OTTAWA – All Canadian telecom service providers must join the CRTC’s Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS) for a period of five years, the Regulator ruled on Wednesday.
After a hearing this week to review the independence and effectiveness of the CCTS, whose existing membership decision is set to expire later this month, the CRTC issued a rare bench ruling immediately after the hearing ended which dictated that “all residential and small business consumers that obtain forborne telecom services in Canada, including those that receive services from TSPs that do not have more than $10 million in revenues, should…
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MONTREAL – Most telecom customers don’t know that if their service provider fails to address a complaint to their satisfaction, they may ask the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS) for help.
To coincide with the CRTC hearing on CCTS, the consumer group Option Consommateurs has released a research report called Do I have the right number? Customer Service at Telecommunications which recommends that the CCTS be given more power and greater publicity.
“Presently, consumers have no idea where to complain once they are convinced that they cannot get any satisfaction from their providers’ customer services”, said the report’s…
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OTTAWA – Sports network The Score has asked the CRTC if it can spend more money on Canadian content, but show less of it.
In an application made public on Monday, The Score proposed that its Canadian programming expenditure requirement be upped from 45% to 47.8% of its gross revenues, but that its overall Canadian programming exhibition requirement be lowered to 75% of the broadcast day, down from 80%. The national English-language analog channel also asked to draw programming from additional program categories, and that its wholesale rate be de-regulated.
Interventions and comments are due by January 4, 2011.
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OTTAWA – Christianne Laizner has joined the CRTC as General Counsel, Telecommunications, the Regulator announced Monday.
Laizner comes to the Commission from the Department of Justice where she most recently held the role of executive director and general counsel of the Department’s legal service unit at the Canadian International Development Agency. Prior to that assignment, she co-managed Justice’s litigation and procurement review practice group at Public Works and Government Services Canada, and worked in the Trade Law Division and the Civil Litigation Section.
With extensive experience in administrative law, procurement law and trade law, Laizner has appeared before both courts and…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has turned down most of CTV’s requests to amend the licence conditions relating to MuchMusic’s nature of service, including a bid to decrease the number of music videos that it airs.
The English-language specialty service will, however, now be able to draw programming from some additional categories and can adopt an 18-hour broadcast day, down from a 24-hour period, the Commission’s decision reads.
CTV applied in March for amendments that it said would permit MuchMusic to “adapt to the business realities of audience fragmentation and changing technologies by providing programming that is relevant to the service’s core audience of young adult viewers”.
www.crtc.gc.ca
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has sided with Bell Canada in a dispute with Telus over 911 network access charges in the province of British Columbia.
In a decision on Friday, the Commission directed Telus to credit Bell Canada for overbilled 911 charges in the province from March 2003 to February 2009, in accordance with Telus’ terms of service.
www.crtc.gc.ca
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OTTAWA – Quebecor has received regulatory approval to proceed with its new “hard news and straight talk” Sun TV News channel. It is expected to launch early next year.
Friday’s decision granted the category 2 channel a five year license that will expire on August 31, 2015. As Cartt.ca reported, Quebecor last month dropped its requests that the channel be licensed with must-carry status, after the Commission said that it would not consider must-carry license applications until at least the Fall of 2011, if at all.
"Today marks the dawn of a new era for Canadian news media,"…
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OTTAWA – Canada’s top two communications industry regulators lamented the fact that they don’t have the appropriate tools to deal with a rapidly changing marketplace.
CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein and Helen McDonald, assistant deputy minister at Industry Canada, were speaking on a panel of regulators at the International Institute of Communications annual conference in Ottawa earlier this week (where Cartt.ca was the media sponsor).
McDonald said that for the department to more effectively manage scarce spectrum resources, legislative changes are in order. She pointed to secondary market trading for spectrum as an area that would run much more efficiently…
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TORONTO – Satellite radio competitors XM Canada and Sirius will merge in Canada, just as their American parent companies did over two years ago.
Wednesday’s announcement said that the all-stock merger values the combined company at approximately $520 million, which includes long-term debt of $130 million.
Under the terms of the agreement, Sirius Canada shareholders will be issued treasury shares of XM Canada parent Canadian Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. (CSR) representing a 58.0% equity interest in CSR immediately following closing of the transaction. The approximate ownership interest in CSR following closing of the combination transaction will be as follows:
– CSRI Inc., an entity controlled…
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OTTAWA – The Canadian Media Production Association (CMPA) is urging the government to protect independent producers from what it calls “the negative impact (of) consolidation” in the broadcasting industry.
Appearing Tuesday before the House of Commons Standing Committee of Canadian Heritage, the CMPA claimed that the three integrated private broadcast corporate groups in English Canada are “using their dominant position to secure unreasonable terms that undermine independent producers’ businesses and put at risk the thousands of high-skilled jobs”.
“I would like to think that independent producers are well positioned to make a significant contribution to Canada’s burgeoning digital economy”, said CMPA…
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