By Ahmad Hathout
Quebecor and Bell are wrangling on the issue of when exactly permits are processed for the purposes of determining who is responsible for corrective work on support structures that must carry more attachments.
Quebecor filed a Part 1 application, made public on Monday, asking the CRTC to clarify the status of attaching permit applications that had yet to be fully approved by Bell when the CRTC in January ordered the telcos to make the necessary corrective work on structures at their own expense to prepare for new equipment.
Specifically, the issue is when those outstanding applications…
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The CRTC announced Monday it has committed more than $15 million from its $750-million Broadband Fund to SaskTel and Access Communications Co-operative to build approximately 455 kilometres of new transport fibre infrastructure that will deliver high-speed internet to 3,880 homes across 27 communities in Saskatchewan.
These are the final projects selected for funding from the CRTC’s third call for applications to the Broadband Fund. The next round of funding applications will open in 2026, the CRTC said in a press release.
“We are taking action to help ensure that Canadians have access to…
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By Ahmad Hathout
The Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) is asking the CRTC to reduce what it calls outdated and unnecessary reporting requirements and hasten ownership transaction applications.
According to the letter, sent Thursday, Canadian broadcasters must submit dozens of reports to the regulator on a monthly and annual basis, “many of which are duplicative or overlap to a considerable extent” because their necessity have “never been reassessed.”
These reports, as outlined in the letter, include annual financial and monthly television programming log evaluation reports, local TV news audits, independent and regional production reports, women in production reports, emerging and indigenous artist…
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Quebecor’s TVA Group announced Wednesday it is eliminating 87 positions in its broadcasting segment as its financial situation continues to deteriorate.
The cuts affect primarily unionized jobs and include permanent and temporary positions in Montreal and at local stations in Trois-Rivières, Sherbrooke, Saguenay and Rimouski, TVA Group said in a press release.
Despite its restructuring and workforce rationalization strategies in recent years, TVA Group has posted cumulative net losses of more than $93 million since January 2022, including a $17 million loss for the first nine months of 2025, due primarily to a…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Bell wants the CRTC to end a mandate that requires it to provide copper-based voice services in two small Ontario towns upon the installation of subsidized fibre networks.
The telco says in a Part 1 application made public Monday that it is “neither efficient nor in the interest of consumers” in Nairn and Fingal “to continue to impose an obligation to serve over an increasingly end-of-life copper network when consumers can obtain more reliable service using the more modern (and government-subsidized) networks while also contributing to the continued expansion and operation of those networks.”
Bell has historically been the…
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Terrion currently building a multi-carrier tower in Nanaimo
By Ahmad Hathout
Telus executives said Friday that they are confident the telco can compete on its suite of services in light of Bell’s entrance in the internet market out west.
“We are obviously supportive of competition,” Executive Vice President and CFO Doug French said on the company’s third-quarter earnings conference call on Friday. “We still want to obviously win in retail, and our bundling and our product superiority will continue to compete well there.”
The comments came after Bell announced last month that it was going to wholesale Telus fibre and…
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By Ahmad Hathout
The head of Quebecor on Thursday excoriated the federal government’s decision to up CBC/Radio-Canada’s annual funding while not forcing it out of commercial advertising sales.
The Liberals allocated an additional $150 million to the public broadcaster’s annual appropriation, which was a pre-election commitment from Prime Minister Mark Carney, but did not push it out of those ad sales for which private television broadcasters compete.
“Regrettably, this new government has missed an opportunity to support an industry facing ever-growing challenges and job losses at an alarming rate,” Pierre Karl Peladeau, president and CEO of Quebecor, said during…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Bell’s president and CEO said Thursday that the telco is targeting the new year for the full launch of fibre-based internet service for its mobile wireless customers in western Canada.
Mirko Bibic said during the company’s third-quarter earnings conference call that Bell already has a trial in Kelowna, British Columbia for fibre internet service using Telus’s network, and that the telco is targeting January for a full launch.
“We are going to do all this in a very disciplined way,” Bibic said.
During its investor day conference last month, Bell said it was launching the service this…
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By Ahmad Hathout
The Federal Court of Appeal will hear a SaskTel challenge that alleges the CRTC’s decision to mandate access its bundled fibre facilities was based on a cabinet direction that conflicts with the Telecommunications Act.
The court approved the telco’s leave to appeal application on Friday, just over a year after it was filed in September 2024.
The gist of the argument is that the CRTC allegedly preordained a decision based on what it was told by the federal government, which, through section 10 of the 2023 cabinet direction, ordered it to adopt a specific policy of…
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The CRTC last week approved an application by Vista Radio to acquire CJGY-FM Grande Prairie (Reach 96.3 FM) in Alberta and its rebroadcasting transmitters in Dawson Creek and Fort St. John, B.C., from Golden West Broadcasting.
In its decision to approve the change in ownership of the Christian music format station, the CRTC said Vista Radio had proposed a value of the transaction of $1,531,576 and had requested an exception to the payment of tangible benefits to allow all of its proposed $98,000 contribution to go to the British Columbia…
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