By Ahmad Hathout
TORONTO – The CRTC approved Monday a limited and temporary regime in which competitors can force negotiations for access the last mile fibre services under the current aggregated regime.
The regime will be narrowed to the incumbent telephone companies, who will be required within six months to provide wholesale access to their fibre-to-the-premises networks in Ontario and Quebec, noting there is increasing demand there for faster speeds that are provided by a direct fibre line to homes and businesses.
The CRTC reasoned that the fibre builds of the cable companies, which have largely relied on hybrid fibre-coax builds, are…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC said in a letter Monday it expects wireless internet service providers, including current holdouts Bell, Rogers, Telus and Xplore, to participate in the commission’s data project with Innovation Canada to track fixed wireless internet performance.
The CRTC has previously asked wireless ISPs to contact their subscribers about participating in the third phase of its Measuring Broadband Canada project, which seeks to better understand how Canadians subscribing to fixed wireless internet services with the federal objective speeds of 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps (or faster) upload are experiencing internet performance in their…
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The media company has suspended its dividend
By Ahmad Hathout
TORONTO – Corus CEO Doug Murphy said Friday that the CRTC’s preliminary view that the media company should see relief from its regulatory obligations, at least temporarily, is a significant move because it understands the financial environment it is going through.
Last week, the CRTC said it is of the view that Corus should have its spending on programs of national interest reduced to 5 per cent, instead of the regular 8.5 per cent, and to extend the deadline to pay back what it already owes the regulator from…
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By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – The CRTC has approved Tuesday two low-cost internet packages proposed by Northwestel, formally integrating the Bell subsidiary into the Connecting Families program.
Effective Tuesday, the approved rates will provide eligible low-income Canadians in Northwestel’s footprint with access to two internet packages: a plan with 15 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload with 300 GB of data for $10, with an overage charge of $1 per gigabyte; and a plan with the federal objective of 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload with 400 GB of data for $20 with the same overage charge.
There was some concern…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC last week informed Cogeco Communications via a letter it was closing a tariff application proposing revisions to Cogeco’s third-party internet access (TPIA) tariff, and suggested the ISP resubmit the application with additional information required under the commission’s tariff application rules.
In its Sept. 8 application to revise its TPIA tariff, Cogeco said it had started to increase the upload speed of its 360 Mbps and 1 Gbps downstream high-speed retail internet services from 30 Mbps to 100 Mbps, and this increase would be progressively rolled out throughout Cogeco’s serving…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC last week approved Skigin Radio Incorporated’s November 2022 application for a broadcasting licence to operate a low-power, Indigenous FM radio station in Woodstock First Nation, New Brunswick.
Serving the Maliseet people of the Wolastoqiyik territory, Skigin Radio’s 50-watt station will operate at 107.7 MHz.
In its licence application, Skigin Radio had proposed to broadcast 112 hours of local programming and 14 hours of wrap-around programming (programming that originates from other radio stations) per broadcast week. Of that programming, 104 hours would be devoted to musical content, 20 per cent of which…
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By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – The CRTC on Thursday is proposing to relax Corus Entertainment’s regulatory obligations on an “exceptional basis,” as the pure-play media company saw a dramatic decline in its financials over the year.
Corus sent an application to the regulator last Wednesday stating that high inflation, its sub-$1 share price, and its debt-to-liquid cash ratio reaching “unacceptable levels” after the content company saw a 61 per cent free cash decline over the previous year have put it in a precarious position with rapidly declining profitability. The company said it has had to halve its dividend since its November…
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By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Regina member of Parliament Andrew Scheer has asked the federal government to provide more information about the rationale and cost behind a registry of companies set up by the CRTC that is intended for them to contribute to the enrichment of Canadian content.
The former Conservative Party leader has tabled two sets of inquiries in the House of Commons Monday, with one requesting specifics as to the overall rationale for setting up the registry and how the commission arrived at the $10 million annual revenue threshold to include companies for possible regulation.
Under that set of questions,…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC announced Monday it has renewed the broadcasting licence for SaskTel’s terrestrial on-demand service SaskTel Pay-Per-View until Aug. 31, 2028.
The licence for SaskTel’s pay-per-view service was due to expire Dec. 31, 2023, having been administratively renewed by the CRTC three times since August 2021, which is when the service’s licence was originally scheduled to expire.
The CRTC explained in its decision Monday, after SaskTel Pay-Per-View’s licence was renewed in 2014, the commission created the category of on-demand services by consolidating what were formerly known as pay-per-view and video-on-demand services.
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By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Bell is asking the Federal Court of Appeal to review whether the CRTC was allowed to automatically renew its broadcasting licences without notice or consultation.
The CRTC approved all of the broadcaster’s 66 television and specialty channel licences until August 2026 on an administrative renewal basis. But Bell still had an outstanding appeal in the form of Part 1 applications to the CRTC asking it to reduce the regulatory burdens on it because the financial climate for broadcasters has changed from when the licences were last renewed for a five-year term in 2017.
“There…
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