OTTAWA – Canada’s wireless customers need better safeguards to protect against expensive premium text messaging services, according to a new report released Wednesday from the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC).
The report, Paying a Premium: Consumers and Mobile Premium Services, includes the results of focus groups with consumers who had experiences with mobile premium services, also known as premium text messaging services, plus a review of industry self-regulation and practices.
PIAC counsel and report co-author Janet Lo said that consumers continue to report numerous problems with mobile premium services, ranging from unauthorized subscriptions to unsuccessful unsubscription, and difficulty disputing charges for these…
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THE QUESTION, “Whose customer is it anyway?” has always been a contentious issue between television distributors and the pay and specialty channels they offer to Canadians.
In short, the BDUs have long been adamant that the customer is absolutely theirs. It’s their network, they do the packaging and marketing and the customer pays them, of course. Simple, right?
Broadcasters have always countered that without their content, BDUs have nothing but a nice store with empty shelves, that the subscriber doesn’t care about the connection and pays the cable company to see their favourite shows. Simple, right?
Notsomuch. The answer is that they…
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LESS THAN A DECADE AGO, the television landscape was a lucrative landscape of BDUs and broadcasters who understood the terrain. Laws were established. Rules followed. Peace (sort of) reigned.
Then over-the-top video (OTT) with all of its possibilities blew into town, creating a wild west that many believe leaves traditional players without a strong weapon while a new, lawless breed takes over, driving consumers to cut, or trim, their TV subscriptions.
“OTT is more important than we thought,” says Alain Gourd, chair of The Working Group on Online Broadcasting (formerly the Over-the-Top Working Group), a conglomerate of 13 BDUs, broadcasters…
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OKAY, WE’LL ADMIT IT. Sometimes it does get a little difficult in maintaining one’s attention on the fifth day into a CRTC hearing.
The questions, and quite often the answers, grow more similar as minutes turn into hours, turn into days. Those repeated questions and answers, though, do tend to allow followers of the hearing to divine just what the commissioners and the industry are aiming for. If you read between enough lines, maybe you can even predict, a little, what’s coming.
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WE’VE ALREADY EXPLAINED what the primary topics are during our extensive coverage of the CRTC’s…
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GATINEAU – The clichés and attempted parallels were flying on the final day of the CRTC’s vertical integration hearing on Tuesday.
All of the independents, from V Interactions at the start of Tuesday through to GlassBox and Fight Network at the end of the day, are afraid the big, vertically integrated companies will only act ruthlessly in their own self interests to the severe detriment to their much smaller companies.
Among the elements of its proposal, the Weather Network/Météomédia owner Pelmorex Inc. argued that the Commission should “entrench in regulation” a requirement on broadcast distribution undertakings (BDUs) that they can’t alter…
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GATINEAU – A code of conduct for vertically integrated broadcast and distribution groups, content exclusivity on mobile and the need for a skinny basic package were the primary discussion points discussion during the fourth day of the CRTC’s examination of vertical integration.
EastLink noted during its opening remarks that access to content is a “critical driver” of not only its cable distribution service, but for all of its services, and therefore rules need to be established to ensure equitable access to content.
“Programming services dictate contract terms requiring distribution in high penetration packages, packaging requirements and, in some cases, with the…
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GATINEAU – Do consumers really want the ability to pick the Jenny Craig of TV packages, a.k.a. the oft-debated, ultra-lean, skinny basic package?
It has been one of the primary questions coming from CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein and his colleagues over the first three days of the Commission’s hearing into vertical integration.
The idea has been bounced around for a couple of years (especially during the fee-for-carriage battles), however it has really taken hold of the imagination of the panel of commissioners this week.
In a nutshell, a mandated skinny basic package would force cable, satellite and telco TV distributors…
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GATINEAU – Having stopped its HSPA wireless network build earlier this year, Shaw Communications is nearing a decision on what to do, finally, on the wireless front.
“We’re in certain conversations, strategically, looking at options. We’re certainly looking at LTE 4G as where technology is going but we’re still in that process,” said company CEO Brad Shaw to reporters after his appearance in front of the CRTC’s vertical integration hearing.
“We’ll soon make an announcement, I think, over the next month.” The company put the brakes on its HSPA network build in February in order to reassess its wireless goals…
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By Steven James May
MP CHARLIE ANGUS WAS bang on when he dubbed Canada’s digital television transition a “hodgepodge” during a Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage in March 2011. Trying to figure out if, when and where a particular over-the-air (OTA) television broadcaster will be going digital (or not) requires significant digging.
With just over two months to go before Canada’s digital television transition (70 days according to the Cartt.ca countdown clock), many viewers in cities such as Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto are already enjoying digital over-the-air (OTA) television. (For many, it is a viable, enjoyable, alternative to paying a TV…
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TECHNOLOGY HAS CREATED THIS vast crevasse. On one side is what consumers want. On the other is what the traditional TV industry says they can give them. Nestled in the void, like a big broadcast boogeyman waiting to pounce (for some, anyway), is OTT.
At the Banff World Festival last week, over-the-top video was top of mind and a prominent feature in CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein’s breakfast speech to delegates, although he refused to speculate on its impact, given the fact-finding proceeding that is under way.
But it’s clear that there’s no way to zipline across the divide…
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