OTTAWA – When it comes to wholesale access services, the CRTC should no longer make incumbent telephone companies share parts of their networks with competitors in the residential telephone market, recommends an independent report released Monday by the Commission.
The author of the report, competition and commercial litigation lawyer Michael Osborne, makes the recommendation for areas of the country where large cablecos are emerging as big telephone players.
In business markets, Osborne suggests the CRTC adopt an ex post regulatory approach to allow wholesale access-dependent competitors to demonstrate that mandated access must be continued, because there is less facilities-based…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Ian Scott, vice-president of government affairs at Telus, has agreed to participate, for a two year period, in an executive interchange with the Commission, the CRTC announced Friday.
Effective October 1st, Ian will become Chief Policy Advisor to the Chairman on strategic issues such as the CRTC’s role on the international scene and its new approach to regulatory convergence. Scott’s agreement with the Commission is governed by the terms of the Interchange Canada Program and the Values and Ethics Code for the Public Service.
Scott had been with the Commission from 1990 to 1994, where he was…
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MONT TREMBLANT – Cogeco CEO Louis Audet said Thursday he thought it pretty improbably that Rogers Cable would want to overbuild his company’s regions of Halton, Oakville and Burlington.
He was responding to a question at the CIBC Institutional Investor Conference at the Fairmont Mont Tremblant, Quebec.
Cartt.ca broke the story last week that Rogers had applied to the CRTC to expand its cable licensed territories to include the large piece of Cogeco’s Ontario territory as well as that of Aurora Cable.
Audet doesn’t figure Rogers has any plans to completely overbuild, as it would be far too costly….
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC today approved Rogers Media’s $375 million purchase of Citytv as well as Astral Media’s Standard Broadcasting buy. A decision that took about than a month from the end of the hearings.
Rogers had proposed the acquisition of the Citytv stations in Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver, which the Commission wouldn’t let CTV have when it bought the stations’ former owner, CHUM Ltd.
In its decision, the Commission is also requiring that Rogers Media sell, within the next 12 months, its two religious stations, CHNU-TV Fraser Valley and CIIT-TV Winnipeg, since maintaining these two stations would…
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VANCOUVER – On Thursday, the CRTC deregulated 35 exchanges for local business phone services in Telus regions in Alberta, B.C. and Quebec, including all major metropolitan areas.
"We welcome today’s announcement by the CRTC of deregulation of local telecommunications services for businesses in these regions. It will allow Telus to bring the full benefits of competition to these customers, providing us with the flexibility to quickly bring creative offers to the marketplace while continuing our investment in technology and innovation for the benefit of businesses across the country. We look forward to similar decisions that will enable us to…
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OTTAWA – New technologies. New platforms. The new consumer. New business models.
Delegates to the annual Canadian Association of Broadcasters convention will have some meaty issues to tackle when they gather in Ottawa November 4th – 6th.
The theme is “Broadcasting, Redefined”, and CAB President and CEO Glenn O’Farrell says the two-plus days of workshops and informal discussions will focus on issues of fundamental importance to Canada’s private broadcasting sector.
On the agenda: • The impact of new technologies and platforms, including broadband, the Internet, high-definition television, and digital radio; • The new consumer, whose needs and expectations are…
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MONT TREMBLANT – When Cogeco Cable began rolling out video on demand about five years ago, “we thought we were building a virtual video store,” says the company’s director of affiliate relations JP Caveen.
Not any more, of course. VOD has moved leaps and bounds away from that.
Caveen was part of a video on demand panel organized by CTAM Canada held Monday afternoon during the Canadian Cable Systems Alliance 14th annual general meeting that included a programmer, an aggregator and three operators.
They were there to share their success stories and challenges with the independent cable companies who…
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TORONTO – If it can’t buy ’em, it looks like Rogers might overbuild ’em.
Rogers Cable has applied to the CRTC to extend its cable territories in Ontario to include a chunk of Cogeco Cable’s Ontario wheelhouse: Oakville, Burlington, Milton and Halton Hills, as well as into tiny Aurora Cable’s market in Aurora, just north of Toronto.
A move like this may signal a stark departure from the historically collegial cable industry where each company kept to its own territory and expanded by purchasing other cable companies. (Aurora and Cogeco are both known not to be for sale, however.)
In…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC today denied Shaw Communications’ request to add USA Network to the list of eligible foreign satellite services for digital distribution.
Shaw asked for the new addition in January, saying the general interest cable channel available to 90 million in the States, would be attractive to customers.
Shaw also wanted Commission to alter its approach to adding non-Canadian services to the digital lists. The company wants the Commission to automatically approve the addition of all general interest non-Canadian services, and that it permit broadcasting distribution undertakings (BDUs) to distribute services on the eligible lists on…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The rising number of media outlets, many of which are controlled by the same conglomerates, isn’t evidence of a diversity of voices on radio and television, the CRTC was told Wednesday.
Several media unions on Wednesday stated the pooling of media resources from different cities across a chain of stations under the same ownership didn’t equate to more perspectives in the news. Also, requiring a reporter to produce a story for multiple platforms – TV, radio and the web – is contributing to lower quality reports as journalists aren’t left with enough time to research background documents and…
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