COMING OFF A SUCCESSFUL free trial that saw 43,000 subscribers sign up for its OneZone WiFi service in downtown Toronto, Toronto Hydro Telecom moved to a subscription-based service in late April. Toronto Hydro Telecom president David Dobbin (pictured below) spoke to Cartt.ca contributor Linda Stuart about OneZone, the upcoming wireless spectrum auction, and the competitiveness of Canada’s mobile communications industry.
Linda Stuart: The OneZone service has been offering subscription-based services for a couple of months now. How has uptake on the subscription service gone so far?
David Dobbin: Better than we expected. We originally projected a 10% month-over-month conversion…
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OTTAWA – Canada’s telecommunications companies have launched an agency to hear complaints from consumers that can’t be resolved by the telcos or the CRTC.
The office of the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS) opened its doors in Ottawa on Monday. It was created in response to a request from Industry Minister Maxime Bernier that telephone service providers work together to create an independent, industry-funded agency to handle complaints that fall outside the CRTC’s jurisdiction and that consumers and small businesses have been unable to resolve directly with their service provider. The request was tied with the federal…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Canadian broadcasters have offered at least tepid support for a Rogers Cable application to the CRTC to alter the video on demand regs to allow for greater advertising flexibility in the VOD platform.
Some of those organizations which filed an intervention on the issue added that a decision on what Rogers wants should be deferred and discussed under the upcoming review of broadcast distribution undertaking policy recently announced by the Commission.
As the rules stand right now, ads within video on demand content must have already appeared on a linear Canadian TV channel, there must be a…
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VANCOUVER – Over 1,000 Canadians have clicked through to the CRTC asking that Canadian media companies get no bigger or become more concentrated says the group behind the letter clicking campaign.
"Our campaign to stop the big media takeover is striking a chord with Canadians from coast to coast," says Steve Anderson, co-ordinator of Canadians for Democratic Media. "It’s clear that there’s a lot of dissatisfaction, especially about news coverage. The situation in Vancouver-Victoria, where CanWest Global owns three daily newspapers and two TV stations, is a particular source of anger."
Canadians for Democratic Media are hoping Canadians…
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WINNIPEG – Consolidated revenues at CanWest Global communications increased by 7% to $738 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2007, ended May 31st, consolidated EBITDA rose 13% to $122 million but consolidated net earnings were $8 million or 38% lower than last year’s same quarter, the company announced this afternoon after the close of trading.
CanWest, of course, owns Global TV as well as other electronic media assets in Canada and abroad as well as the largest number of Canadian newspapers in the country.
"Results for the third quarter were positive, led by continued growth in publishing revenue…
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TORONTO – A couple of longstanding CHUM executives have decided to leave their new company, Cartt.ca has learned.
Just weeks after it was officially brought into the CTVglobemedia fold, CHUM’s chief financial officer Alan Mayne has told his new bosses he won’t be staying.
This follows the departure of CHUM CEO Jay Switzer who, as expected, left the company once the new owners were given approval by the CRTC to take over the company.
And this week, Maria Hale, vice-president, content business development, who has been the driving force behind the CHUM properties push into integrated multiplatform content, also…
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TORONTO – The only all-HDTV broadcaster in the country, High Fidelity HDTV, has added a new partner in merchant bank C.A. Bancorp.
Four-year-old Hi Fi HDTV has offers four channels, Rush HD, Equator HD, Oasis HD and Treasure HD, which are carried on Bell ExpressVu and certain other carriers like Source Cable and SaskTel’s MAX. The company has had some trouble gaining carriage on large cable operators as they are instead holding back slices of bandwidth for existing analog specialty channels that haven’t yet but may soon make the switch to high definition.
The $4 million dollar investment by…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Earlier this year, after having been told by the federal government to rely on market forces and deregulate as much as possible, the Commission asked the telecom industry to help it prioritize.
After receiving submissions from cable companies and telcos and a few others, the Commission said Wednesday that a review of general tariff bundling rules and requirements for market trials was the consensus top priority and it issued a public notice on the matter, intending to make a decision as soon as possible.
"The Commission is of the view that the onus is on parties who…
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NEW YORK – We might see a cable petition to the CRTC soon to add what will be the newest business channel to the eligible satellite services list here in Canada.
According to a report in Multichannel News, News Corp. will launch the Fox Business Network, a spin-off of Fox News, on October 15th. The story says the company has already reached carriage deals with Comcast, Time Warner Cable, DirecTV and Charter Communications and will launch to 30 million subscribers.
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MONTREAL – "Looking at the performance of our divisions, the television group recorded very strong growth for the quarter with subscriber-related revenues up 9% and advertising revenues increasing by 13% over the same period last year," said Astral Media president and CEO Ian Greenberg in today’s press release on the company’s third quarter financial peformance.
Consolidated net earnings for the first nine months of fiscal 2007, ended May 31st, increased by 9% over last year, rising to $93.1 million ($1.76 per basic share). Consolidated net earnings for the third quarter increased by 8% over the same quarter last year,…
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