Other subsidies can be re-directed, too
GATINEAU – The CRTC’s primary role when it comes to ensuring broadband is accessible by all Canadians should be to focus on the deployment of networks rather than dealing with affordability issues, something which is better handled by other organizations, according to Bell Canada.
Speaking at the Commission’s basic service objective hearing on Tuesday, Rob Malcolmson, senior vice-president of regulatory affairs at BCE Inc. noted that low income Canadians are still subscribing to broadband services even if they can’t afford it. They are simply giving up other things to do so.
“This is fundamentally a poverty…
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GATINEAU – In an unprecedented move, CRTC chair Jean-Pierre Blais used a break in the Basic Service Objective hearing to make a significant point through a personal address to the hearing: we’ve decided already that broadband is essential to Canadians. (The full text of that address can be found here.)
“Overall, in a nutshell, witnesses that appeared so far have agreed to a self-evident truth: today, in Canada, broadband is vital,” he said. “So, unless you disagree with this conclusion, let us not spend more hearing time on this self-evident truth. We have other, more important…
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Innovation minister vows more federal support for indigenous and rural communities
TORONTO – Ottawa has not done its best to help bring broadband to remote native communities, Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains has suggested.
The previous Conservative government allocated over $270 million since 2014 under the Connecting Canadians program to help local providers bring high speed Internet to rural and outlying communities across the country, and the program has been taken over and recently added to by Liberal government.
However, Bains told reporters in Toronto on Friday during a visit to Cisco (It's a shame his visit didn't come…
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Chair's comments change the focus of the hearing, puts government, industry, on notice, to get their acts together
GATINEAU – The the second week of the CRTC's basic service objective (BSO) hearing featured a rare moment of reflection from CRTC chairman and CEO Jean-Pierre Blais which will now alter the focus of this hearing. Below are Blais' unedited personal thoughts, made just prior to Monday's lunch break.
Those of you who are familiar with CRTC proceedings will appreciate that it is unusual for Chairs to make formal remarks beyond those made at the beginning of the oral hearing.
But this is an exceptional…
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GATINEAU – So far, the CRTC’s basic service objective (BSO) hearing has been largely focused on broadband backbone network, speed and data caps, but on Thursday, the panel of commissioners were dealt doses of reality on the need to implement a low cost broadband service when the broad Affordability Access Coalition (AAC) making its appearance.
AAC is a collection of organizations including the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC), the Consumers Association of Canada (CAC), the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and others. The group argued that a minimum basic broadband should carry speeds of 10 Mbps download…
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GATINEAU – Some 66,000 Canadians, or just 0.5% of Canadian television households, have signed up for the new slimmed down basic TV programming packages five weeks after they debuted, the CRTC said Friday.
The Commission asked ten of the country’s biggest TV service providers – Access Communications, Bell, Cogeco, Eastlink, MTS, Rogers, SaskTel, Shaw, Telus and Vidéotron, to add up subscribers to their new basic television packages. These ‘skinny basic’ packages, priced at $25 or less, debuted March 1st amidst great fanfare touting choice and affordability.
TV service providers also began offering either pick-and-pay for individual channels or small packages of…
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GATINEAU – The first two days of the CRTC’s basic service objective (BSO) hearing had a distinct northern flavour. Witnesses argued that a lack of backbone capacity was hindering broadband in the region. On Wednesday, two companies intimately involved with satellites appeared before the Commission, arguing that new birds coming online within the next year will help address capacity constraints for rural and remote regions of the country.
Satellites have long been a key part of the broadband solution for the Far North, but in some ways the hype didn’t meet reality. As the Commission heard…
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GATINEAU – Including broadband in a redefined basic service objective (BSO) is an absolute requirement, the Nunavut Broadband Development Corp. (NBDC) and SSi Group of Companies told the CRTC on the second day of its basic service obligation hearing. The problem in getting good broadband in the Far North, they say, is the lack of adequate backbone infrastructure.
“The bottleneck for Nunavut is backbone and that cannot be solved with a fragmented approach where services for consumers are supported separately from services for business or government. All Nunavut users rely on the same upstream services delivered over the same inadequate…
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GATINEAU – The CRTC approved ZoomerMedia’s application for religious service VisionTV to completely alter its programming, but denied its request to cut down some of its Canadian content requirements.
UPDATE: However, according to the company, that doesn’t mean it is getting out of religious programming.
Thanks to the CRTC’s Let’s Talk TV policy changes, genre exclusivity is on the outs, so the Commission decided because of that, (and the fact that Vision will no longer be a must-carry for Canadian carriers as of August 31, 2020), it would allow Vision’s request to drop its current conditions of license (COLs). All of…
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GATINEAU – The Government of Yukon and the Kativik Regional Government both told the CRTC on the first day of its basic service obligation (BSO) hearing that broadband is an essential service and that the Commission must take regulatory action to ensure remote and northern communities have future-proof high-speed services.
“Yukon’s position is that the solutions in this proceeding should enable all Canadians in both urban and rural areas, in all regions of Canada, to have access to fast, affordable and reliable broadband service,” Jim Pratt, a consultant with the Yukon government, said in his opening remarks.
He noted…
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