By Ahmad Hathout
Corus CEO Doug Murphy said on the company’s fiscal first quarter conference call Friday that the point at which there’s recovery in advertising demand and revenues is too early to tell, as he said the company is happy to put behind a rough 2023 in which it pleaded with the CRTC to reduce its regulatory obligations.
“On the one hand, we expect the return of new scripted programming to catalyze primetime marketing investments by our advertisers,” he said on the call. “On the other hand, the macro-economic environment remains uncertain while distortions related to post-pandemic normalization of many…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Members of Parliament on the industry committee said Thursday that they want a broad study on mobile wireless prices and want the heads of Canada’s major telecommunications companies in front of them after Rogers announced price hikes to service packages.
MPs said they want to invite to the committee Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne, Commissioner of Competition Matthew Boswell, Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri and its chief corporate affairs officer Navdeep Bains, Bell CEO Mirko Bibic, Telus CEO Darren Entwistle, and Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau.
Some members verbally agreed that they needed Champagne and Staffieri in front of them by…
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By Steve Faguy
MONTREAL — Cogeco CEO Philippe Jetté doesn’t want to discuss when he expects the company will launch a wireless service.
He was pestered with questions from journalists Thursday before the company’s annual general meeting — is it a matter of weeks, months, years? — but repeatedly said that they’re working toward a launch and would announce their plans in the near future. An actual launch is unlikely in the “short term” because “some preparation work remains,” he told analysts earlier.
Jetté expressed some frustration with the length of the process, both in terms of regulatory obligations and the slow pace of…
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By Ahmad Hathout
TekSavvy has filed a Part 1 application to the CRTC asking for a review of a wind down of older coaxial network technology by Cogeco that it said will affect its ability to provide service to its customers.
The large independent telecom relies on Cogeco’s last mile coaxial facilities at two interconnection locations in Burlington and Windsor, Ontario. Cogeco allegedly told TekSavvy that it is migrating wholesale customers to fibre technologies, including to radio frequency over glass technology (RFoG) at the Burlington site as soon as last week with eventual migration at both sites to ethernet passive optical…
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Various groups of public safety answering points (PSAPs) and Enhanced 911 (E911) stakeholders are asking the CRTC to have the decommissioning of legacy E911 networks delayed until the end of 2025 or later.
As part of Canada’s transition to next-generation 911 (NG911) networks, the legacy E911 networks are currently scheduled to be phased out by March 2025. The CRTC received three separate Part 1 applications in December, asking for the networks’ decommissioning to be delayed.
A group comprising E-Comm Emergency Communications for British Columbia Incorporated (E-Comm) and its NG911 contracted partners British Columbia Emergency Health…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Alicia Barin stepped down as the CRTC’s vice chair of broadcasting on Friday to focus on her personal life.
“After a period of deep reflection and consultation with those closest to me following the sudden passing of my husband this past summer, I have concluded that I am at a time in my life when I need to fully step away from my professional commitments and focus on my family, which includes our four children,” Barin told CRTC staff in a statement, which was forwarded to Cartt.
“My appointment to the CRTC and the opportunity to work with the…
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By Ahmad Hathout
The federal government’s procurement website published late last month a contract on behalf of the CRTC that requests a report that delves into a comparative analysis of international mobile wireless roaming rates.
The regulator is asking for an in-depth analysis of the rates provided by Canadian carriers versus their international peers in the United States, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Germany, Italy and Japan.
“The study must include an analysis of the factors that may explain the differences (e.g. regulatory, economic, geopolitical, structural and/or technical)” in the pricing between the Canadian and international carriers, according to a statement…
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Bell calls application an ‘attempt to abuse the CRTC process’
By Ahmad Hathout
Quebecor is alleging that Bell is delaying access to its national wireless network despite the CRTC already determining the rate for that access.
In a Part 1 application posted Wednesday, Quebecor said it had prepared to launch services using Bell’s network on October 11 in areas where it doesn’t have a wireless network. But since the CRTC selected Bell’s rate for that access after arbitration on October 10, Quebecor alleges Bell has delayed its cooperation, which it says amounts to an anticompetitive practice.
Part of that delay,…
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CRTC also announced more money allocation from third call
The CRTC has formally denied an application by Bell that requested the regulator change the way it collected money for the $750-million Broadband Fund.
Bell requested last December that the regulator stop collecting money from the internet service providers until it has disbursed the money it has collected and to return the money it hasn’t given out. Part of the reasoning is that there have been many more funding programs available since the Broadband Fund was launched and that the unused money held by the CRTC and not distributed could be…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Eastlink is alleging that competitors using its network – who have complained to the CRTC about negligence in relation to an Eastlink network failure that affected their customers – are misrepresenting claims about the aftermath of the July outage.
City Wide, Frontier Networks, and Purple Cow Internet allege in a Part application filed last month that Eastlink disconnected their customers’ service for 24 hours starting July 3 due to an error caused by a new software update to the company’s billing system that they said incorrectly flagged all of the cableco’s third-party internet access customers as not having…
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