Large telecoms emphasize need for mobile wireless projects
By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Service providers are providing mixed responses to the CRTC’s proposal to use the Broadband Fund to subsidize the ongoing cost of operating networks it helps build, with responses ranging from not expanding its use beyond its current boundaries and allowing for its use for that purpose.
The CRTC launched a proceeding in March to broaden the scope of the $750-million fund supported by telecom revenues, from which three rounds of funding had been opened.
The commission – surveying the influx of other federal broadband programs since the emergence of…
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By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri said Wednesday the company is weighing its options, including possibly appealing a decision by the CRTC to pick Quebecor’s rate for access to the national carrier’s wireless network.
“We’re reviewing it,” Staffieri said about the decision. “As you would expect, we’re considering next steps, including potential appeals.”
The regulator said in its decision that while both offers for access met the policy objectives, it was Quebecor’s price that provided the regional player with an opportunity to market more data and therefore more plans.
Rogers said in its original pricing pitch that…
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By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Quebecor has won an arbitration hearing at the CRTC to determine the cost to access Bell’s wireless network.
In a letter dated July 13, the CRTC accepted Quebecor’s June 22 application for the commission to call the final offer for that access, which the Montreal-based company said is integral for its mobile virtual network operator business and its growth as the fourth national carrier after acquiring Freedom Mobile from Shaw.
Quebecor argued that the two sides tried their best but could not hammer out a deal within the 30 days they were required to make a best-efforts…
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By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Rogers told the CRTC that it must act expeditiously on its request to access Bell and Telus poles because the new policy direction from Cabinet requires it.
Rogers said as much in a reply submission last week to Bell and Telus, who told the CRTC to deny Rogers’s request last Wednesday asking for interim access to attach wireless equipment on their poles.
Telus said in its submission that the expedited request is “unsubstantiated” and that Rogers allegedly failed to “demonstrate any need for the Commission to exercise its discretion to implement an expedited process…
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By Ahmad Hathout
MONTREAL – With less than a month remaining to get an agreement hammered before the CRTC-imposed deadline, Cogeco CEO Philippe Jette said the telecom is still working to get a deal done to roam on the large carriers’ wireless networks.
“We’re still determined to launch a mobile service in Canada and we are now in negotiations with the MNO,” Jette said on the company’s fiscal third-quarter conference call with analysts Friday. “For competitive reasons, we won’t go further on this call…it remains a critical element for our business case to enter for the long-term this market, so we…
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TORONTO – Media company Corus announced Thursday its Nelvana subsidiary has agreed to sell an animation business for $147.5 million to Integrated Media Company.
Integrated Media will acquire Montreal-based Toon Boom Animation, marking Corus’s exit from the animation software business at a time when the company is struggling with a rough advertising market and what it says are onerous regulatory burdens.
Corus said it expects to use the money to pay down debt.
“After an enterprise-wide review of our operating model and asset base, we have decided to exit the animation software business,” Colin Bohm, Corus’s executive vice president…
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YELLOWKNIFE – Bell subsidiary Northwestel announced Wednesday it has launched fibre internet to three more Northwest Territories communities, bringing the total number of NWT communities hooked-up with fibre to 21.
The region’s dominant provider, which also provides live and on-demand TV through its app, now provides download speeds of up to 500 Mbps and unlimited monthly data in the communities of Fort Resolution, Kakisa, and Enterprise.
“These fibre upgrades are part of Northwestel’s Every Community Project, a 3-year project to bring high speed unlimited Internet to 10,000 homes across the Northwest Territories and Yukon,” the company said in a press release.
“Northwestel…
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OTTAWA – Bell filed Wednesday a letter of support for the Supreme Court of Canada to review a Federal Court of Appeal decision affirming that the CRTC does not have jurisdiction over wireless attachments on municipal structures.
The one-page letter supporting Telus’s application includes a copy to Rogers, Cogeco, Quebecor, Xplornet, Ice Wireless, the province of British Columbia and opponents of the argument, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and Electricity Canada.
Telus filed the appeal to the high court last month, which has yet to decide if it will hear it. The Vancouver-based telecom argued that the appeal…
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By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – The spate of acquisitions by incumbents of wholesale internet service providers in recent months is not because of a difficult market or bad wholesale access rates, Bell argued in its most recent submission to the CRTC’s wholesale internet framework proceeding, which is messaging that runs counter to what competitors have been saying.
“These acquisitions were completed for a variety of reasons, including succession planning, and the sales were made at strong valuations, not because the Resellers went bankrupt, were driven out of the market or…because of ‘the broken wholesale access model,’” Bell said, in reference to…
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By Konrad von Finckenstein, former chair of the CRTC
The passage of C-18 seems certain to lead to a confrontation, lengthy litigation and probable impasse between Google and Meta on one side and the federal government on the other.
One way to resolve the issue might be to borrow a page from Australia. That country enacted an Act similar to C-18, the News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code Act 2021, but it only applies to companies designated by the minister. While its Act is in force, no such designation was ever made as the industry and…
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