TORONTO – If Canada is going to deliver broadband nationwide – connecting a growing plethora of products – we need to move forward immediately on the next wireless spectrum auction, Rogers Communications CEO Nadir Mohamed said on Wednesday.
In a speech at the Economic Club of Toronto and later speaking to reporters, Mohamed implored the federal government to move the auction of the 700 MHz block of spectrum especially with greater alacrity. He also asked Industry Canada to make sure the auction is without the set-aside rules favouring newcomers which was used in the last spectrum sell-off in 2008 that…
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GATINEAU – Bell Aliant Regional Communications says that if the obligation to serve subsidy regime isn’t fixed, it may have no choice but to cut off certain services to some of its most costly markets.
The revelation came under questioning from CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein when he asked Bell Aliant executives what the company would do if the Commission didn’t accede to its wishes and change the local subsidy regime.
Dennis Henry, VP of regulatory affairs for Bell Aliant was blunt in his response that some of the more expensive regions to serve may lose some telephony services….
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OTTAWA – The country’s largest cable companies want the CRTC to treat them the same as Bell and Telus. At least, as far as the Commission’s rules on speed matching go.
In a petition submitted to Cabinet last week, Cogeco, Quebecor on behalf of Videotron, Rogers and Shaw asked that the Governor in Council vary, rescind, or refer back to the Commission its decision on Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2010-632 issued on August 30, 2010.
That decision, as Cartt.ca reported, was based on a public proceeding launched in May 2009 to consider whether incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) and cable…
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GATINEAU – Expanding the basic service objective to include broadband would have substantial negative financial impacts on their businesses, a group of small independent ISPs told the CRTC on Monday during the fourth day of hearings into the obligation to serve and other telecom matters.
This is the second week of the hearing, which moved back to Gatineau after three days in Timmins, Ont.
David Buffet, president of Radiant Communications Corp., said that creating a new subsidy regime to fund broadband expansion would turn a slight profit the company generated in 2009 to a net loss. Revenue…
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NEW LISKEARD, Ont. – As the provision of rural broadband has been the focus of an ongoing CRTC hearing, one of the companies which faced the CRTC last week today announced the launch of its new wireless network for Northern Ontario.
By early December, mobile customers along the Highway 11, 101, 65 and 66 corridors in Northern Ontario will be able to get on a brand new HSPA+ 3G network thanks to NorthernTel, a division of Bell Aliant. The company will switch on the High Speed Packet Access (HSPA+) network that is being built out across Canada by Bell…
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OTTAWA – Talk of the contribution regime and the appropriate level for a high-cost serving area (HCSA) subsidy became heated at times during the fifth day of testimony at the CRTC’s obligation to serve hearing.
Len Katz, vice-chair of telecommunications and national commissioner, took the l’Association des companies de téléphone du Québec to task over the importance of the subsidy to their businesses. He suggested that based on the ACTQ’s subsidy proposal, it would actually be more beneficial for its members to lose customers because they could then become takeover targets.
“The perversion as I see it is, at…
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TORONTO – While subscriber numbers are being held back for now and legal challenges from its competition are in progress, wireless brand chatr has gained a strong foothold in the Canadian market as it heads into a crucial two-month sales stretch, according to Garrick Tiplady, chatr’s senior vice-president.
“We’re not releasing (subscriber numbers) now but what I can say is we’re quite pleased with the results – and when you step back… we’re seeing strong results across the country in all the markets we’ve launched in,” Tiplady said in an interview Tuesday afternoon with Cartt.ca.
Chatr is so far…
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TIMMINS – It became clear through the first day of the CRTC’s obligation to serve hearing that commissioners would like to set some sort of speed target for service providers to hit when it comes to providing broadband for rural Canadians.
Both chairman Konrad von Finckenstein and vice-chair telecom Len Katz repeatedly asked executives with Bell Aliant, Barrett Xplore and Northwestel if they would accept some sort of megabits per second speed target to come out of this proceeding.
All were reluctant.
While government and the industry has tended to define a base of 1.5 Mbps as “broadband”, most recognize that just…
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TIMMINS – It’s hard to disagree with Northwestel’s assertion that when it comes to telecom operations, it is like no other.
The Bell Canada-owned company’s networks cover about 115,000 people spread across 40% of Canada’s total land mass – or four million square kilometres.
To say “there are important differences between the environment and the provision of telecommunications services in the far north as compared to the rest of Canada,” as the company’s president and CEO, Paul Flaherty told the CRTC Tuesday morning in Timmins, is quite an understatement.
Flaherty appeared in front of commissioners during day one of the Regulator’s obligation…
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TIMMINS – On Wednesday everyone, save one company, told the CRTC that adding broadband delivery to the telecom industry’s basic service objective is something that the Commission must do.
And a few even said nevermind those paltry 3-4 Mbps goals, we need to aim at 10, at least (but we’ll get to that in a bit).
MTS Allstream, as we detailed here, not only said the CRTC should make broadband a BSO, but even tied a number, $7 billion over 10 years, which would pay for broadband to every single Canadian household – because letting market forces take care of…
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