YELLOWKNIFE – In preparation for local competition in its territory, incumbent Northwestel said Monday that it is rolling out a new home telephone service to its cable customers in Yellowknife.
Called Cable Home Phone, the service uses the same high-speed broadband network as the company’s Internet and cable television services, and includes traditional landline features such as call display, call waiting, call forwarding, and voicemail.
Customers may also opt to add on a new long distance plan offering unlimited, anytime long distance calling for $9.95 per month when bundled with Northwestel’s digital TV and Internet services.
“Cable Home Phone is a common…
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OTTAWA – Canada’s wireless industry generated $43 billion for the Canadian economy in 2010, according to a new report released Monday by the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA).
Conducted by UK-based Ovum Consulting, The Benefit to the Canadian Economy from the Wireless Telecommunications Industries: An Economic Impact Assessment, quantifies the economic impact of Canada’s wireless sector in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), investment and employment.
It determined that the wireless communications services industry directly contributed $18 billion to Canada’s GDP and provided an additional $15.66 billion of economic flow through to contributing suppliers in the supply chain. The sector also generated what’s…
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OTTAWA – The dispute between Bell Media and a group of independent distributors known as the Canadian Independent Distributors Group (CIDG) will go to final arbitration on June 29, the CRTC said Thursday.
As Cartt.ca has reported, Cogeco Cable, Telus, EastLink, MTS and the Canadian Cable Systems Alliance have balked at the terms of carriage offered to them by Bell Media for its 30-some specialty channels. Alleging undue preference against Bell, the CIDG object to packaging, penetration, and other terms offered to them by Bell Media. Bell says that its wholesale costing model, a penetration based rate card that it says…
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TORONTO – CTV executive Phil King may be in charge of programming for the country’s largest conventional network, but it’s clear that sports are as big a part of that as are the slate of new fall shows that the network announced Thursday.
Speaking with Cartt.ca prior to Bell Media’s ‘upfront’ event, King, who broke in to the business at TSN before that network was acquired by CTV, admitted that the next round of NHL hockey and Olympic broadcast rights are never far from his mind.
“The (Canadian NHL) rights discussion is still two years away, but I find it…
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OTTAWA – Nearly 11 million Canadians have registered their telephone numbers with the CRTC’s national do not call list (DNCL), according to a report released Tuesday.
The most recent status report showed that the DNCL contains 10,786,194 telephone and fax numbers as of April 30, with approximately 80,000 numbers added during that month alone.
The Commission fielded 13,100 complaints about telemarketing communications in April, down slightly from a high of over 13,600 in February of this year. Since the DNCL was launched in 2008, 542,991 complaints have been logged.
Three new investigations were opened in April, bringing the number of active investigations to…
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YELLOWKNIFE – Ice Wireless and Iristel are joining forces to offer telecommunications and Internet services in the Northwest Territories, Yukon and Nunavut this summer.
Privately-held VoIP provider Iristel, which is a major shareholder in Ice, has been licensed by the CRTC as a carrier since 2000. It will go head-to-head with Bell-owned incumbent Northwestel on a range of telephone services including VoIP and wholesale long distance.
Iristel and Ice Wireless president Samer Bishay said that the competition will go a long way toward ending the "digital divide" between Canada's northern communities and populated areas in the south.
"Northwestel's monopoly is officially at…
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OTTAWA – After considering 11 different radio station applications for Calgary, the CRTC handed out licences to Jim Pattison Broadcast Group and Multicultural Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) this week.
The decision, which shut out radio bigwigs such as Bell Media and Corus, granted Jim Pattison Broadcast Group an English-language commercial FM licence for the 95.3 MHz slot. The station’s format will be Adult Album Alternative (AAA) music, with a primary focus on new and emerging artists, and a secondary focus on alternative music from the last decade.
Targeting women from 25-49 years of age, the station plans to air 40% of Canadian…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC will continue in its search for a “sustainable solution” to meet the telecommunications needs of Canadians with hearing and speech disabilities.
While text relay services meet the needs of the vast majority of people with such disabilities, those who use a sign language as their first or primary language have submitted that a sign-language service known as video relay would better meet their needs.
After receiving reports from both Telus and Bell Canada on their respective video relay service initiatives, the Commission said Friday that it requires further study in order to better understand the different projections regarding use…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has tweaked the conditions of licence for mainstream sports and national news channels as it pertains to the broadcast day.
On Friday, the Commission said that its revisions will permit specialty Category C services operating in either of the two genres to choose between an 18 or a 24 hour broadcast day, replacing conditions it set out in 2010.
The changes come at the behest of Bell Media which asked the CRTC to provide Category C channels the same flexibility as Category B services. Noting that sports services such as RDS and TSN offer “a high level of…
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OTTAWA – If you ask the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS), the CBC could learn a few things from Ontario’s educational broadcaster TVO.
CACTUS wants the national broadcaster to follow TVO’s lead by offering its analog TV transmitters that are scheduled to be shuttered this summer to their local communities. TVO, which is pulling the plug on its over-the-air signals on July 31st, has already contacted over 100 affected communities to offer them the towers and satellite equipment for free.
"This transmission infrastructure is worth millions and has already been paid for by Canadian taxpayers," said CACTUS…
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