OTTAWA – The majority of Canada’s mobile wireless carriers have told the CRTC that redefining home network to include public Wi-Fi will have serious negative consequences on the mobile market while smaller providers Ice Wireless and Execulink argue Wi-Fi First providers are needed to inject much needed competition to an already highly concentrated market.
The final round of submissions on the CRTC’s Governor-in-Council demand that it reconsider its March wholesale wireless roaming decision were due December 1st. This is something ISED Minister Navdeep Bains announced during June’s Canadian Telecom Summit.
For Bell Canada, the only issue…
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MONTREAL and TORONTO – The Cogeco Program Development Fund, the Independent Production Fund and Cogeco Communications announced Monday they’ve concluded an agreement to ensure “the sustainability of the CPDF's Canadian television production funding activities,” says the press release.
This new agreement will become effective on January 1, 2018.
The CPDF and the IPF had been co-operating with each other since 1992 by sharing resources for the processing of funding applications and the administration of the CPDF's program funding activities, which are supported financially by the annual contributions of Cogeco's regulated broadcasting distribution undertakings to independent production funds and the returns…
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The disruption initiated by the web was always going to result in some chaos. But now the barbarians may be the gatekeepers
MANY OF MY GENERATION wring their hands, dab the sweat off their upper lips and otherwise fuss – in the manner older generations do – about millennials.
They live at home until 30, ooze entitlement, have the attention span of a housefly and, because their parents’ generation mortgaged their future, are more focused on fun than ambition. Whatever.
What is, however, worth worrying about is the responsibility that will be unique to millennials: the nurturing of the World Wide…
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GATINEAU – Toronto-based lawyer Monique Lafontaine has been named the CRTC’s new Commissioner for Ontario.
Wednesday’s announcement by Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly says that Lafontaine (pictured) brings over 17 years' experience in entertainment and communications law to the role, and that her areas of specialization include television, radio, new media regulation, program licencing and affiliation agreements, stakeholder relations, and anti-spam and privacy legislation.
Lafontaine, who is fluently bilingual, will begin her five-year post on January 2nd, 2018. According to her LinkedIn profile, she held senior roles at ZoomerMedia, the Directors Guild of Canada and law firm McCarthy Tétrault before opening her own communications and entertainment…
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VICELAND’S FUTURE IN CANADA may be on thin ice after word that its partner, Rogers Media, may have plans to pull its financial support for the specialty service.
According to a Globe and Mail report, Rogers will “cut off funding early next year”. The millennial-focused Viceland, which launched in Canada in February 2016 in place of the Biography Channel, is part of a joint venture between Rogers Media and Vice. The two also have a larger partnership that includes the Vice Canada content studio in Toronto, built thanks to a $100 million investment in Vice by Rogers Communications, announced in…
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Internet complaints on the rise; PIAC wants a new code of conduct
OTTAWA – The Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS) said today it saw an 11% increase in the number of complaints received from Canadian telecom customers in 2016-17, a turnaround of a three-year trend of declining complaints.
While Canadians continue to complain most often about their wireless services, they represent a declining proportion of all complaints to the CCTS, says the organization in its press release. What’s on the rise, however, are consumer complaints about their broadband services.
“The CCTS is the administrator of the CRTC’s Wireless Code, and…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has turned down a request from Rogers Media seeking to decrease local programming on the Quebec feed of its multilingual multi-ethnic discretionary service OMNI Regional.
OMNI Regional offers its service in four separate regional feeds. Rogers asked the Commission to change the condition of licence from requiring the Quebec feed of the service to include 14 hours of original, local independently produced programming each week to be 14 hours of original, local ethnic programming each month.
Rogers said that the proposal to provide 14 hours weekly of original, local independently produced programming on the Quebec feed was…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC is heading to Toronto next week to consider new radio applications vying to serve Ontario’s Grimsby/Beamsville region as well as the town of Georgina.
The public hearing will take place from November 28 – 29, 2017 at the Holiday Inn Toronto Yorkdale to consider applications from Dufferin Communications, Durham Radio and Byrnes Communications seeking a broadcasting licence to operate an English-language commercial FM radio station to serve Grimsby and Beamsville.
The Commission will also review applications from My Broadcasting Corporation, Frank Torres, and Radio Markham York to serve the south-central Ontario market of Georgina with a new FM…
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OTTAWA – A senior government official acknowledged during a Parliamentary committee appearance Thursday morning that the federal government’s $500 million Connect to Innovate (CTI) program won’t do enough to bring broadband to all underserved communities in Canada.
Speaking to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, Susan Hart, director general for the Connecting Canadians Branch at Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) noted the number of communities which will get new backbone infrastructure under CTI is “a drop in the bucket” compared to what’s needed.
When setting out to determine the scope of the CTI program, the…
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EDMONTON – CCAA-protected pay TV provider Super Channel last month had its protection order extended until February 28th, 2018. The court also recently dismissed claims from unsecured creditors HSBC and Shaftsbury Films against secured creditors Rosedale Meadows Development Inc. and Peter Allard.
The Allard-family owned company (its legal entities are called Allarco Entertainment 2008 Inc. and Allarco Entertainment Limited Partnership) entered bankruptcy protection in May 2016, then owing $115.7 million to a number of creditors. It has been granted several extensions on its protection from creditors under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) since.
According to numerous…
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