OTTAWA – Much has been made about the paradigm shift over the top (OTT) video services are going to bring to the broadcasting system, but a conference in Ottawa heard yesterday that it is still too early to determine if there will be a negative impact on the conventional broadcasting sector.
Speaking at the International Institute of Communications Canada conference, Ryan Victor, senior VP of business and legal affairs at NBC Universal Television Distribution, said the biggest near-term effect of OTT services will be to understand its impact on the business because it’s still not yet known how OTT services…
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OTTAWA – While milling about on the floor of the Institute of International Communications 2011 Canadian chapter conference here at the beautiful new Ottawa Convention Centre on Monday morning, everyone had a guess (and some claimed inside information) on what Industry Minister Christian Paradis is going to say in his speech to the conference on Tuesday afternoon.
Is it to be a statement on foreign investment changes for the telecom sector? Setting out the rules on the auction of 700 MHz wireless spectrum? Some sort of direction in the long-overdue digital economy strategy?
It looks like now,…
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HAMILTON – CHCH has asked the CRTC for permission to use a new replacement UHF digital television transmitter, specifically the one formerly used by Toronto 1/Sun News Toronto.
The Channel Zero-owned over-the-air TV broadcaster said in its application to the Commission the new replacement digital transmitter operating on CH15 will boost its coverage and help it regain viewers who previously tuned to its CH18 transitional DTV channel which was shut down in August as part of the digital transition.
Comments on the application are due by January 11, 2012.
www.crtc.gc.ca
www.chch.com
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OTTAWA – The number of telephone and fax numbers registered on Canada’s national do not call list (DNCL) continued to climb in October, while the number of complaints about telemarketers dropped, according to a report released Tuesday by the CRTC.
The status report said that as of October 31, 2011, approximately 119,000 new Canadian numbers had been registered, up sharply from about 90,000 numbers in August of this year.
The Commission received over 12,000 complaints about telemarketing communications in August, but by October, that number had fallen to under 11,000.
Six new investigations were opened in October, bringing the number…
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OTTAWA – Former CRTC Commissioner Andrée Noël has been named the new national chair of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC).
She replaces Ron Cohen who announced in June that he would retire from the role by the end of the year. The appointment is effective as of January 1, 2012.
Noël joins the CBSC from her consulting practice where she provided services to public and private organizations on broadcasting and telecommunications matters. Prior to her nine years as the CRTC’s regional commissioner for Quebec, Noël was first director of legal and regulatory affairs and then director of public affairs for Fonorola…
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OTTAWA – Shaw has been given the official go ahead by the CRTC to extend its local television satellite solution (LTSS) to Canadian viewers impacted by the digital television transition.
As part of its purchase of Canwest Global, Shaw earmarked a portion of its tangible benefits package to provide free local or regional TV services and the necessary satellite equipment and installation services for up to 31,500 households that were poised to lose access to local over-the-air stations as a result of August’s digital television transition. Shaw was authorized to allocate $1 million of this $15 million benefit to fund…
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OTTAWA – A Canadian and U.S. lawyer squared off on billing for bandwidth at the International Institute of Communications Canada conference yesterday with the American lawyer arguing that while wholesale access is a good thing, a government mandated regime may not be.
Bryan Tramont, managing partner at Washington D.C.-based Wilkenson Barker Knauer, pointed to a 2010 study of 16 European countries and their efforts with respect to network unbundling and the impact on broadband penetration rates. “ found no correlation between the aggressiveness of unbundling and the broadband penetration rates when you control for other variables…like computer adoption and…
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OTTAWA – Over the past number of weeks, Canada’s independent broadcasters have been alerting CRTC staff and commissioners that the big, vertically integrated BDUs are all but ignoring the Commission’s brand new Code of Conduct, which was released with its new policy on Vertical Integration on September 21.
Ignoring that code is a big mistake, CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein told Cartt.ca during an interview Tuesday.
Even though on October 14th, with the ink still drying on the original, the Regulator modified it (changing the instances where it said “shall” to “should”),…
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TORONTO – Media Access Canada (MAC) is gathering support from the country’s disability organizations to head up the newly established broadcasting accessibility fund (BAF).
The CRTC mandated the $5.7 million fund earlier this year as part of BCE’s tangible benefits when it purchased CTV. The Commission directed that the fund’s control be in the hands of the accessibility community with two third voting and board positions, and that the remaining third be filled by members of the broadcast industry.
MAC said that both it and the members of the Access 2020 Coalition have sent submissions to the CRTC stressing that voting…
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OTTAWA – Despite its popularity with consumers, Canada’s national do not call list could be in jeopardy by next spring unless the CRTC can find funding to continue investigating telemarketing complaints and enforcing compliance.
The Commission listed this somewhat startling matter as a ‘risk and uncertainty’ in its quarterly financial report for the period ended September 30, 2011 released Monday.
Despite being granted power five years ago under the Telecommunications Act to create and administer the national DNCL, the Commission said that it did not receive incremental on-going funding “to perform these non-discretionary, statutory responsibilities”. To date, the CRTC said its investigation and enforcement…
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