COMPETITION HAS COME to Saskatchewan. The little-big (population-area) province has had competition on the terrestrial video side since 2002 but only recently has a serious voice option come available.
It was quite a lag between the cable companies in the province losing 50,000 video customers and their recent launch of voice over IP. With the largest MSOs in the province: Shaw (Saskatoon, Prince Albert) and Access (Regina and area) now – or about to be – adding VOIP, competition is officially hot.
So how is the provincially-owned telco faring, with still 98% of the local phone lines? President…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Toronto-based Venoa Video has asked the CRTC for a BDU license serving the Greater Toronto Area.
According to the company’s web site, it either offers or wants to offer voice over IP, high speed Internet, IPTV, community TV and radio, health care communications, education online and e-shopping. The home page even has a button entitled "HBO Canada" that is "under construction".
The company does operate in Toronto as a third-party DSL re-seller.
Venoa wants a "Class 1 terrestrial distribution undertaking (which will) use an Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line 2 Plus (“ADSL 2 Plus”) and Very High Speed…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Rogers Media’s $39.6 million purchase of O.K. Radio Group’s Alberta radio stations was approved by the CRTC on Wednesday.
This comes on the heels of the Commission’s approval of the sale of O.K.’s Vancouver Island stations to Jim Pattison Broadcasting.
Rogers new Alberta stations are: CHDI-FM (Radiosonic FM – modern rock) and CKER-FM (World FM – multicultural) in Edmonton, CJOK-FM (Country 93.3); CKYX-FM (A/C) and its transmitter CJOK-FM-1 in Fort McMurray; and CFGP-FM (Sun FM) Grande Prairie and its transmitters CFGP-FM-1 Peace River and CFGP-FM-2 Tumbler Ridge.
O.K. has divested all of its radio assets now as…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The stroller and drool set may soon have a high definition home of their own.
The CRTC Thursday granted a category two digital specialty service license for a channel called BabyHD to High Fidelity HDTV.
HiFi HDTV owns and operates all HD channels Rush HD, Equator HD, Treasure HD and Oasis HD.
The commercial-free service will feature educational and entertainment programming targeted to infants and toddlers younger than three years of age. Programs would also provide expert advice or information regarding infants and toddlers, targeted to parents and caregivers of infants and toddlers, says the decision.
As…
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GATINEAU – If the CCTA was still around, it wouldn’t have been able to find consensus among its members for the CRTC’s TV Policy Review either.
While the schisms among the Canadian Association of Broadcasters members meant that association was unable to come up with a submission containing any consensus among its members, some of whom want large carriage fees for broadcasters, some who want small ones and some who oppose them altogether, fractures of opinion exist in the distributor world, too.
Two of the former Canadian Cable Television Association‘s largest members faced the Commission yesterday with diametrically…
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GATINEAU – As the so-called softer side of the industry comes to the fore over the next few, final days of the CRTC TV Policy Review hearing, groups like producers, actors, documentary makers and unions are just hoping the Commission pays more attention to them than the consumer media.
Reporters had elbows up in a crowd most of the week as the likes of CTV, Rogers, Shaw, Bell and Global Television faced the Commission – and then the microphones and notebooks right after.
No such problem Thursday afternoon and Friday.
At one point Friday morning we counted 13 people…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Rogers Media has to provide the Rogers Sportsnet signals to Bell Canada under the same terms it gives to Rogers Cable, the CRTC said today.
Bell Canada had filed for dispute resolution with the Commission, complaining how it was being treated in negotiations to carry the regional sports service. Specifically, it was being told by Sportsnet that Bell’s new terrestrial digital TV service can’t offer Sportsnet on basic.
(Bell filed the complaint on September 27th and said, interestingly, according to today’s decision, that it planned to launch the new terrestrial service in mid-November 2006. Bell’s IPTV service…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The idea that Canada’s signal distributors should pay conventional broadcasters fees to carry their signals is “trash” according to Rogers Communications CEO Ted Rogers.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday following his company’s appearance before the CRTC on day three of its over-the-air TV review hearings, Rogers countered the many broadcaster arguments in favour of such charges, known as fee-for-carriage (FFC), made over the hearing’s first two days. He said broadcasters should look to new technologies – not new regulations – for new revenues. “These guys should get back to high def and keep up with the new stuff.”…
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GATINEAU – After a two-day ad campaign by Shaw Communications that ran in numerous newspapers across the country prior to the company’s appearance at the CRTC’s TV Policy Review hearing Thursday morning, Commission vice-chair broadcasting, Michel Arpin, opened proceedings this morning by letting Shaw executives know he was not pleased.
The ads (which appeared in the Vancouver Sun, Edmonton Journal, Calgary Herald, Winnipeg Free Press, Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, Victoria Times Colonist – which are all in Shaw Cable territories – as well as the Globe and Mail and National Post) asked Canadians to let the CRTC know whether or not…
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WITH THE FOCUS OF the TV and telecom industry in Ottawa this week for the TV Policy Review hearing, we figure any Tuesday Interview subject would probably get lost in the myriad stories we are providing all week long from our perch inside the CRTC’s Gatineau conference room.
The Tuesday Interview, with SaskTel CEO Robert Watson, will return next week.
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