GATINEAU – Telus has been ordered by the CRTC to provide rebates to customers who paid a $2.95 per month access fee but didn’t make any long-distance calls during the month. Telus however is not required to rebate customers who made long-distance telephone calls during the same month.
Local service rates are regulated by the CRTC and have to be either pre-approved by the commission or, in larger areas where it has stopped regulating rates are subject to a price ceiling. Long distance service, however, is not regulated. Telus had contended it did not need pre-approval or to abide by…
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GATINEAU – Bragg Communications, the east coast cable and telecom company that claims to be “small in a big way,” wants the CRTC to take on a similar persona, by making big steps towards a smaller regulatory burden.
In its presentation Wednesday to the CRTC’s broadcast hearings, Bragg co-CEO Dan McKeen gave his support to the Commission’s stated overall approach in its review that would see a reduction in regulations and increased reliance on market forces. However, he also sought CRTC help on behalf of small BDU’s which he suggested are occasionally bullied when they try to negotiate access to programming…
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TORONTO – The interests of small and independent Canadian broadcasters are at risk of being trampled by the industry’s giants in the current regulatory proceeding on the future of the broadcast system, warns Bill Roberts, president and CEO of S-VOX, which operates the multi-faith and multicultural specialty television service VisionTV.
"This hearing has so far been a war of the giants, with conventional broadcasters and broadcast distribution undertakings to make certain that smaller players do not get caught in the crossfire."
S-VOX…
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Dear Editor,
IN YOUR NEWS REPORT today you suggested Telus supported some form of fee for carriage in Quebec.
To be clear, we are categorically opposed to FFC under any circumstance and in any jurisdiction. We obviously agreed with vice-chair Arpin that the CRTC can develop different rules in Quebec to reflect regional differences, that is something which is provided for in the Broadcasting Act, but we still oppose FFC as a solution, regardless of any regional differences.
We recognize TQS is in serious difficulty. But FFC won’t fix its difficulties. The roots of its problems are deeper. As…
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GATINEAU – Telus Corp., a relatively new entrant into the broadcast distribution field with the IPTV service it launched in 2006, says it would prefer the regulatory status quo than a descent into a “rabbit hole of new regulations for problems which simply don’t exist”.
In a presentation before the CRTC’s hearings on broadcast distribution and specialty services Wednesday, Telus’ vice-president for wireless, broadband and content policy Michael Hennessy said he was concerned that “false assumptions” could persuade the Commission to add regulations when what the industry needs is space to flourish.
“The future has to be based on…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC will rule on Telus’ controversial network access fee tomorrow and Cartt.ca will have complete coverage of the decision.
The CRTC is reviewing the new fee Telus added to local phone bills after competitor Yak Communications filed a formal complaint last year. The commission has also received complaints from over 400 B.C. residents since the $2.95 charge was added to phone bills last November.
The monthly fee to access Telus’s long-distance network is charged to customers who haven’t signed up for long-distance calling plans with Telus or any of its competitors.
Customers are charged whether or…
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GATINEAU – Imagine – a video presentation at the CRTC’s hearings on broadcasting! Who would ever think of doing that?
“3-2-1. Blastoff!”
The Shaw Rocket Fund cleverly grabbed the attention of CRTC commissioners yesterday with a short animated video to make their point that children, as the ones who are already immersed in multi-media culture, should have a voice in this three-week gabfest about a future Canadian broadcasting model.
But it also took a former Radio-Canada journalist and now CRTC commissioner, Michel Morin, to ask the most probing question of the day: how come no one else at these…
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GATINEAU – Quebecor Inc. president and CEO Pierre-Karl Péladeau challenged the CRTC today to re-write its “little red book” of more than 400 broadcasting rules and regulations or risk seeing the Canadian broadcast industry bypassed by the global digital environment.
In a presentation before the CRTC’s hearings on broadcast distribution and specialty services, the head of the powerful Quebec media conglomerate which owns, among other assets, #3 cable company Videotron and top Quebec broadcaster TVA, said that it would be a mistake to go through these “crucial” hearings and make only minor adjustments.
“An accumulation of regulations won’t solve…
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BELOW ARE SOME QUICK QUIPS, a few lines – and their explanations, that we found interesting over the first four days of the CRTC’s hearing in broadcast distribution undertaking and specialty service policy.
Broadcasters as babies (1) “There is an opportunity for the over the air broadcasters to help themselves. If they were embracing the on demand platform, if they had a CTV on demand or a Global on demand, then we could have a very serious discussion about incremental value for the customer and compensation for that. But we are not having those discussions because we seem to…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC has ruled that ARTV did not comply with the “watershed hour clause” when it broadcast an NFB documentary about rape at 7:30 p.m. (Broadcasting Decision 2008-81).
The regulator stated it expected ARTV to ensure that in the future all programs it broadcast containing scenes of explicit violence or dealing with other subjects intended for an adult audience were scheduled after 9 p.m., as called for by the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ Voluntary code regarding violence in television programming. ARTV is required to meet that standard as a condition of its licence.
The CRTC said it…
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