MONTREAL – The Canadian wireless sector is not only well-priced, it offers better service than many other large industrialized countries, and does not need new “interventionist measures” to promote competition, according to a new publication from the Montreal Economic Institute (MEI).
The organization published a new Viewpoint Monday entitled Three Myths about Competition in the Canadian Wireless Sector, timed to coincide with the start of the CRTC’s hearing into the wholesale wireless market.
According to the document, wireless prices in Canada are lower than those in the United States, Japan, and Australia. Moreover, by comparing different mobile wireless service bundles…
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MONTREAL – Cogeco Cable could add wireless service to its mix as the country’s newest Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO), a move that it said will help foster wireless competition in a market dominated by incumbent providers.
In advance of its appearance Monday at the CRTC’s review of wholesale mobile wireless services, Cogeco said in a statement that it will seek “the implementation of appropriate regulatory measures to allow it to enter the wireless market as an MVNO to offer customers more choice, better value and differentiated wireless services”. MVNOs are mobile wireless service providers that lease capacity from facilities-based wireless…
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OTTAWA–GATINEAU – With wireless service networks now accessible to 99% of the population, more and more Canadian households are dropping their landlines, according to the 2014 edition of the CRTC’s Communications Monitoring Report.
The report, released Thursday, provides an overview of the Canadian communication industry for the year ended August 31, 2013. This year, the CRTC is releasing the report in three parts. The first, about the country’s broadcasting sector, was released earlier this month, and the third part will be released in October with data on international comparisons, the National Do Not Call List and consumer spending on…
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BANFF – Three days of great weather, stunning scenery, clean mountain air and a ton of networking and learning made for another super CCSA CONNECT conference, where much of the talk surrounded the lengthy and somewhat contentious TV Policy Review hearing.
After CRTC vice-chairman broadcasting Tom Pentefountas opened the conference Monday morning with his speech (one which pretty much stayed away from the hearing), one of the conference’s sponsors AMC’s Lesley Fields, showed she’d been listening to the Commission’s Let’s Talk TV hearing when she noted she felt nervous following Pentefountas saying: “I feel the need…
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GATINEAU – There are a good number of phone calls and meetings happening behind the scenes in Gatineau and Ottawa as the CRTC struggles to figure out what to do after being told “no” by Netflix and Google.
As most have heard by now, the American tech behemoths, who were invited by the CRTC to appear at the TV Policy Review hearing (they didn’t ask to appear, they were asked…) got rough rides from chairman Jean-Pierre Blais over data they didn’t bring, and/or won’t submit as evidence, no matter what the CRTC’s confidentiality rules state.
While we…
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GATINEAU – It didn’t seem like that big a deal.
Tiny wanna-be Internet video distributor Leiacomm (no word if it’s named after the Princess…) complained to the CRTC claiming Bell Media was granting itself an undue preference by refusing to sell content to the independent company which wants to stream video content online, without a license, as a sort-of online BDU, instead of a subscription VOD product like many other OTT providers are. (It’s online presence is known as Picktv.net)
The Commission dismissed Leiacomm’s complaint on Monday saying the preference Bell granted itself by not dealing with Leiacomm was not undue,…
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GATINEAU – Being exempted from regulation, CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais said in 2013, is still a form of regulation. So, one shouldn’t get the sense that just because Netflix on Monday refused the Commission’s order to provide data about its Canadian users, the chairman feels he has no arrows left in his quiver.
In May 2013, during the third day of the hearing analyzing Bell Media’s second attempt to acquire Astral Media, CRTC chairman Blais said this: “I never talk about regulated and unregulated. I always talk about licensed and unlicensed for the very fact that one couldn't have exempted…
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TORONTO – Shaw Media is asking the CRTC to licence an innovative new English-language specialty news channel called Global News 1 that promises to deliver local news on a national scale.
The company said Monday that the national, all-Canadian channel would incorporate local feeds in all 12 markets where Global currently operates conventional television stations, plus add local newsrooms to Fort McMurray and Red Deer, AB; Sault Ste. Marie, Niagara, Mississauga and Ottawa, ON; Quebec City, QC and Charlottetown, PE, where it says there is either no local television news or limited competition.
Unlike any other service, Global News 1 will feature a…
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BANFF – It’s not easy being a small fish in an ocean filled with predators new and old – and with unpredictable tides – but the strong, well-organized school of independent CCSA members consistently show they have advantages which can allow them to survive and thrive.
That’s the message CRTC vice-chair broadcasting Tom Pentefountas carried with him this morning to open the Canadian Cable Systems Alliance annual Connect conference at the Banff Springs Hotel.
He recognized that the transitions being made by the large companies in the media, cable and telecom spaces are exceedingly difficult and have certainly not been easy…
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GATINEAU – The screen went black for about 15 minutes Friday morning at the CRTC’s Let’s Talk TV policy hearing when chairman Jean-Pierre Blais abruptly called for a break after Netflix’s director of global public policy, Corie Wright, repeatedly refused to agree to provide Canadian subscriber information in confidence. After the TV time out, Netflix was ordered to provide Canadian subscriber information without the confidentiality guarantee it was seeking.
The brouhaha started about 10 minutes into questioning when vice-chair of broadcasting Tom Pentefountas wondered aloud if Netflix would provide Canadian subscriber figures. After Wright responded that the company didn’t release…
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