The regulator now moves to challenges against final wholesale decision
By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC said large provider access to the aggregated last-mile fibre facilities of mainly Bell but also Telus in Ontario and Quebec have proven to increase consumer choice and competition between internet service providers, rejecting a cabinet recommendation to impose a ban on Rogers, Bell and Telus (Big 3) from accessing those facilities.
The commission’s relatively short decision hinged largely on what it said was a lack of evidence that such access would hinder network investment as well as evidence showing that Telus is now…
Continue Reading
The CRTC said it will not alter the Feb. 13 implementation deadline for Telus, Bell and SaskTel to provide competitors with workable access to their fibre networks in a decision last week that rejected Telus’s October 2024 request for a four-month extension to the implementation date in British Columbia and Alberta.
In arguing for the extension, Telus had said its systems would not be fully automated by Feb. 13 and using manual order processing created the potential for processing errors, which could have adverse effects on wholesale customers and their end users.
The telecom regulator…
Continue Reading
By Christopher Guly
OTTAWA – As the CRTC continues its consultations and public hearings on implementing the Online Streaming Act, which seeks in part to encourage investment in Canadian content from global streamers, France is creating domestic content through partnerships with major digital platforms.
Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ are investing between 20 per cent and 25 per cent of their French revenues in creating French content, Amanda Borghino, deputy general delegate of the Union Syndicale de la Production Audiovisuelle – which represents nearly 200 audiovisual production companies in France – told a panel on global regulatory approaches…
Continue Reading
More details emerge in the previously confidential monthslong battle
By Ahmad Hathout
Corus and Rogers continue to butt heads over the CRTC’s standstill rule, with the former urging the Federal Court of Appeal to affirm it and the latter asking the regulator to lift it so it can shuffle Corus channels it no longer wants out of both its rotation and certain channel slots.
The result of the back and forth has unveiled more details in a carriage dispute that is now nearly two years old.
The latest development sees Corus requesting this month that the Federal Court of Appeal reject a December…
Continue Reading
In a decision published Tuesday on its website, the CRTC has denied an April 2024 application from the Regional County Municipality of D’Autray that sought to have Bell refund costs associated with corrective work to its poles that the telecom had charged to the municipality as part of its pole access agreements.
Although a February 2023 telecom regulatory policy made the costs for corrective work on poles the responsibility of the pole owner, the CRTC determined in this week’s decision that the revised support structure tariff pages filed by Bell in…
Continue Reading
By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC is directing the country’s legacy telcos on Tuesday to modify their tariffs to address certain issues surrounding corrective and make-ready work to hasten access by third parties to their telephone poles.
The commission ordered Bell, Telus and SaskTel to amend their tariff pages to ensure both make-ready and corrective are on the same timeline for completion and be scheduled together to minimize third party attachment delays. Make-ready is the work involved in preparing the pole for a new attachment and corrective work deals with things like meeting construction standards.
On the matter of simple work, such as…
Continue Reading
The CRTC is looking for input on how to improve the routing of calls and texts to Canada’s 988 suicide crisis helpline service.
Currently, when someone calls 988, the call is routed to a toll-free 1-8xx number using the caller’s area code, and then routed to the crisis response centre closest in location to that area code, not where the caller is actually located. In addition, calls made from blocked numbers are routed to the national crisis centre in the absence of area code information.
The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), which delivers the 988 service in Canada, has…
Continue Reading
By Mark Goldberg, a telecommunications consultant
The headlines were breathless – Canada’s telecom regulator is going to cut the cost of internet services for people living in the far north
What the CRTC didn’t say, and what was entirely missed in the coverage, is the regulator wants customers in the rest of Canada to pay for it.
This is the same regulator that continually chastises Canada’s internet and wireless providers for not doing enough to lower prices while pushing for more investments to connect remote areas. This, despite the federal government’s own data showing cellular and internet prices keep falling while the…
Continue Reading
Telus quietly purchased the residential internet customers of wholesaler City Wide Communications through its subsidiary Altima last summer, the Vancouver-based telecom confirmed.
“As a new entrant in the region, Altima is offering customers the added benefits of greater access to a wide range of products, including mobility, home automation, security, health, and entertainment,” a Telus spokesperson told Cartt. “It is business as usual at City Wide, which continues to operate as a company serving their business customers.”
City Wide, which also offers television and landline services, is based in Nova Scotia.
Telus, which purchased Altima in 2022 and more…
Continue Reading
Following its Jan. 16 launch of a public consultation on implementing a far north internet subsidy, the CRTC last week asked the body it proposes will be administrator of the subsidy how quickly the necessary updates to the National Contribution Fund (NCF) can be made to distribute the funds to internet service providers operating in the far north.
In a letter sent to the Canadian Telecommunications Contribution Consortium (CTCC) — which along with the Central Fund Administrator (CFA) would be tasked with administrating the subsidy under the CRTC’s proposal — the telecom regulator asked…
Continue Reading
