GATINEAU – Bell Canada’s Mirko Bibic had more than football on his mind this Super Bowl Sunday.
Bell’s leadership is angry with the CRTC’s decision to ban the practice of simultaneous substitution during the Super Bowl broadcasts, beginning with the 2016 season, and so the company’s EVP and chief legal and regulatory officer Mirko Bibic sent an e-mail to commissioners Sunday morning to ask for a meeting to discuss.
Senior sources with knowledge of Bell Media’s NFL contract tell Cartt.ca that ending simsub for the Super Bowl will cost the company $20 million in lost revenue for…
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OTTAWA – The participant list for Industry Canada’s upcoming AWS-3 and 2500 MHz auctions this spring is beginning to take shape. Among those who have confirmed to Cartt.ca that they have submitted applications to participate in the two aforementioned auctions are Rogers Communications and Telus Corp.
SaskTel says it applied for the AWS-3, but noted it is ineligible for the 2500 MHz sale. Bell Canada and Eastlink wouldn’t confirm or deny that they filed applications. Vidéotron and MTS hadn’t replied to Cartt.ca by deadline.
Wind Mobile, which recently completed a restructuring, had previously announced its…
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TORONTO – The CRTC left no doubt as to its stance on an open internet when it clamped down on Bell and Videotron’s practice of exempting their own mobile television services from their standard monthly data charges.
The Commission determined Thursday that mobile television services Bell Mobile TV and illico.tv give their respective distributors an undue preference in favour of their own services, and have subjected consumers of other services to a corresponding undue disadvantage, contrary to the Telecommunications Act.
Bell Mobility was ordered to eliminate the “unlawful practice” by April 29, 2015. Vidéotron, which had already told the Commission…
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TORONTO – The topic of simultaneous substitution always comes up a lot at this time of year, in the same breath as the Super Bowl and its nifty new ads.
While the average Canadian sports fan may be celebrating the CRTC’s decision Thursday to prohibit the controversial requirement in Super Bowl games starting in 2017, Bell Media, the Canadian rightsholder of the big game that airs nationally on its CTV network, told Cartt.ca that it was “extremely disappointed” with the ruling.
“The government is damaging the future of local television in Canada while rewarding U.S. corporations over home-grown companies”, said…
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LONDON – Saying the Commission can not and will not tear down what’s working now in favour of what’s coming in the future, CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais announced this morning that local TV stations have to keep running their OTA transmitters – and that simultaneous substitution is here to stay – with some tough new rules.
However, simsub will be eliminated for Super Bowls, beginning with the 2016 National Football League season. The local television decisions announced today by the chairman are part of the Regulator’s conclusions from the 15-month-long Let’s Talk TV policy review launched in the fall of…
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LONDON – In his speech this morning to the London Chamber of Commerce, CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais announced a Commission decision which said Bell and Vidéotron were providing themselves undue preferences by letting customers stream programming without it counting against their bandwidth caps like all other streamed video.
“In November 2013, the CRTC received an application – filed by a University of Manitoba graduate student named Ben Klass – complaining about an alleged undue preference on the part of Bell Mobility. A similar application, filed against Vidéotron, followed a few weeks later,” outlined Blais.
“The problem in…
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WHISTLER – John Gossling, executive VP and CFO at Telus told an investors conference last week that high-end smartphones such as the iPhone 6 and others give the company the ability to address any potential downside from the expiry of a large number of contracts in the latter part of this year.
He was referring to the CRTC’s June 2013 decision, outlawing three-year contracts. It came into force on December 3, 2013, which means that all wireless carriers, not just Telus, will have to deal with the ending of both three-year and two-year contracts this year, a number that…
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TORONTO – After a quarter-century in TV and radio, John Cassaday would like to try something else.
While Corus Entertainment’s founding CEO announced last week he will retire from the company at the end of March, the 60-year-old Cassaday told Cartt.ca he isn’t thinking about riding off into the sunset. It’s just that that now is the right time for him to give up the reins at the Shaw-family controlled TV, radio and production company to his COO Doug Murphy.
“It just seemed like the perfect time for me,” he said in an interview. “February 14 is my 25th anniversary in…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has been asked to step in to help resolve a standoff between Bell Canada and the City of Hamilton over a new municipal access agreement (MAA).
In an application to the Commission dated August 22, 2014 but made public recently, the Ontario city said that its previous MAA expired in 2012, and that it notified Bell a year prior to say that it would not renew that agreement as it “provides no mechanism or means of holding Bell to account for its failures to either perform at an acceptable level or comply with the City’s basic…
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OTTAWA – Area code 548 will be rolled out in in the region currently served by area codes 226 and 519 in southwestern Ontario starting June 4, 2016, the Telecommunications Alliance confirmed Tuesday.
After this date, residents and businesses requesting a new phone number may get a number with the 548 area code. Numbers with the new area code will only be assigned to customers when the existing supply of 226 and 519 numbers is depleted.
Currently, the 226 and 519 area codes cover most of southwestern Ontario, which includes the communities of London, Windsor, Kitchener-Waterloo, Guelph, Brantford, Sarnia, Woodstock, Stratford…
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