt.ca has reported earlier, Bell and Québecor tell a radically different story when it comes to Québecor division Vidéotron’s desire to offer TPIA service via Bell division Cablevision du Nord – and those differences are even more evident in Quebecor’s reply to the CRTC, filed on August 6th.
One of the arguments made by Québecor is that competition and its benefits – something the Competition Bureau said in its Broadband Report released this week is a necessity – does not exist in the northwestern quadrant of Québec, seeing as how Abitibi-Témiscamingue is only served by Télébec…
Continue Reading
MONTREAL – Second quarter revenues for Quebecor came in at $1.06 billion, up 1.8% for the same quarter of 2018 after the company added 38,300 new wireless subscribers.
Adjusted EBITDA for the period ended June 30th was $455 million, up 6.8% and net income attributable to shareholders was $140.2 million in the quarter, well ahead of last year’s $42 million.
Cable and wireless division Vidéotron significantly increased its revenues from mobile telephony by 11.9% and Internet access by 2.6% in the second quarter of 2019. Vidéotron's total average billing per unit ("ABPU") was $50.20 in the second quarter of 2019, compared…
Continue Reading
GATINEAU – The CRTC said this morning prices for most communications services decreased in 2018.
According to the CRTC's Communications Monitoring Report pricing publication issued today, the national monthly average reported price for wireless, Internet, television and home phone services (combined) was 11% lower in 2018 than in 2016.
The most significant price reduction was in the mobile wireless market. In the four mobile packages analyzed by the Commission, prices dipped by an average of 28% from 2016 to 2018, with the most significant drop being for services offering 5 gigabytes (GB) of data or more.
For example, reads the Commission press…
Continue Reading
GATINEAU – According to a new submission to the CRTC, Vidéotron has misrepresented talks that have taken place in order for it to possibly become a third-party ISP on the network of Cablevision du Nord, a division of Bell Canada.
In a reply to the Commission filed in response to Vidéotron’s recent Part 1 complaint, which we outlined here, Cablevision has a far different story to tell about what’s going on when it comes to Vidéotron’s apparent efforts to become a TV and broadband competitor in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region of Quebec.
“First, Cablevision’s TPIA service…
Continue Reading
