GATINEAU – It didn’t take long for the CRTC to modify its schedule in the usage-based billing proceeding. With Bell Canada’s appearance lasting all morning on Monday, the Commission has decided to push the testimony from the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Centre and OpenMedia.ca until Tuesday.
Konrad von Finckenstein, chair of the CRTC, noted that the OpenMedia.ca-CIPPIC appearance is likely to be lengthy and therefore would be better to hear from the consumer advocacy groups on Day 2 of the hearing.
The other interveners on Day 1 were Telus Corp., a panel of consumer interests from Ontario…
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OTTAWA – The standstill that some asked for during the CRTC’s recent vertical integration hearing has been granted.
The Commission said Friday that programmers and BDUs currently engaged in a terms of carriage negotiation must continue to operate under the terms of their previous agreement as the CRTC reviews the regulatory framework relating to vertical integration.
The continuation of service was issued “in order to better permit the Commission to implement determinations that may result from (the vertical integration) proceeding”, reads the notice.
www.crtc.gc.ca
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OTTAWA – Two years after establishing guidelines on net neutrality, the CRTC has fallen short on its goal to protect users, writes Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor who holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law.
Geist’s report, which also appeared Friday in the Toronto Star, says that after filing an access to information request and reviewing “hundreds of pages of documents”, he found “that virtually all major Canadian ISPs have been the target of complaints, but there have been few, if any, consequences arising from the complaints process. In fact, the CRTC has…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC has postponed the CBC’s licence renewal hearing from this September until June 4, 2012.
The Commission said Friday that the decision was made for two reasons. First, in response to a request by the Quebec English-language Production Committee (QEPC) for the ‘pub caster’s “aggregate financial production information”, similar to that made available by the private English-language television broadcasters for their group-based licence renewals last April.
“The (CBC’s licence renewal application and appendices) do not provide the data that the commercial broadcasters publish in their annual independent production reports, such as the number of projects, aggregate length, region…
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CONSUMER ADVOCACY ORGANIZATION OpenMedia.ca said that it will boycott the CRTC’s “controversial hearing” on over-the-top (OTT) content. That is, if the matter ever progresses to a hearing.
As Cartt.ca reported in May, the Commission kicked off a month-long fact-finding exercise on over-the-top programming services in the Canada. The deadline for comments was Tuesday, July 5.
In a statement on Wednesday, the pro-Internet group accused the CRTC of becoming “overly entangled with the interests of powerful stakeholders", and said that the proceeding has been structured "to yield results that favour industry interests over Canadian interests”.
"The CRTC is supposed to work for the Canadian public,…
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GATINEAU – Shaw Communications used its submission to the CRTC on 2011-344 (the Commission’s fact-finding exercise on over-the-top video) to make some very specific requests the company says will bring regulatory parity between it and OTT providers such as Netflix.
The country’s largest BDU and second-largest broadcasting company wants the Commission to scale back and then eliminate the Canada Media Fund and abolish the Local Programming Improvement Fund, among other things.
Characterizing the entire Canadian TV regulatory framework as “no longer sustainable” in the face of global competition where Canadians can increasingly get access to media from anywhere at any time,…
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MANY TAKE IT AS GOSPEL in this business that without rules to force Canadian broadcasters to make (or at least pay for) and air Canadian content, they just wouldn’t. Instead, they’d more cheaply buy foreign (i.e. U.S.) television shows to fill out their entire schedule.
Go ahead. Ask anyone. We’ve all said it.
The record of regulatory resistance over the years mostly bears that opinion out – as do the prime time schedules of the major private conventional broadcasters. What I’m not sure about is whether that will continue to hold true in the future.
Now, the only prognosticating I’ll allow myself…
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GATINEAU – An annual report commissioned by the CRTC confirms what the telecom industry has been saying for a while about their broadband and wireless plans: It ain’t so bad here…
Prepared for the Commission by Ottawa’s Wall Communications, the annual “Price Comparisons of Wireline, Wireless and Internet Services in Canada and with Foreign Jurisdictions” report combines and averages wireline, wireless, broadband and bundled rates in Canada and compares them with plans with other international jurisdictions. The report found that while Canadian rates aren’t the most expensive, they aren’t the cheapest either, that while Canadian broadband speeds aren’t the fastest,…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has laid out the ground rules for its hearing into usage-based billing (UBB) which begins on Monday.
In a letter to stakeholders dated July 4th, the Commission instructed those planning to appear to “present their submissions at the oral hearing in as plain language as possible” and to “support their recommendations with appropriate rationale and to quantify the impact of these recommendations to the fullest extent possible”.
Oral submissions must be structured as follows:
1. Which of the billing models proposed by interveners should the Commission adopt?
2. If a usage component is adopted, which of the two different…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC will take a good look at broadcasting veteran Michael MacMillan’s plans to buy independent broadcaster Glassbox Television.
MacMillan’s company Blue Ant Media agreed to acquire Glassbox in April, as Cartt.ca reported. Glassbox, which is owned by a number of shareholders and controlled by a board of directors, owns and operates digital specialty channels Aux TV, Bite TV and recently acquired category 1 specialty channel Travel + Escape.
In the application, made public by the Commission on Tuesday, the total purchase price for the various transfers amounts to $32.5 million. Of that, $10 million is assigned to…
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