OTTAWA – The CRTC will make public its decision on whether or not Bell Canada was unfairly capping the bandwidth of third party ISPs.
The Canadian Association of Internet Providers made a formal complaint to the Commission earlier this year saying that Bell’s traffic shaping practices were hindering the speeds being delivered by its members who lease Bell’s network to provide Internet service. CAIP said the big telco was choking – or throttling – the Internet bandwidth its members could offer to customers and that new oversight was required.
Bell says that what it does is simply necessary network traffic management, that no…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – It’ll be hot in Gatineau this July as network neutrality advocates will finally get to face off against the big Canadian ISPs over the corporations’ network traffic management practices.
While the CRTC today announced that it has denied the Canadian Association of Internet Providers’ (CAIP) request that Bell Canada cease the traffic-shaping it has adopted for its wholesale Gateway Access Service (In the future, however, Bell Canada will be required to notify its wholesale customers at least 30 days in advance of making changes that impact on the performance of its Gateway Access Service), the Commission has…
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OTTAWA – Bluewater TV Cable must stop providing telephone service to customers in neighbouring Tuckersmith Co-operative’s operating territory, the CRTC has ruled.
After receiving a complaint from independent telco Tuckersmith in September, the Commission investigated allegations that Bluewater was providing local exchange service in Tuckersmith’s Bayfield 565 exchange, using numbers assigned to the neighbouring Bell Canada Clinton 482 exchange, and was not registered as a competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) for the area.
Bluewater argued it had not actively marketed its telephone service outside of its authorized CLEC area, but agreed to supply telephone service using its cable television…
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TORONTO – After reading the internal memo sent to the employees of Canwest’s broadcasting division on Wednesday – which explained the job cuts – a few times, one thing is certain: The company has only just begun its battle with the CRTC.
The memo – from the desk of imminently departing Canwest Broadcasting president Kathy Dore – adds much more color to the announcement that 210 people will be let go from the division (part of 560 being terminated by the company as a whole). It’s worth noting that this is in addition to 200 who were terminated Continue Reading
TORONTO – Radio and TV broadcasters in Toronto need to dig into digital – in a hurry – because we’re falling behind the rest of the world, CRTC vice-chair, broadcasting, Michel Arpin said in a speech to the Broadcast Executives Society on Monday.
As most will already be aware, U.S. television broadcasters must give up their analog over-the-air spectrum on February 17th. In Canada, the deadline is August 31, 2011, a scant three years away.
Arpin also referenced progress being made in the conversion to digital TV in the U.K. and France, two countries with later deadlines – but…
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GATINEAU – A total of 15 applications have been submitted to the CRTC for new radio stations serving the Ontario cottage country communities of Orillia, Gravenhurst and Bracebridge.
A number of independents, as well as established radio companies like Newcap, Larche, Evanov and Bayshore, are all looking for licenses.
Formats run the gamut from a Classic Rock/Country combo, to Soft AC, to tourist information, oldies and even one all-Canadian application.
Click here for the full list. The hearing is scheduled for January 26th at the Orillia Best Western.
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WINNIPEG – Canwest Global let go 560 employees today as part of an effort to cut the broadcast and newspaper company’s annualized operating costs by approximately $61 million. Of that number 210 are being cut from the broadcasting side.
The job cuts amount to 5% of the company’s total workforce and will happen through voluntary buyouts, attrition and reductions. These reductions are in addition to several hundred jobs that have already been eliminated over the last two years.
“These actions are a result of the current economic environment as well as the structural challenges in the conventional television model,”…
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BOSTON – The four services of the so-called "quad-play" don’t go together quite as easily as some tend to assume, delegates to the 2008 CTAM Summit in Boston were told Monday afternoon.
There are such differences inherent with video, wireline voice, high speed Internet and wireless (especially wireless) that just selling a bundle of four – while it sounds nice and lucrative – certainly takes a lot more thought and creativity to do right.
Here in the States, cable operators haven’t yet made full leaps into wireless like some other companies around the world (“All of us in cable have…
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TORONTO – The CBC and Al Gore’s Current Media are getting together to launch Current Canada, a new "cross-platform media company" aimed at young adults, the two companies announced today.
Retracing the history a little shows the new channel is a completion of a circle – of sorts anyway – as Current comes home to its ownership roots with this launch.
An American news/information/opinion channel and online presence aimed at young Americans – Current was in its past life Newsworld International – a cable news channel launched by the CBC and Power Corporation in the 1990s in the U.S….
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GATINEAU – Shaw Cable must change the way it treats and markets Canada’s gay and lesbian category one digital specialty service Outtv, the CRTC ruled today.
The specialty service and Shaw have had a long and rocky history, dating to its launch in 2001 as Pridevision, back when it was owned by Score Media. Ownership of the channel has changed a couple of times since and the most recent owners, extremely frustrated at how the big western cableco has treated the channel, went to the Commission earlier this year for help.
Tuesday’s decision found that Shaw has subjected the…
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