OTTAWA – Canadians who live in areas without a strong regional wireless competitor pay more for their mobile plans, according to the Competition Bureau.
In its comments for the CRTC’s mobile wireless services review, the Bureau said that 10GB plans, for example, can be priced as low as $60-$75 per month in Quebec, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan (i.e where Bell, Rogers and Telus compete with regional players Videotron, Bell MTS and SaskTel). By comparison, the same 10GB plans in other provinces and territories can be as much as 80% higher, priced at $105-$110 per month.
Factors such as network quality, coverage,…
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We’re not sure where the MPs get some of their facts
OTTAWA – Since January when Nova Scotia MP Bernadette Jordan was appointed Canada’s first Minister of Rural Economic Development, she has met and spoken with Canadians from all walks of life, including those in rural and remote communities from coast to coast to coast.
Speaking before the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology on Thursday, Jordan said the number one concern expressed almost unanimously by the people she visited was their need for better internet connectivity. This was the first committee meeting studying private member’s…
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GATINEAU – Would you rather fight a horse-sized duck, or 100 duck-sized horses?
That was the unusual, if creative, way SaskTel chose to demonstrate how, if the CRTC is going to mandate third party wireless resellers, we can expect a much worse competitive market that causes serious damage to regional independent mobile wireless operators.
“Mandated MVNOs will harm 4th carriers more than the National Wireless Carriers. In any market, there is a portion of the customer base which is most likely to move to a new competitor, a portion which is quite unlikely to change, and a portion somewhere between these…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC needs to be “split up in terms of the kinds of people making broadcasting decisions and the kinds of personnel making telecom decisions,” said Tim Denton, chairman of the Internet Society Canada Chapter (ISCC) at the two-day Policy 3.0 Communications Law conference organized by the Forum for Research and Policy in Communications last week.
Denton, a former CRTC commissioner who now works as a consultant on Internet and telecom policy, also called for the creation of a chief technology officer within the Commission to provide advice on current technology-related issues. He said the CRTC needs to…
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Independent broadcasters want their HD added to satellite services
MONTREAL — The licence renewal applications of Bell and Shaw’s satellite TV distribution services prompted 156 replies, the vast majority of which were comments from individuals upset Shaw Communications plans to discontinue a free basic TV service it set up for people who lost access to over-the-air stations during the digital transition.
The Local Television Satellite Solution was promised and provided by Shaw in 2010 as a tangible benefit during its acquisition of CanWest’s television assets, including Global TV. The company proposed spending $15 million to send free…
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A NATIONAL RATINGS service which includes set top box data from all major TV carriers looks like it may not happen.
On April 4, 2019, Quebecor’s cableco Vidéotron withdrew from the CRTC mandated Set-Top Box Working Group and stated it does not intend to provide STB viewer data to ratings agency Numeris for the proposed audience measurement system. The STB Working Group and Numeris now say they must evaluate the full impact of Vidéotron’s decision before proposing next steps, according to a letter from Shaw’s Dean Shaikh, on behalf of the STB Working Group, to the…
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OTTAWA – After 276 members of Parliament voted earlier this month to support a private members motion, M-208, which calls for expanded digital infrastructure (wireless and wired) in rural areas, the standing committee on Industry, Science and Technology will begin hearings to study the matter Thursday morning.
“I am pleased to see that my colleagues from both sides of the aisle recognized that the lack of cell phone coverage and internet access in rural areas is a public safety issue faced by too many Canadians,” said Liberal MP for Pontiac, William Amos, said earlier this month when his motion passed.
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MONTREAL – To no great surprise, Québecor has appealed CRTC decision compelling TVA Sports to continue providing its signal to Bell TV customers while in dispute with Bell Canada over its distribution agreement.
Quebecor argues the CRTC does not have jurisdiction to regulate affiliation agreements between BDUs and programmers this way; that it does not have jurisdiction to control the financial relationships between BDUs and programmers and that the powers invoked by the CRTC are far from the objectives of the Broadcasting Act, which are cultural in nature and focus on content.
The Federal Court of Appeal must…
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OTTAWA – The federal government should revive the department of communications as part of its review of broadcasting, telecommunications and radiocommunication legislation, a University of Calgary expert on the relationship between communications systems and governments told a conference on Canada’s electronic communications law at the University of Ottawa last week.
Rather than having the minister for Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada responsible for the Telecommunications Act and Radiocommunication Act, and the Canadian Heritage minister responsible for the Broadcasting Act, “we need a ministry whose sole purpose is the oversight of the Canadian communication system,” said Gregory Taylor, an assistant…
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TORONTO – The Canadian government should hold social media companies responsible for what they publish, just as traditional media are, according to a new Nanos Research survey.
The poll, commissioned by watchdog group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting (FCB), found that more than four in five respondents say they agree (63%) or somewhat agree (21%) that the government should hold online social media platforms like Facebook responsible when they publish inaccurate, misleading, or illegal content in the same way that traditional news media are held responsible by the government. Over one in ten disagree (seven per cent) or somewhat disagree…
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