ARE CUSTOMERS GETTING gouged? When can they walk away from their contracts? Should the three-year variety abolished? When should phones be unlocked? These and a number of other questions will be addressed by the CRTC when it releases its new Wireless Code of Conduct Monday at 9 a.m. (This was first reported by Bloomberg yesterday, but we have confirmed it with the Commission.)
The Commission held a five-day hearing back in February where consumers and corporations and many others had their say on how Canadian wireless companies should deal with their customers. Monday morning the Regulator will have its say…
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MONTREAL – Surprising no one, BCE announced Friday it has extended its takeover offer of Astral Media to July 31, 2013 as it awaits regulatory approval for the transaction.
The original expiry date to close the deal was June 1.
The Competition Bureau approved Bell’s second iteration of its proposal to purchase Astral back in March, which was followed by a week-long CRTC hearing earlier this month to review the new proposal.
Bell included a number of revised provisions in its second submission regarding the Astral deal, including new regulatory safeguards and a…
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IT’S INSTRUCTIVE, TRAVELLING to a country where spectrum policy seems focused on what’s best for citizens and not what’s best for the government itself.
In her keynote to the annual CTIA Conference in Las Vegas which we attended last week, acting FCC chair Mignon Clyburn laid out just what the Federal Communications Commission has done and is doing on the wireless front, in good detail. It was a straightforward account of what is going on with the spectrum file Stateside; concrete strategy geared towards the public interest, clearly spoken by a government official in a way that I have never…
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GATINEAU – While many Canadians themselves wonder why they need a phone line attached to their home when they already carry their lives around inside the smartphones in their pockets and purses, the CRTC announced internally today that it plans to cut that old phone cord.
An initiative announced to staff this week will see the Regulator begin to move from landlines to mobile phones starting with a pilot project launching next week.
“As you know, the CRTC is committed to providing technology to support our employees to effectively perform their day-to-day work activities. Over the past few years, there has…
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GATINEAU – Canada’s public broadcaster has been given the green light to introduce advertising on its Radio 2 and Espace musique properties, but only for three years.
“The Commission considers that advertising will serve to ensure that the CBC has the resources to continue to provide high-quality diverse programming. However, the Commission is imposing conditions of licence that limit advertising to a maximum of four minutes per hour and limit the number of times that programming can be interrupted for advertising to twice per hour,” reads the May 28 decision.
The Commission also ruled that Radio 2…
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GATINEAU – The CRTC said Wednesday it has issued seven notices of violation totalling $369,000 in penalties following a wide-ranging investigation into the use of robocalls by political parties, elected officials and telemarketers.
The CRTC received the co-operation of the following parties, firms and an individual who, further to settlement agreements, have paid penalties totaling $277,500: the Wildrose Alliance Political Association, the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, the New Democratic Party of Canada, RackNine Inc. and Marc Garneau, M.P.
“We appreciate the co-operation we received during our investigations,” said Andrea Rosen, the CRTC’s chief compliance and enforcement officer, in the official…
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GATINEAU – The CRTC will announce its decision on the renewal of the broadcasting licences for the CBC at 11 a.m. Tuesday morning.
The most contentious issue of the hearing, held back in November, was the CBC’s request for permission to sell advertising on Radio 2. Struggling with cuts to its funding in the past 24 months, the Corp wants to be able to earn more cash by selling advertising into the indie/classical/eclectic music station – and it also promised not to change the nature of the service in order to pursue higher ratings and increased ad dollars.
Many Canadian private…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC has agreed for the first time to allowed limited advertising on CBC’s Radio 2 and Espace Musique networks.
The Commission allowed the change as part of its decision, released this morning, to renew CBC’s English- and French-language television and radio licenses until August 31, 2018.
The CRTC says it will allow the radio networks to include up to four minutes of advertising per broadcast hour within a maximum of two blocks. The CBC will also have to submit a new application at the end of the three-year period…
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OTTAWA – Approximately 90,000 new phone and fax numbers have been registered with the country’s national do not call list (DNCL) since February, spurring a proportional increase in the number of complaints filed with the CRTC against telemarketers in April.
According to the Commission’s most recent status report as of April 30, the national do not call list (DNCL) now contains 11,657,261 telephone or fax numbers. Approximately 16,000 telemarketing complaints were filed in April, up from just over 10,000 in March. Since its launch in 2008, 695,692 complaints have been logged.
Seventeen new investigations…
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GATINEAU – In its final reply to the CRTC last week on the proposed purchase of Astral Media by Bell Canada, Rogers Communications informed the Commission that, if Montreal’s CKGM-AM (now TSN690) came on the market, it would be prepared to purchase the station and keep it sports talk. This was first reported by Cartt.ca.
In their last written reply to the Commission on the proposed $3.2 billion deal, filed today, Bell and Astral, put plainly, didn’t buy Rogers’ assertion. Not one bit.
As many readers will already know, in order to keep TSN690, Bell has asked…
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