Rogers Infinte customers surpass 750,000
TORONTO – A handful of Canadian telecom executives didn’t hold back on their thoughts about the CRTC’s ruling on wholesale internet, MVNOs and more during BMO’s 20th Annual Media and Telecom Conference, held Tuesday.
“The footprint as a…
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NORTH BAY, Ont. – Canada’s Rural & Remote Broadband Conference today announced the line-up of speakers for its inaugural event.
Victor Fedeli, Ontario’s Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade will keynote Wednesday’s lunch address. “A theme for the conference is how rural and remote broadband impacts economic development, and as such Minister Fedeli’s insights cannot be missed,” said conference founder Amedeo Bernardi, in the press release.
The conference, themed “Bridging the Digital Divide” will be held at the Best Western Hotel and Conference Centre in North Bay, from November 12th to 14th.
Chris Seidl, the CRTC’s executive director, telecommunications will…
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TORONTO — Rogers announced it is the first national carrier to allow smartphone customers to finance the entire cost of their devices, by extending its financing options to include taxes on phones.
With its new device financing option, Rogers is letting customers get every phone for $0 down with 0% interest and no taxes paid upfront.
In July, Rogers announced its Edge Financing options that allowed customers to get the latest smartphones such as the Samsung Note 10 and iPhone XS at $0 down, 0% interest, with the retail price of the device paid through equal monthly payments over 24 months….
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TORONTO — The Canadian Network Operators Consortium (CNOC) announced the agenda for this fall’s Canadian ISP Summit is now online. The three-day summit is scheduled to take place November 4-6 at the Marriott Downtown at CF Toronto Eaton Centre.
In addition to several technical sessions, the Canadian ISP Summit promises a number of keynote addresses by notable industry speakers, along with a regulatory forum panel discussion moderated by Globe and Mail telecom journalist Christine Dobby, and a fireside chat with former CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein.
The current agenda for the Canadian ISP Summit can be found here. Online registration…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU — The CRTC announced it is imposing a $194,330 penalty on Ontario Consumers Home Services (also known as Simply Comfort) and a $69,000 penalty on Blue Dream for violating the Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules.
Between December 2016 and February 2017, Ontario Consumers Home Services committed more than a million violations of the rules, according to a CRTC news release issued Monday. During that period, the company made more than 96,000 unsolicited calls to Canadians whose numbers were on the National Do Not Call List (DNCL), some of which were outside the permitted hours for telemarketing activities. Ontario Consumers Home…
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TORONTO – Expect network investment to plummet, the growth of the digital economy in Canada to stall and an invasion of well-heeled foreign broadband resellers if the recent CRTC decision on third party internet access wholesale rates is not overturned, says a report published this week by TD Securities.
While saying he expects the decision to be challenged and overturned or at least revised, TD telecom and media analyst Vince Valentini pulls no punches in his analysis, saying the Commission-set wholesale rates and retroactive rebates are bad for the incumbent carriers, their customers and Canada as…
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23 jobs cut
MONTREAL — As Breakfast Television is celebrating its 30th anniversary in Toronto, Rogers Media is making cuts elsewhere, including cancelling its Montreal morning show entirely, and having some content at its Vancouver and Calgary shows sourced out of Toronto.
Staff in Montreal were informed after Thursday's broadcast that it would be their last. Eight jobs were eliminated by the cancellation in Montreal, leaving 41 people employed in Montreal between CityNews, OMNI and sales. Four jobs have been cut in Vancouver and 11 in Calgary.
"This decision was very difficult, but at the end of the day, the show…
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GATINEAU – On Friday, the CRTC launched the review it said was coming over the 36-month device financing plans certain service wireless providers recently launched, which it told those carriers to stop doing in early August.
The Commission wants to ensure the provisions of its Wireless Code, which effectively make any sort of carrier service contract longer than two years illegal (there can be no break fee beyond 24 months for a customer to pay when they leave a carrier), are upheld. The carriers which launched the new 36-month plans, first from Rogers this summer, say…
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REGULATING AN INDUSTRY involves a careful balance. Telecommunications is a perfect example. It is regulated so that consumers can expect fair prices, quality of service and universal access. On the other hand, the regulated telecom carriers require a predictable environment that allows them to make a reasonable profit in order to satisfy their shareholders and make forward-looking investments to expand their business and keep up with technological innovations.
It has been the mantra of CRTC that regulation should be fair, transparent, predictable and timely.
Telecom in Canada has been regulated since its inception. After all, it is a networked industry, meaning…
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OF ALL OF THE REACTIONS from last week’s final wholesale rates for broadband internet announced by the CRTC, Bell’s cancellation of plans to improve Wireless Home Internet for 200,000 households stood out.
It’s probably the most revealing statement about how the established big telecoms think, why they won’t stray from the same old way of doing business, and why they continue to ignore the needs of underserved Canadians.
What warranted dropping so many Canadians from Bell’s initial plan to improve connectivity for rural Canadians? Did the broadband business case for rural Canadians look similar to those on the wireless side of…
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