TORONTO – Just in time for the winter getaway season, Rogers is rolling out a new technology for customers travelling in the U.S. that allows them to access their Canadian wireless plans while they're away.
For $5 a day, the Roam Like Home plan, which will be available November 10, allows customers to use the Internet, make calls, send texts and emails in the U.S. just like they would at home, with their Share Everything plan, which includes shareable data buckets, unlimited talk and text, and various other services. Calls made within the U.S. and back to Canada are also included…
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VANCOUVER – The speech CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais gave yesterday to the Vancouver Board of Trade looked like a plea for Canadians to take a deep breath, step back, and let the Regulator do its work on the TV Policy Review – and to remind all that decisions will be based solely on the hard evidence presented to it.
Blais referenced the beginnings of the satellite TV era in Canada where the incumbent cable companies and others used the term Death Star to describe the potential newcomers. Back then, incumbents spoke of all manner of ruination that would come to…
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MONTREAL – Gains at Bell Wireless helped to power a 74.9% jump in BCE's third quarter net earnings, the company announced Thursday.
BCE operating revenue grew 1.9% to $5,195 million in Q3, reflecting higher revenues at Bell and Bell Aliant. Adjusted EBITDA was up 2.5% to $2,115 million while adjusted EBITDA margin increased slightly to 40.7%, driven by “healthy growth” at Bell that was partly offset by a year-over-year decline at Bell Aliant.
BCE's net earnings attributable to common shareholders jumped 74.9% to $600 million year-over-year, which it said was due to a charge in Q3 2013 for the CRTC tangible…
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OTTAWA – If you want to cancel your TV, phone or Internet service, service providers can’t make you wait 30 days anymore.
Today the CRTC announced Canadians will no longer be required to provide advance notice to change their television services, says a press release – the first decision coming from the CRTC’s TV Policy Review. The Commission is prohibiting television service providers from requiring that Canadians give 30-days notice prior to cancelling these services. This is the first decision further to Let’s Talk TV: A Conversation with Canadians on the future of television.
Most of the…
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TORONTO – Any time members of the Canadian telecom industry gather together for a conference, the age-old debate about just how competitive the market actually is here inevitably emerges. The Canadian ISP Summit held this week in Toronto was no exception.
And in fact, opposing views on the subject, firmly expressed, provided most of the sparks during the conference’s final session on Wednesday, a panel discussion that tackled many of the regulatory issues currently faced by the telecom industry.
Moderated by telecom industry consultant Mark Goldberg (co-founder and organizer of the annual Canadian Telecom Summit), the regulatory panel featured: Dr. Michael…
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OTTAWA – Canadians’ complaints over their telecom and Internet services fell for the first time in the seven year history of the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS), but Commissioner Howard Maker stopped short of calling it a trend.
“From our examination of other statistics… we are cautiously optimistic that the industry as a whole is becoming more focused on customer issues and on how it addresses customer problems”, Maker wrote in the 2013-2014 annual report, called ‘Driving Positive Change’, released Tuesday.
The CCTS received 11,340 customer complaints in 2013-14, down 17% from 13,692 in 2012-13, and successfully resolved…
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I FINALLY HAVE A RESPONSE to something CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais asked we reporters – in absentia, mind you – during day eight of September’s Talk TV hearing, the day set aside for accessibility issues.
“I asked others beforehand – now they may be listening elsewhere – but the media table, which was chock-a-block last week, seems to be completely empty now,” chairman Blais said on September 17th. “And I'm struck, because members of the community you serve presumably buy goods and services – goods and services that are made by people that advertise in newspapers and other electronic media.
“Why…
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TORONTO – The radio industry, electronic media’s elder statesman, is not in trouble and the sky is not falling, but radio broadcasters need to do a better job at promoting their advertising success stories to keep marketers from becoming too distracted by the “shiny, new toy” (a.k.a. digital audio streaming services).
That was the rallying call delivered by Erica Farber, president and CEO of the U.S.-based Radio Advertising Bureau, during an industry executive town hall session at the Ontario Association of Broadcasters’ Connection 2014 conference, held Thursday in Toronto. “Success stories work,” she said. “We do not do a good…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC’s National Do Not Call List levied $3,050,595 in fees in the 2013-14 fiscal year, according to its annual report released Thursday.
During the 2013-2014 reporting period, from April 1, 2013 to March 31, 2014, Canadians registered 750,521 numbers, bringing the list’s total to 12,239,563 numbers, or about 29% of Canadian households.
There were 666 telemarketer registrations, bringing the total to 10,877. Telemarketer registrations to the National DNCL have increased by 14.5% since 2011-12, and by 23.2% since 2010-11. Telemarketers also bought 2,090 subscriptions to the List, ranging from one area code for one month to…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has updated a number of aspects of its commercial radio policy in an effort to ensure that its approach is simple, effective and measurable.
The Commission said Tuesday that these radio policy updates will allow commercial radio to achieve the objectives of the Broadcasting Act and, ultimately, to better serve Canadians. In spite of relative stability, both financially and in terms of tuning, since the last policy review in 2006, the CRTC said that the commercial radio sector would nevertheless benefit from an update of certain regulatory and policy elements.
The changes include:
– A revised approach to…
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