GATINEAU – Although the CRTC proceeding on lower-cost data-only plans or skinny wireless was not supposed to be targeted towards a means-tested subset of low-income households, the deaf, deaf-blind or hard of hearing Canadians (DDBHH), seem to have scored a victory.
In its final reply, Bell Mobility (BCE) indicated that they would extend an existing promotion for people with disability. “In order to ensure that new lower-cost data-only plans accommodate the needs of persons with disabilities, we would extend our 2 GB data add-on to our customers with disabilities in conjunction with our proposed plans. This means that persons with…
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Even faster speeds to follow thanks to Telesat and Kepler’s LEO plans
OTTAWA – Residents of Nunavut will soon be able to watch movies over the web just like other Canadians down south through a high-speed broadband satellite connection provided by Ottawa-based Telesat later this summer.
Telesat’s Telstar 19 Vantage satellite is scheduled to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida on July 22, and should be operational by late August or early September, according to Michele Beck, vice-president of North American sales for Telesat’s enterprise and broadcast group.
The geostationary satellite, situated 36,000 kilometres above the…
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TORONTO – As widely expected, Corus Entertainment today slashed its dividend as part of a plan to reduce debt and re-invest in its core business as it struggles to compete with Facebook, Google, OTT providers, internet radio and global change in content consumption.
Corus is cutting its annual dividend by 79% to $0.24 per share for Class B shares (to take effect Sept. 1, 2018). It also announced a quarterly loss of $935.9 million tied to its devaluation of its broadcast licenses. The loss includes a $1.01-billion non-cash impairment charge related to broadcast licences and goodwill.
Television business revenue fell 5%…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has laid out its plan to phase out the local service subsidy over three years as it continues to shift the focus of its regulatory frameworks from wireline voice services to broadband Internet access services.
The local voice service subsidy was designed to keep wireline voice service affordable in high cost serving areas (HCSAs). Telecommunications service providers with $10 million or more in annual Canadian telecommunications revenues are required to contribute to a national fund that is distributed to incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) serving regulated HCSAs, usually rural and remote locations.
The Commission said Tuesday…
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OUR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT promised a review of the Broadcasting and Telecommunication Acts in its 2017 budget and last week the CRTC took the first step down this path when it issued: Harnessing Change: The Future of Programming Distribution in Canada.
While it floated a number of interesting, innovative and controversial ideas, we’re all anxious to hear what Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly will have to say about it this weekend when she addresses the Banff International Media Fest. There, we hear she is likely to announce the appointment of a worthy and carefully chosen panel of experts to undertake a year-long project…
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TORONTO – Can cord cutting in Canada be halted, or at least slowed, by solving the country’s “drama problem”?
Veteran lawyer and engineer Peter Miller and Ken Engelhart, former SVP regulatory and chief privacy officer of Rogers Communications, think so. Speaking Wednesday at the CTAM Canada Leadership Forum in Toronto, the duo drove home some key points from their recent report Strengthening Canadian Television Content: Creation, Discovery and Export in a Digital World, penned with Lawson Hunter for the C.D Howe Institute.
The “drama problem”, according to Engelhart, is the dearth of big budget, well-produced, made-in-Canada dramas that would conceivably…
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GATINEAU – The communications needs of most Canadians are met with land-line telephones (still) and wireless plans. But if you’re a deaf, deaf-blind or hard of hearing Canadian (DDBHH), wireless video is essential. It offers mobility and efficiency, but of course video consumes a lot more data than voice.
So, when the CRTC determined the gap in the wireless service market was low-cost data-only service, or skinny wireless, and asked the big wireless companies to file new prices and capacities, the deaf community paid attention.
First, for them, the voice portion of any package is hardly useful, neither is voicemail service….
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TORONTO – Canadian 9-1-1 experts met at the end of May as the community continues to move forward towards the June 2020 deadline to transition to Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1).
Hosted by Rogers in downtown Toronto, the three-day meeting of the Emergency Services Working Group (ESWG) featured highly technical discussions around standards and operational best practices. Approximately 80 experts from across the country attended the meeting in person, with more joining by phone. Coincidentally, the ESWG meeting followed on the heels of an important CRTC Decision.
In Telecom Decision CRTC 2018-188, the Commission varied an earlier…
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Competition Bureau invokes Sugar Wireless as a model to follow
GATINEAU – “Generally, the Bureau does not favour price controls. However, the presence of market power in this industry; the natural experiment offered by Sugar Mobile’s attempted entry into the wireless services industry; and the fact that similar LCDO Plans have arisen without government intervention in some foreign jurisdictions informs the Bureau’s view that LCDO Plans can increase economic welfare and consumer choice in Canada’s wireless industry.”
So says the Competition Bureau of Canada’s submission to the CRTC about the low-cost data only wireless plans submitted to…
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WE’VE HEARD LOADS OF discussion and debate since the official launch of the review of the Broadcasting Act – along with the Telecom and Radiocommunication Act – and with another year of discussion and debate on the horizon, the best first course of action to solve the tricky and complex policy challenges ahead is to ask (and answer) the right questions in the right order – and right now.
I’ve thought of five important questions which should be answered first, ahead of anything else. I’d argue much of the discussion around proposals such as combining the two Acts should come far…
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