By Steve Faguy
MONTREAL — In the last six hours of its licence, CJMS 1040 AM program director Jocelyn Benoit hosted a special show reminiscing about the station’s 21-year history, interviewing various guests and playing country music hits.
Though he promised the station, based in the Montreal suburb of St-Constant, would live on as an online-only stream run personally by him, it was clear this would be more of a death than a rebirth.
A few seconds after midnight on Sept. 1, Benoit was cut off mid-sentence, and the station went dead on schedule.
Except the next morning, it was back on the…
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By Konrad von Finckenstein
IN AUGUST OF 2019, after three years of studying submissions and holding hearings the CRTC delivered a ruling on final rates for wholesale internet access, which are the rates large carriers charge their small competitors to access their networks. Up to that date, the large carriers billed resellers based on CRTC-set interim rates.
The rates released a year ago are lower than the interim rates and retroactive to 2016. Monthly capacity rates are 15% to 43% lower than the interim rates and the access rates are 3% to 77% lower than the interim rates. In addition, by…
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By Denis Carmel
GATINEAU – In the lengthy CRTC process reviewing its wireless policies, one player played an unusually central role.
Since it had no economic interest and because of its professed expertise, the Competition Bureau (which falls under the purview of the department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development) convinced the Commission to be allowed special access to confidential company data, despite strenuous objections, all of which we have reported on previously.
So, when the Bureau admitted it made a mistake in its final comments and issued corrections, Bell Canada jumped on it and requested that…
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GATINEAU — As administrator of the Independent Local News Fund (ILNF), the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) this month asked the CRTC to raise the fund’s current 10% market cap to 12% in a Part 1 application filed August 10.
The CAB application makes the request in order to preserve the status quo following Bell Media’s acquisition of V Interactions (licensee of the V television network and five French-language television stations in Quebec) from Groupe V Media in May 2020.
The ILNF supports the production of local news and information by private, independent television stations. As it stands now, the funding…
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GATINEAU — The CRTC is putting on hold a recent application by Rogers asking the Commission to provide relief in an ongoing dispute with Bell over access to utility poles in New Brunswick owned by NB Power because the larger issue of joint-use pole arrangements is likely to be addressed during another proceeding already underway, the Commission said in a recent letter.
The issue of access to poles and other infrastructure is an age-old issue and continues to be a major challenge for the industry and will only grow when 5G gains real traction when it is rolled out…
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Looking at fines for each of up to $1.25 million
By Denis Carmel
GATINEAU – High long-distance termination rates could provide an incentive to competitive local exchange carriers to increase traffic there because it could be beneficial financially in an era where many phone customers have unlimited long-distance plans. However, a common retaliation approach by incumbents delivering said traffic is to reduce the capacity of certain circuits by carriers.
This is what is detailed in a decision issued Friday where the CRTC put an end to a dispute that started in August 2018 where Telus asked the Commission to Continue Reading
By Denis Carmel
GATINEAU – Bell Canada has told the CRTC independent payphone provider AFX Communications is not playing by the rules.
AFX is a Quebec-based competitive pay telephone service provider (CPTSP) and as such receives payment for toll-free calls made from its pay phones. Last month, AFX filed its own complaint with cabinet to challenge a CRTC ruling over its levels of payment.
In a new submission to the CRTC, Bell Canada alleges AFX is not playing by the rules. “We have uncovered evidence that raises strong concerns about the legitimacy of the volume of toll-free calls made over AFX…
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By Ahmad Hathout
GATINEAU – The CRTC team involved in the co-development of a new Indigenous broadcasting policy said it could use a government-commissioned panel report to guide its process, according to a confidential document released to this publication.
The undated document highlights several areas from the report by the broadcasting and telecommunications legislative review panel, released in late January, “which could help guide its own work, particularly where they prove consistent with issues discussed during early engagement sessions.” The three-phase review began in September 2019 with the engagement sessions and will be followed by a public consultation process and then…
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By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – AFX Communications, a competitive pay telephone service provider (CPTSP) based north of Montreal which offers service in a small portion of Québec, has long received compensation from the incumbent local exchange carrier (in this case Bell) for toll-free calls made from its phones.
In May 2019, AFX filed an application with the CRTC claiming Bell stopped, since March 2019, paying the required $0.80 a call when the payphone was connected to a Bell business line. Bell says the tariff only applies to calls made over a pay telephone access line (PAL) and not to call…
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GATINEAU — Cambridge, Ont.-based competitive local exchange carrier Fibernetics last week filed an application with the CRTC seeking relief from what it calls “unjustifiable conduct” on the part of Bell Canada related to local network interconnection (LNI) between the two companies.
In an abridged version of its application dated July 14 and posted on the Commission’s website today, Fibernetics says it has attempted to negotiate an LNI agreement with Bell for eight additional local interconnection regions (LIRs) that Fibernetics wishes to enter as a Type 1 CLEC. In April, Fibernetics provided a trunk forecast to Bell for the eight LIRs…
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