TORONTO – Astral Media may have been one of the CRTC’s most vociferous critics when it came to its satellite radio decision this year, but the company’s radio division has signed on to produce two French language channels for SIRIUS Canada.
Adult Contemporary format Rock Velours will play the best Canadian soft rock and include new French artists like Jorane, Pierre Lapointe and Ariane Moffatt. Rock Velours will also feature newer Canadian artists like Daniel Powter, Feist and Divine Brown.
Contemporary Hit radio (CHR) format Energie2 will have a play list that includes Pop Rock, Modern Rock and popular…
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SAINT JOHN – Aliant president and CEO Jay Forbes told financial analysts on Friday that he’s holding out hope that the CRTC will see it their way when it comes to forbearing from regulating its local telephony markets.
Aliant and all other Canadian telecom stakeholders faced the Commission during the week of September 26th to give their opinion on local telephony competition and at what stage the Regulator should de-regulate local phone markets.
The local forbearance hearing (which was attended by www.cartt.ca) was initiated by an Aliant request early in 2005 that it be relieved of regulation in 32…
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TORONTO – The Canadian Telecommunications Hall of Fame inducted its first nine laureates at a dinner last week in Toronto.
Those honoured included posthumous contributors to Canada’s telecommunications industry, namely, Alexander Graham Bell and Reginald Aubrey Fessenden in the Inventors and Innovators category, Dr. John H. Chapman in the Servants of the Public category and Charles Fleetford Sise (first Bell Canada CEO) in the Icons of Business category.
Other laureates inducted were former CRTC vice-chair (telecom) David Colville in the Servants of the Public category, Professor and telecom law specialist Hudson Janisch and consultants Lis and…
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OTTAWA – Looking to push the adoption of advanced telecom technologies in this country, the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance said this week that the market should decide how telecommunications develops in Canada.
Providing better tax credits and becoming a model user of ICT were recommended steps that government could take to encourage industry growth, according to respondents.
"The survey is part of a six-month advocacy campaign by CATA to encourage the adoption of advanced telecommunications and information technologies," said John Reid, president, CATAAlliance, in a press release.
The survey was undertaken as an open online poll of the general membership…
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TORONTO – The Canadian cable industry asked for the U.S. version of Discovery HD in February of 2003 but made little progress with its request with the CRTC.
However, a decision last Friday, as reported by www.cartt.ca, licenses Discovery HD Canada – and owner CTV Specialty said today that it will launch, ASAP.
CTV Specialty Television Inc. (a subsidiary of CTV Inc.) and US-based Discovery Communications announced Tuesday that their joint venture application to the CRTC for a new High Definition (HD) specialty channel – Discovery HD – has been approved. Expected to launch before the end of 2005,…
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MONTREAL – Bell Digital Voice is now available in the Greater Montreal Area, the company announced this morning.
Already offered in Toronto for $40 a month, the service is being progressively rolled out across Québec and Ontario.
In Montreal, the offer is $35 a month. Bell has faced significant pressure in Montreal with Videotron’s $16 a month residential telephony offer. The MSO said in August that it had surpassed 75,000 customers and were adding 4,000 a week, which means the company is over or nearly 100,000 VOIP subscribers, most of which would be telephony customers taken from Bell.
As…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU –Teletoon Retro, D.I.Y. and Nostalgie are just three of the 14 new category two digital specialty channels approved by the CRTC Friday.
A few of the new licenses will sound familiar (D.I.Y., Teletoon Retro, Humour) because their owners had held similar digital licenses when they were granted in 2000, but let them lapse as they decided not to launch right away.
One would think that reviving the licenses would mean the channels will launch soon, too.
The full list and links are below:
Teletoon Retro (English)
Teletoon Retro (French)
Vista The Virtual Window
D.I.Y. Television…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC told all companies selling voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) service that they must be diligent when it comes to telling customers what they can and can’t do with 911.
Today’s CRTC edict requires all local voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) service providers in Canada to provide specific notification to current and prospective customers regarding the availability, characteristics and limitations of their 911 and Enhanced 911 (E911) service. All local VoIP service providers will have to implement these requirements within 90 days of this decision.
Some of the notification requirements are:
* VoIP 911 service has…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Look for a local telephony price battle in Montreal.
The CRTC took a first step towards local telephony deregulation on Thursday when it granted – on an interim basis – Bell Canada’s request to price its voice over IP service differently in different regions. Until now, if telcos wanted to drop prices, it had to drop prices across its entire footprint and could not target certain markets.
However, in Quebec, MSO Videotron is offering local telephony for as little as $16 a month and Bell is losing thousands of customers per week.
Bell doesn’t face similar pricing…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC Thursday granted a category two digital specialty service license to Astral Media for French-language speed channel Télé-Vitesse.
Astral’s application proposes a service that would be devoted to speed – on land, on the water and in the air – and vehicles: automobiles, motorcycles, snowmobiles, trains, boats, planes and more.
Astral proposed to air magazine programs, documentaries, dramas, reality television shows and, on occasion, speed-sports competitions and segments on automobiles and the technologies that make them possible.
www.crtc.gc.ca
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