The CRTC is asking Rogers to explain how the recent increase of its service set-up fee from $60 to $70 on Rogers and Fido plans is consistent with the federal government’s recent amendments to the Telecommunications Act introduced this spring in Budget 2024.
Division 37 of Bill C-69, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on April 16, 2024, which received royal assent on June 20, contains a prohibition stating, “A telecommunications service provider must not charge a fee to a subscriber that is related to the activation or modification of a telecommunications service…
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Media company said its application serves to show urgency of situation
By Ahmad Hathout
Blue Ant Media has filed a Part 1 application requesting that the CRTC reduce its required spending on programs of national interest, citing a stranglehold on its ability to spend money on content that its audiences want to watch.
In the two-page filing, dated June 20 but posted to the CRTC website Thursday, the media company asks that it be allowed to put five, instead of 13.5, per cent of its previous year’s revenues into PNI, which it said “force broadcasters to spend their production budgets on certain…
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Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne announced Tuesday the appointment of Drew Olsen as vice chair and CEO of the Copyright Board of Canada for a five-year term, starting Aug. 26.
In this position, Olsen will lead the work of the Copyright Board as well as supervise and direct board staff. He succeeds Nathalie Théberge, who was recently appointed as the CRTC’s vice chair of broadcasting for a five-year term that began in April.
Olsen is currently associate director general of the audiovisual branch at Canadian Heritage. While at the department, he has held other leadership…
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The CRTC last week approved an implementation plan from incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) Westport Telephone Company Limited, operating as WTC Communications, for local competition by Bell Canada in the exchange of Westport, Ont.
Given there is no other competitive local exchange carriers currently operating in WTC Communications’ local interconnection region, the ILEC said it does not already have the necessary processes in place. In its implementation plan, it asked for 60 days to file competitor services tariffs related to local network interconnection in Westport once the commission approved its implementation plan. It further proposed that Bell…
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The CRTC has told Rogers in a letter it plans to publish the full Xona Partners report on the cable giant’s July 2022 major service outage, after receiving letters from public interest groups requesting disclosure of the full text of the report.
On July 4, the CRTC posted an executive summary of the Xona report, which detailed the results of an independent assessment of the Rogers network architecture for reliability and resiliency, as well as the processes in place at Rogers to manage network changes and respond to network incidents like…
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Media company says it is confident in slate of rebranded and new content after losing Discovery rights
By Ahmad Hathout
Corus Entertainment executives said Monday that the pure-play media company is expecting to make further cuts to full-time positions, which will bring the total by the end of August to almost 800, or 25 per cent, since the beginning of its fiscal year in September.
“Our board of directors has given us a clear mandate to decisively right-size the business and create a more sustainable future,” John Gossling, co-CEO of Corus and chief financial officer, said on a third quarter conference call…
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The Canada Media Fund (CMF) on Monday invited industry members and organizations to help shape its 2024-2027 Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility (EDIA) Strategy by sharing their insights at in-person forums or via virtual sessions during the month of July.
EDIA community members can attend in-person sessions in Toronto (July 17), Vancouver (July 24) or Montreal (July 30). The meetings can also be joined virtually on Zoom, according to information on the registration form here. Industry organizations are invited to attend virtual sessions on July 29 in English and on July 31 in…
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The CRTC has approved a request from Northwestel for additional funding via the Broadband Fund to drive its fibre expansion in rural Whitehorse.
Representing the sixth increase in funding for its Yukon fibre project, Northwestel has been approved for a further 7.1 per cent increase ($4.1 million) in funding to add fibre for internet access services in the rural Whitehorse areas of Deep Creek, Golden Horn and Takhini River Road, adding approximately 250 households to the overall project scope.
This brings the total CRTC Broadband Fund funding for Northwestel’s Yukon fibre project to $62.7 million.
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The CRTC is asking for comments on a Part 1 application from the Broadcasting Participation Fund (BPF) to expand its mandate so it can provide financial support for public interest participation in Online News Act proceedings.
The BPF was established in 2012 to help support research and reimburse the costs of public interest participation in the CRTC’s broadcasting proceedings.
A Part 1 application dated June 18, posted to the CRTC’s website on July 5, proposes that the BPF’s mandate now be expanded to accept applications for public interest intervenor costs in CRTC digital news proceedings under the Online…
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The combination of measures that Rogers undertook after its major service outage in July 2022 are satisfactory to improve the Rogers network resiliency and reliability as well as to address the root cause of the outage, according to a report by Xona Partners Inc. released last week by the CRTC.
The report, commissioned by the CRTC via a contract awarded in 2023, details the results of an independent assessment of the Rogers network architecture for reliability and resiliency, as well as the processes in place at Rogers to manage network changes and…
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