TORONTO – With more than 350 delegates, a strong group of sponsors and vendors and 21 educational sessions, the 2016 Canadian ISP Summit was the biggest edition yet.
Focused on independent ISPs like Teksavvy, Distributel, Sogetel and Execulink, the annual gathering is a place to hear war stories, get the latest and greatest in tech developments, hear marketing successes and, of course, regulatory wins and losses.
2016 has featured a few wins for the independent ISPs on the wholesale wireline front, especially (even though that still isn’t over, yet).
The final session…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has ordered Rogers Communications to allow TekSavvy Solutions to provide Internet access services to its customers at a Toronto townhouse complex.
The Commission said Wednesday that Rogers must continue to provide TekSavvy with access to its existing and new retail end-users in the complex by way of aggregated wholesale high-speed access (HSA) service provisioned over Rogers’ fibre-to-the-premises access facilities, subject to the conditions set out in its decision. Furthermore, Rogers must provide other ISP competitors with access to their existing and new customers at that complex through the same service, and subject to the same conditions set…
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French broadcasters license renewal will carry on with just two Francophone commissioners
WE HAD THOUGHT IT was government policy which said in order to run any CRTC hearing about broadcasting in the province of Quebec, at least three commissioners must be Francophone.
When former CRTC vice-chair, broadcasting, Tom Pentefountas (Greek last name, but a Francophone Quebecker), announced a year ago last Wednesday that he was leaving the Commission, the Regulator immediately postponed a hearing into the framework for French-language vocal music applicable to French-language commercial radio. It’s not part of the official paperwork explaining the reason why…
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GATINEAU – After four and a half days of a hearing on differential pricing practices, Quebecor Media Inc. took the stand on Friday to defend its Vidéotron Unlimited Music offering. In a nutshell, the company said it’s not acting as a gatekeeper and therefore not contravening the Telecommunications Act, but rather using innovation to offer its customers more services.
Unlimited Music is nothing more than a marketing instrument at aimed at growing its subscribers and targeting a younger demographic, QMI said in its opening remarks. It added the service doesn’t contravene the Internet Traffic Management Practices (ITMP) framework just…
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OTTAWA – Canadians continued to cut the TV cord in record (if still pretty small) numbers since launch of a CRTC-mandated skinny basic TV package on March 1st.
In the two fiscal quarters since phase one of the Commission’s new consumer choice policy came into effect (which mandated a $25 skinny basic package of over-the-air stations and must-carry channels and the launch of smaller, theme packs of channels), Canada’s publicly traded TV service providers combined lost approximately 98,500 TV subscribers, according to new research and analysis from Ottawa-based research and consulting firm Boon Dog Professional Services.
That’s a loss of 11,500…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC is calling on the country’s telcos to step up and help clamp down on the number of unwanted telemarketing calls plaguing Canadians.
The Commission told telecommunications service providers (TSPs) on Monday that they have 90 days to develop technical solutions to block blatantly illegitimate nuisance calls within their networks by working the CRTC Interconnection Steering Committee (CISC). These calls include those that appear to originate from telephone numbers that (i) match the telephone number of the person being called; (ii) are “spoofed” with a number that is local to the person being called, in the…
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OTTAWA – The Ontario city of Brampton and St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador may soon each have a new radio station after the CRTC issued a call for comments on market capacity and on the appropriateness of issuing a call for radio applications to serve the two areas.
The Commission said Friday that it issued the calls after receiving applications from Priya Datta, on behalf of a corporation to be incorporated, and Antoine Karam, on behalf of a corporation to be incorporated, each for a commercial ethnic station to serve Brampton. It also received an application from Andrew Green and Jordan…
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TORONTO and VANCOUVER – South Asian Broadcasting Corporation announced today it has completed the purchase of CIRC Radio Inc., the company which operates the Toronto FM radio station CIRV-FM, 88.9 known as “Toronto’s Multicultural Super Mix”.
Surry, B.C.’s SABC is controlled by Kulwinder Sanghera and also operates CKYE-FM, 93.1, serving the Greater Vancouver Region. Sanghera also controls CKYR-FM, 106.7 Calgary. Both are multicultural radio stations are known to listeners as RED FM.
“I am honored to continue the broadcasting legacy started three decades ago by a Canadian pioneer of ethnic broadcasting, Mr Alvarez,”said Sanghera, in a press release. Financial details were…
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GATINEAU – Differential pricing can benefit a broad range of players in the communications market, Telus told the CRTC on the fourth day of its DPP hearing, but just don’t let the vertically integrated (VI) entities use their “unnatural incentives” to give themselves an advantage.
“Since differential pricing practices increase the size of the market, they allow both carriers and content providers to spread these fixed costs over a larger number of consumers. This process has produced, and should continue to produce, newer and better services at stable or falling prices throughout the Internet ecosystem,” said Dr. Jeffrey Eisenach, managing…
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HALIFAX – DHX Media has received CRTC approval to allow broadcast advertising on Family Channel, effective immediately.
Historically an ad-free pay-TV service, Family offers Canadian and acquired series, movies and specials, and also airs teen-focussed content after 9:00 PM on F2N. Subscribers also have access to the Family Channel app, Family OnDemand and Family Online.
"DHX Media welcomes the CRTC's decision to permit all specialty and pay television services to broadcast advertising," said DHX Television SVP and GM Joe Tedesco, in a statement Thursday. “It represents the next logical step in the implementation of the Let's Talk TV decision, when genre…
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