OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Canada’s television service providers saw their overall revenues dip 0.1% in 2015 amidst a continuing erosion of subscribers, according to the CRTC’s statistical and financial results for the industry released Tuesday.
Broadcasting Distribution Undertakings – Statistical and Financial Summaries 2011-2015 said that combined revenues remained steady at $8.9 billion, while subscribers fell from 11.4 million in 2014 to 11.2 million for the year ended August 31, 2015. Total expenses increased by 1.3% to $7.2 billion, and as a result, the sector's operating margin decreased to its lowest level in five years, but remained healthy at 19%.
Despite these…
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OTTAWA – The Ontario towns of Aurora and Georgina 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 Monday that it issued the call after receiving an application from Bhupinder Bola, on behalf of a corporation to be incorporated, to serve Aurora, plus an application from Renfrew-based My Broadcasting Corporation to serve the Georgina market.
Interventions are due by August 10 and the deadline to file replies is August 22, 2016. …
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OTTAWA – Quebec’s new web-blocking legislation is not only unconstitutional, it directly conflicts with the Telecommunications Act, says the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC).
In a Part 1 application to the CRTC dated July 8, 2016, the consumer organization said that Bill 74, which requires Quebec-based Internet service providers to block certain gambling websites, “frustrates the Canadian telecommunications policy objectives expressed in s. 7 of the Telecommunications Act. Bill 74 also presents a compliance challenge to ISPs operating in Québec. Finally, Bill 74 threatens constitutionally-protected free speech.”
PIAC is calling on the CRTC to declare Bill 74 unconstitutional, ultra vires (beyond…
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OTTAWA – Customers of Ice Wireless and its affiliate Sugar Mobile may continue to roam on Rogers’ national mobile network, at least in the short term.
The CRTC has granted Ice Wireless’ request for interim relief while considering its request for final relief by preventing Rogers from prohibiting customers of Ice Wireless or Sugar Mobile from roaming on its mobile network.
A letter from secretary general Danielle May-Cuconato addressed to Ice Wireless president & CEO Samer Bishay and Rogers’ SVP regulatory David Watt said that the Commission has determined that the application, filed in February 2016, has met its…
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Chair, Minister, respond, too
GATINEAU – After former Ontario CRTC commissioner Raj Shoan filed a new judicial review application last week which alleges institutional bigotry and many other workplace issues within the Commission as part of the reasons why his firing should be reversed, those directly affected by his statements have responded.
In his legal documents filed with the Federal Court last week, which we reported on here, Shoan filed a copy of a letter he sent to Heritage Minister Melanie Joly on June 14th (before his appointment was rescinded). That letter detailed a number of offensive statements which Shoan…
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a.k.a. net neutrality…
GATINEAU – There is pretty broad consensus among many of the interveners in the CRTC’s differential pricing consultation that the practice can have a positive impact on the ISP business, content providers and consumers.
First round comments to the Commission’s Examination of differential pricing practices related to Internet data plans (2016-192) revealed though that it’s not a cut and dried issue. For instance, Bell Canada argued that zero-rating and sponsored data pricing mechanisms – two differential pricing practices or DPPs – are common in the communications world.
The company pointed to toll free calling and time of use…
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Says commissioner Vennard conducted herself inappropriately, too
TORONTO – In a judicial review application filed with the Federal Court on Tuesday, former Ontario regional CRTC commissioner Raj Shoan alleges institutional bigotry within the Commission as part of the justifications why his firing should be reversed.
Documents filed by Shoan also say a serious complaint against another commissioner, Alberta and NWT commissioner Linda Vennard, was swept aside and that shows an unfair inconsistency in how staff complaints about the two commissioners have been treated.
He also seeks an immediate stay of the Order-in-Council which rescinded his appointment, so he can return to his…
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OTTAWA – Mississauga-based telecom service provider Axsit is in breach of its obligations to customers and Commissioner of Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS), says the CCTS.
Axsit, which offers VoIP phone service to residential and home office customers, joined CCTS in April 2013 as is required by the CRTC in order for it to participate in the complaint-resolution processes established by CCTS.
CCTS said that it received a complaint from an Axsit customer in January 2016 alleging that the company had billed the customer for long distance charges for calls which had actually been made fraudulently by a third party. Following…
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Growing in small market Quebec
MONTREAL – It only started in 2012, but Quebec’s Attraction Radio has already grown, entirely through acquisitions, to become one of the top radio broadcast owners in Quebec, based on a business model of small-market stations each maintaining their own identity and local management.
On Tuesday, the CRTC published the latest acquisition by this group, of CIPC-FM Port-Cartier (Radioactive 99.1) and CKCN-FM (PUR FM 94.1) in nearby Sept-Îles, on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River, 500 kilometres northeast of Quebec City.
Both stations were owned by four shareholders, Yvan Beaulieu, Jean Laverdière, Luc Hovington and…
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Nextologies is changing the economics of signal transport
SLAVA LEVIN WANTS to show me something.
We walk through his new building in Markham, past his master control which now offers 107 TV channels to Canadian distributors (making ECG the largest broadcaster in Canada, by number of channels), past one of his studios where a Canadian Filipino-language talk show is being shot, and through a tech-cluttered storage area to a set of tight, narrow stairs and then a ladder.
We’re now on the roof among 27 satellite dishes pointed out to the present and future of far lower-cost signal transport than the TV…
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