GATINEAU – There was little love for the CRTC when, on the day before St. Valentine’s Day, Videotron filed its appeal of the wholesale Internet billing decision (more popularly known as the usage-based-billing issue). However, the Quebec cableco wasn’t the only provider to let its feelings be known regarding the matter, other network owners as well as the independent ISPs have taken the Commission to task over the appropriate rates for wholesale network access and use.
The issue that never seems to go away is not focused on the capacity-based billing framework, which most agree is a good idea, but…
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IN NOVEMBER, THEN-MACLEAN’S magazine national columnist Andrew Coyne added his voice to the cacophony of critics carping about the CBC, saying the TV portion should become a pay channel, a-la HBO.
Oy, where to begin with that one? How about starting with the Broadcasting Act, a law which mandates the CBC’s existence, carriage and programming goals. According to the Part 1 of the Act, section 3(1)(l & m), the overall programming provided by the Corp. should be that which “informs, enlightens and entertains” and should:
(i) be predominantly and distinctively Canadian, (ii) reflect Canada and its regions…
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SLAMMING THE CBC has become a too-easy sport for many Canadians (second only, perhaps, to slamming the CRTC). That harsh, hot criticism should be expected, however.
The CBC gets more than a billion dollars a year from Canadians (an amount that is likely to take a hit, come the March 29th federal budget), has to be made available to all of us everywhere and serve a mandate written into law – to be all things to all Canadians. Satisfying that mandate has been nearly impossible to fulfill for most of the CBC’s lifetime. So coast-to-coast-criticism, as those who work at…
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OTTAWA – Terrestrial pay-per-view service Viewer’s Choice is going national.
The service was granted permission from the CRTC Tuesday to amend its broadcasting licence from a regional service, serving Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces, to a national nature of service.
Viewers Choice is owned by Viewers Choice Canada Inc., which is majority owned by Astral Media with minority partners CTV and Rogers Media. Its programming includes movies, concerts, adult content and live sporting events such as boxing, wrestling, mixed marshal arts and special events like The World Series of Poker.
www.crtc.gc.ca
www.viewerschoice.ca
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TORONTO – Former CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein has joined the C. D. Howe Institute as an Institute Senior Fellow.
The C. D. Howe Institute is an independent not-for-profit organization that aims to raise Canadians’ living standards by fostering economically sound public policies. Wednesday’s announcement said that von Finckenstein’s areas of focus are communications law, dispute resolution, competition law, and mergers and acquisitions.
“Konrad von Finckenstein possesses extraordinary policy depth and range”, said Finn Poschmann, the Institute’s vice-president of research, in the announcement. “His record of public leadership is remarkable and his deep knowledge base will add tremendous capacity to our…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has received 22 applications for the coveted 88.1 FM slot in Toronto which vary from a $12 million CanCon promise from Newcap, to an all-business news station from Channel Zero, to a student-supported bid by Ryerson University to reclaim the frequency it lost last year when The school’s CKLN Radio was stripped of its licence.
CKLN Radio Inc had been broadcasting its community-based campus radio station at Ryerson University for 27 years until its licence was revoked in January, 2011 after it repeatedly failed to comply with federal broadcasting regulations over a number of years. But…
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TORONTO – Canadian Network Operators Consortium Inc. (CNOC) is appealing two CRTC decisions around wholesale Internet rates plus wants greater transparency in the regulatory process going forward.
Referring to the Commission’s usage-based billing decision which adopted a capacity-based rate structure alongside the traditional flat rate model for wholesale Internet services, CNOC called the capacity-based rates approved for incumbents Bell, Cogeco, Rogers and Videotron “inflated”, which therefore makes it difficult for independent Internet service providers to compete.
“The rates struck under the two decisions were made by the CRTC using a considerable amount of information filed in confidence by incumbents that interested parties, such…
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OTTAWA – Despite Rogers’ promise to drop its Internet traffic management practices (ITMP) this year, it appears as though the company still has a little explaining to do to the CRTC.
In a letter sent to Rogers this week, the Commission’s chief compliance and enforcement officer Andrea Rosen said that further testing uncovered another issue with Rogers’ technical ITMP which she described as a potential instance of non-compliance requiring immediate attention.
“It appears that Rogers applies a technical ITMP to unidentified TCP upload traffic, regardless of the port used, when traffic from certain popular P2P applications is or was recently present”,…
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OTTAWA – The biggest challenge the Canadian broadcasting industry is facing is a subset of distributors who are seeking lower rates for specialty services, Kevin Crull, president of Bell Media, told the Canadian Media Production Association’s annual Prime Time 2012 conference in Ottawa on Friday morning.
Crull spoke about this issue and other challenges Bell Media is facing in a interview style session with former CTV president, former head of CBC News and current professor, MBA program in arts and media administration, Schulich School of Business, Trina McQueen. Crull said this issue is more important than the group licensing regime…
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OTTAWA – The success of independent producers under the CRTC’s group licensing regime (GLR) will be tied to that of the broadcasters, the Canadian Media Production Association’s Prime Time 2012 heard this morning.
Peter Grant, counsel at McCarthy Tetrault, presented findings of a short paper examining the impact of GLR on indie producers that show under this new regime a substantial increase in money will become available for Canadian programming. He said that money available will jump from $290 million in 2012 to approximately $329 million in 2016. What’s also evident is that programs of national interest (PNI) will make…
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