The Canadian Communication Systems Alliance, which represents 100 independent communications companies, announced Wednesday that consultant John Roman is the organization’s new director of legal and regulatory affairs.
“With more than 14 years of dedicated experience in policy, regulation, and consulting within the broadcasting and telecommunications sectors, Roman’s extensive track record of crafting regulatory submissions, supporting Governor in Council (GIC) requests, and creating and delivering presentations for appearances at CRTC and Senate Committee hearings underscores his invaluable expertise in understanding and achieving results in the regulatory field,” a CCSA press release said.
“His involvement with licensing, mergers, pricing models, and service frameworks demonstrates his deep…
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The Municipalité régionale de comté (MRC) de D’Autray, located in the Lanaudière region northeast of Montreal, has submitted a Part 1 application asking the CRTC to clarify the rules regarding costs related to preparatory work on Bell poles to which the regional county municipality wants to attach.
In an application dated April 18 and posted to the CRTC’s website Tuesday, the MRC’s director of information systems and telecom services asks the commission to facilitate and to encourage Bell’s application of the provisions of the CRTC’s February 2023 telecom regulatory policy regarding costs associated with make-ready work…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Not-for-profit media company Accessible Media Inc. (AMI) has lodged a complaint with the CRTC alleging Videotron is not treating institutional subscribers in a way that conforms with industry standard when it comes to carrying AMI’s programs.
Since 2016, AMI and Videotron have been deadlocked on the terms of a distribution agreement in which Videotron must carry AMI-TV and AMI-tele as part of the 9.1(1)(h) rule.
Central to AMI’s undue disadvantage complaint, as outlined in a Part 1 application made public this week, is that Videotron allegedly will not budge on how to treat institutional customers, such as hotels and…
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Wireless prices in Canada decreased an average of 18.2 per cent for data plans in 2023 when compared to 2022 prices, according to Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada’s 2023 Price Comparison Study of Telecom Services, published Tuesday.
The annual report — which provides a comparative price analysis of wireless and home internet services in Canada, both regionally and relative to G7 peer countries and Australia — also found home internet prices in Canada declined across all service plans in 2023. There were significant decreases on plans up to 100 Mbps, including decreases…
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By Ahmad Hathout
An independent telecommunications association is asking that the CRTC to raise the revenue threshold for companies required to contribute annual fees to the commission, after the regulator ruled similarly for broadcasters last month.
The Independent Telecommunications Providers Association filed a Part 1 application made public this week imploring the regulator to this year increase the revenue threshold from $10 million to $25 million of previous year’s financial results – money that goes toward CRTC operations and a regime that funds telecommunications services.
“Today, the application of the $10 million mandates contribution payments by…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Bell’s joint request of the CRTC to permanently block the three largest telecommunications companies from accessing its bundled fibre facilities is an attempt to nullify the competitive impact of the interim access regime, Rogers and Telus argued earlier this month.
The country’s largest telco partnered with wholesale competitors to ask the regulator in a procedural request to clarify that the Big 3 are ineligible to access the bundled middle- and last-mile facilities of Bell and Telus before the May 7 deadline to implement the interim regime in Quebec and Ontario. The CRTC did not explicitly…
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This is part two of a three-part feature. Please read part one here.
By Doug Barrett, adjunct professor in the Arts, Media & Entertainment MBA program at the Schulich School of Business
In my last piece, I suggested that the critical definition of Canadian Content was that set out in the Income Tax Act and Regulations and administered by the Canadian Audio-Visual Certification Office (CAVCO) and asked why the ongoing debate focused instead on the definition used by the CRTC.
In this piece, I’d like to look a little closer at the CAVCO role. In my…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Google is asking the Federal Court of Appeal to allow it to argue that the CRTC should have included in its new broadcasting fee regulations an explicit exemption for advertisements that are placed on user-generated content.
The CRTC ordered in March a new way it was going to calculate revenues and collect fees for its operations, lowering traditional broadcasting obligations with the transfer of some of that collection to online platforms in line with the new Online Streaming Act that will bring the latter services under its ambit.
During the intervention phase of that 2023 proceeding,…
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Quebecor said it will rethink pricing strategy as a result
By Ahmad Hathout
Quebecor will need to accept Telus’s rate to connect to its wireless network, the CRTC ruled Monday, eliciting a scathing response from the Montreal company that included a promise to reconsider its low-cost pricing and suspend the launch of certain plans in Manitoba.
Telus and Quebecor could not come to an agreement on the price-per-gigabyte component of that access, so they each presented their respective prices and asked the CRTC to make that determination via final offer arbitration.
While it said both offers would allow Quebecor’s mobile virtual network…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Bell will argue before the Federal Court of Appeal that the CRTC was not right to rely on the government’s policy direction to order telcos to provide interim access to their bundled transport and last mile fibre facilities because it is inherently contradicted by the Telecommunications Act.
Section 10 of the 2023 policy direction to the CRTC requires the commission to mandate the provision of an aggregated wholesale high-speed access service. At the same time, section 8 of the Telecommunications Act provides the government with the ability to order the regulator to make decisions of “general application on…
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