By Ahmad Hathout
The city of Ottawa is arguing before the CRTC that Videotron is relying on the wrong agreement in its request for the regulator to force the city to reimburse the carrier for having to move its transmission lines for the construction of city projects.
Videotron filed a Part 1 application last month alleging the city has refused to compensate it $300,000 for the move to make way for projects at Montreal Road and Woodroffe Avenue because it was made at the request of its subsidiary Hydro Ottawa, which the telecom argued doesn’t make sense because…
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By Ahmad Hathout
TVA Group will be able to broadcast fewer newscasts and hours of local programming to allow it to be nimbler in a rough financial environment, the CRTC ruled Monday.
TVA parent company Quebecor a year ago filed to the CRTC the request to ease the regulatory obligations on CFCM-DT in Quebec City, saying it would need some relief from the need to broadcast two newscasts every weekend and reduce by two hours the requirement to maintain 18 hours of local programming per week. The alternative to that, it warned, is that it would have to make “difficult…
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By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC has on Monday finally decided to ease Corus’s financial obligations and delay the payback period to certain Canadian content funds, more than six months after it requested said relief.
That means Corus will see its obligations to programs of national interest (PNI) reduced from 8.5 per cent of previous year’s revenues to 5 per cent and extend beyond the current licence term the repayment period of certain amounts owed to its Canadian programming expenditure (CPE) that were deferred from the pandemic.
“The evidence on the record of this proceeding demonstrates that Corus is under considerable financial strain,”…
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Telus announced Monday it will invest $17 billion in British Columbia and more than $16 billion in Alberta to significantly expand and improve its network infrastructure and operations across those two provinces over the next five years.
These investments are part of the Vancouver-based telecom’s larger commitment to deploy $73 billion across Canada by 2028 to develop infrastructure, improve sustainability and advance its network technology, it said.
Part of its investment in the two provinces through 2028 will go toward enhancing its 5G network with open radio access network (ORAN)…
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Canadian Heritage announced via X on Thursday that Claire Anderson has been reappointed as CRTC commissioner for British Columbia and Yukon for a second five-year term.
The official order in council dated May 3 says her reappointment is effective Aug. 26, 2024.
A citizen of the Taku River Tlingit First Nation and based in Whitehorse, Anderson is the first Indigenous woman and first Yukon resident to be appointed as a CRTC commissioner. Her original appointment started in August 2019.
Called to the Yukon bar in 2014, Anderson started…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Telus said the CRTC must pony up if it requires the telco to build a new network to keep landline customers in certain remote communities of British Columbia connected – even though there are alternative service providers in those areas.
Earlier this year, the Vancouver-based company was forced by the CRTC to explain what was going on with home telephone services in those BC communities after it proposed to disconnect the services. Telus explained that those services are based on decades-old wireless technology known as the SR500 system that uses the 3.5 GHz spectrum, which…
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Regulator says it is aiming for wholesale internet decision by end of summer
By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC said Friday it will not immediately decide whether the three largest telecommunications companies should be banned from accessing the large telcos’ bundled middle- and last-mile fibre facilities, effectively greenlighting Bell, Rogers, and Telus to ride on those networks in the interim.
A consortium made up of Bell, Cogeco, Eastlink, TekSavvy, and the indie rep the Competitive Network Operators of Canada filed a late March request for the CRTC to rule that the Big 3 are banned from accessing Bell’s and Telus’s fibre facilities…
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Public Safety Canada and Pelmorex Corp. announced Monday a test of the Alert Ready national public alerting system (NPAS) will take place in most provinces and territories on Wednesday, May 8 as part of Emergency Preparedness Week, which runs from May 5 to 11.
A test alert will be distributed May 8 to Canadians in the participating provinces and territories on their television, radio and compatible wireless devices. While issuing a test alert is at the sole discretion of each provincial and territorial emergency management organization (EMO), the CRTC requires broadcasters and wireless service providers to…
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By Doug Barrett, adjunct professor in the Arts, Media & Entertainment MBA program at the Schulich School of Business
This is the third piece examining the current debate on the definition of Canadian content.
In the first I examined the different legal foundations of the Canadian Audio-Visual Certification Office (CAVCO) system and the CRTC system
In the second I argued that the CRTC should require CAVCO certification for all programs benefiting from “public purpose” money available because of CRTC regulation or other subsidies.
In this piece I look at the appropriate role of the CRTC content certification…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Bell CEO Mirko Bibic said Thursday that the higher rate of customers switching to other carriers is “concerning,” but that the telco is mitigating that with bundled offers.
Last week, Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri blamed competition from aggressively priced mobile wireless offers in the market and ease of switching for its postpaid churn rate rising to 1.1 per cent in the quarter compared to the same period last year. While Staffieri said he expects the trend to continue, he added the company isn’t worried about it.
Bell’s postpaid churn rate for the first quarter that ended…
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