By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – A coalition of public interest groups has asked the CRTC on Friday to consider a financial plan for a fund that bankrolls their involvement in broadcasting hearings.
Public interest participation in those hearings is funded through a not-for-profit organization known as the Broadcasting Participation Fund (BPF), which spawned out of Bell’s purchase of CTV network assets in 2011. The problem for the fund, according to its proponents, is that it relies on money, called tangible benefits, that only comes as a condition of approving broadcasting acquisitions that are now uncommon.
Interest groups have said the fund is…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – The CRTC said in a letter Monday it expects wireless internet service providers, including current holdouts Bell, Rogers, Telus and Xplore, to participate in the commission’s data project with Innovation Canada to track fixed wireless internet performance.
The CRTC has previously asked wireless ISPs to contact their subscribers about participating in the third phase of its Measuring Broadband Canada project, which seeks to better understand how Canadians subscribing to fixed wireless internet services with the federal objective speeds of 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps (or faster) upload are experiencing internet performance in their…
Continue Reading
The media company has suspended its dividend
By Ahmad Hathout
TORONTO – Corus CEO Doug Murphy said Friday that the CRTC’s preliminary view that the media company should see relief from its regulatory obligations, at least temporarily, is a significant move because it understands the financial environment it is going through.
Last week, the CRTC said it is of the view that Corus should have its spending on programs of national interest reduced to 5 per cent, instead of the regular 8.5 per cent, and to extend the deadline to pay back what it already owes the regulator from…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – Bell and its subsidiary Northwestel have pledged not to disconnect services to Iristel for not paying service dues.
The CRTC earlier this month asked Bell and Northwestel to hold off on disconnecting interconnection services to the far north provider until it makes a determination on a Part 1 application filed by Iristel that Bell allegedly hasn’t committed to providing an interconnection point in certain cities, including at Kuujjuaq in northern Quebec.
“Bell and Iristel have participated in a staff mediation process and they have reached an agreement…for the period during which the Commission…
Continue Reading
By Connie Thiessen
Rogers Sports & Media is shuttering its CityNews radio operations in Ottawa, citing low audiences, revenue declines and a restrictive regulatory environment for AM radio.
CityNews will go off the air on both the AM and FM band at 1 p.m. ET today with a Rogers Sports & Media spokesperson telling Broadcast Dialogue that resulting layoffs were in the single digits.
The company will return the licence for 1310 (CIWW-AM) to the CRTC, and restore its Country format station to 101.1 on the dial, following a series of December 2020 moves that saw Country 92.3 debut on CJET-FM in…
Continue Reading
By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – The CRTC has approved Tuesday two low-cost internet packages proposed by Northwestel, formally integrating the Bell subsidiary into the Connecting Families program.
Effective Tuesday, the approved rates will provide eligible low-income Canadians in Northwestel’s footprint with access to two internet packages: a plan with 15 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload with 300 GB of data for $10, with an overage charge of $1 per gigabyte; and a plan with the federal objective of 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload with 400 GB of data for $20 with the same overage charge.
There was some concern…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – The CRTC last week informed Cogeco Communications via a letter it was closing a tariff application proposing revisions to Cogeco’s third-party internet access (TPIA) tariff, and suggested the ISP resubmit the application with additional information required under the commission’s tariff application rules.
In its Sept. 8 application to revise its TPIA tariff, Cogeco said it had started to increase the upload speed of its 360 Mbps and 1 Gbps downstream high-speed retail internet services from 30 Mbps to 100 Mbps, and this increase would be progressively rolled out throughout Cogeco’s serving…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – The CRTC last week approved Skigin Radio Incorporated’s November 2022 application for a broadcasting licence to operate a low-power, Indigenous FM radio station in Woodstock First Nation, New Brunswick.
Serving the Maliseet people of the Wolastoqiyik territory, Skigin Radio’s 50-watt station will operate at 107.7 MHz.
In its licence application, Skigin Radio had proposed to broadcast 112 hours of local programming and 14 hours of wrap-around programming (programming that originates from other radio stations) per broadcast week. Of that programming, 104 hours would be devoted to musical content, 20 per cent of which…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – Telus has been awarded Friday more funding on top of the $12 million it was allocated for four projects backed by the commission’s Broadband Fund.
The CRTC has approved the Vancouver-based telecom’s request for an additional $4.5 million – a nearly 40 per cent increase – on the basis of unanticipated increases in costs including labour since the pandemic and changes in equipment that would “improve the sustainability, resiliency, and cybersecurity of the project.
The projects will build and/or upgrade mobile wireless, local fixed access, and transport infrastructure in a total of 26 communities and along roughly 305 kilometres…
Continue Reading
By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – The CRTC on Thursday is proposing to relax Corus Entertainment’s regulatory obligations on an “exceptional basis,” as the pure-play media company saw a dramatic decline in its financials over the year.
Corus sent an application to the regulator last Wednesday stating that high inflation, its sub-$1 share price, and its debt-to-liquid cash ratio reaching “unacceptable levels” after the content company saw a 61 per cent free cash decline over the previous year have put it in a precarious position with rapidly declining profitability. The company said it has had to halve its dividend since its November…
Continue Reading
