WE JOURNALISTS JUST love our year-end lists, don’t we? They are everywhere. However, we don’t do predictions here. They only thing I have found to be certain when trying to predict the future is that nearly all the time, the predictions are wrong.
So instead, here’s our list of 10 open questions heading into 2011.
1. How much market share will the Telus and Bell Canada IPTV services take from incumbent cable companies? The user experience of the Microsoft Mediaroom-driven Optik TV and Fibe TV is just so darn good and so darn integrated (I’d switch just for the whole-home PVR…
Continue Reading
VANCOUVER – The city of Vancouver has waded into the usage-based Internet billing debate after issuing a motion that calls on the CRTC to disallow the practice.
Councillor Andrea Reimer introduced the motion at a City Council meeting late last week on behalf of the city’s residents. It was debated and eventually passed, though one councillor opposed the motion.
Reimer claimed that the CRTC’s usage-based billing policy, which allows telecom companies to impose a limit-based pricing system on the independent Internet service providers that purchase wholesale broadband from them, “will stifle innovation, harm job creation, and make it more difficult for individuals…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Bell Canada has paid a $1.3 million fine for violating the national do not call list rules, the CRTC announced late Monday.
Independent telemarketers hired by Bell Canada to promote and sell its television, telephone, wireless and Internet services made calls between January and October to consumers who had registered their numbers on the national Do Not Call List (DNCL), or who were, or should have been, on Bell Canada’s internal do not call list, acording to a CRTC investigation.
"All telemarketers must respect the wishes of Canadians who have registered their telephone number on the National DNCL or…
Continue Reading
KEITH PELLEY DOESN’T DO caffeine. He’s already wired.
“Can’t drink caffeine,” he says. “I don’t need the energy.”
Late this past summer, the unfailingly exuberant Pelley made the surprising leap from CTV to Rogers Media, jumping from the country’s biggest TV company, the highest rated national TV network and owner of TSN, the top-rated sports channel where Pelley began his TV career, to a far smaller TV business.
At the time, many considered Pelley the odds-on favourite to replace CTV CEO Ivan Fecan. Now, whether Pelley knew for sure the Bell folks were coming in and unlikely to give him the…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA-GATINEAU – A direct marketing company has agreed to pay a $500,000 penalty after being caught violating the country’s do not call list rules.
Xentel DM Inc., which has offices in Toronto, Calgary, and the U.S., paid the administrative monetary penalty to the Receiver General for Canada after receiving a notice of violation from the CRTC, the Commission said Friday.
A CRTC investigation found that Xentel made calls to consumers who had registered their numbers on the National Do Not Call List (DNCL) and promoted events on its own behalf or on the behalf of organizations that were not registered…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – The Public Interest Advocacy Centre and the Canadian Bar Association locked horns this week in a Parliamentary committee over proposed amendments to the Competition Act, which would authorize the Competition Bureau to conduct entire market studies in the absence of a complaint regarding anti-competitive behaviour.
Bill C-452, a private member’s bill introduced by Bloc Québécois MP Robert Vincent, seeks to change the current law, which says the Commissioner of Competition can only launch an investigation when there is a concern about one or more market participants. While the bill appears to have originally been tabled to…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – The CRTC has pushed back the date of the hearing to investigate vertical integration by six weeks.
In a notice on Thursday, the Commission said that the revised hearing date is June 20, 2011 (formerly May 9), and that the new date for interventions and comments is April 27, 2011 (formerly March 7). The move comes in response to a request from CTVglobemedia to accommodate its trip to Hollywood in May to shop for U.S. programming for the upcoming television season.
The Commission also said that it wishes to discuss two additional matters at the hearing:– the composition of…
Continue Reading
TORONTO – A newly formed coalition of Canada’s largest accessibility organizations, called Access 2020, will be asking the CRTC to adopt a new approach to accessibility in its May 2011 policy hearing on vertical integration.
“While current regulatory trends mean that sight- and hearing-impaired Canadians will only obtain complete access to television in thirty years, Access 2020’s goal is to achieve fully captioned and described television content within the next decade,” said Beverley Milligan, on behalf of Media Access Canada which is leading the coalition. “We will be inviting the CRTC to empower Canada’s accessibility organizations to research, test, develop…
Continue Reading
NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ont. – Long-time head of the Canadian Cable Television Association, Michael Hind-Smith, died December 3rd from complications due to cancer. He was 80.
Hind-Smith was the longest-serving CCTA president and CEO and oversaw a period of massive growth and change in the cable business during his 15 years (1975-1990) heading the now defunct organization.
“He was such a good representative for the cable industry,” Rogers Communications vice-chairman Phil Lind told Cartt.ca in an interview. “He had some terrific battles with the CRTC (pay-TV, specialty channels, “6 and 5”, pole access) but he kept the association together for a long time….
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – BCE’s proposed tangible benefits associated with its bid for CTV’s television broadcasting assets “falls way short of the mark of what is expected under the CRTC’s tangible benefits policy”, says the Canadian Media Production Association (CMPA).
The organization representing the interests of English-language screen-based media companies in Canada said that it warned the Commission during the Shaw/Canwest proceeding that bending on the tangible benefits policy could de facto establish a new standard.
“It is clear that BCE has mirrored its application to that of Shaw/Canwest,” said CMPA president and CEO Norm Bolen, in a statement. “Bell’s acquisition of CTV is a strategic…
Continue Reading
