Bell Canada on Monday launched a new multimedia campaign, “Build. Connect. Grow Canada”, calling on the CRTC and new federal government to implement what it calls “smart policies” to unlock billions in private sector investments to build critical fibre infrastructure.
Bell said in a Monday press release 7.8 million homes and businesses across Bell’s footprint currently have access to its pure-fibre network, but the CRTC’s recent decision to uphold the Big Three telecom providers’ access to the aggregated last-mile fibre facilities of Bell and Telus on a wholesale basis has…
Continue Reading
The CRTC will hold a virtual hearing July 10 on an application from Vista Radio to acquire Golden West Broadcasting’s English-language commercial radio station CJGY-FM in Grande Prairie, Alberta, and its transmitters CJGY-FM-1 Fort St. John and CJGY-FM-2 Dawson Creek, B.C.
CJGY-FM, currently operating as Christian radio format station Reach 96.3 FM, would be the second station owned by Vista Radio in the Grande Prairie market, where it already operates pop radio station CFRI-FM (104.7 2Day FM).
Vista Radio has proposed a total value of the transaction of $1.53 million, with a tangible benefits package of $98,000 (representing 6.4 per cent…
Continue Reading
Decision will create challenges for efficient 5G rollout: Telus
By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC is correct in its interpretation of “transmission line” under the Telecommunications Act to mean just wireline infrastructure for the purposes of regulating attachments to public property, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Friday.
The 7-2 ruling upholds a lower court’s decision and means the regulator does not have jurisdiction over wireless attachments on that property, forcing the telecoms to go directly to the municipalities that govern those structures to get access that they say they need to expand the next-generation 5G network.
The high court used at least two…
Continue Reading
The CRTC last week approved an application from UFV Campus and Community Radio Society to operate a new FM transmitter in Chilliwack, B.C., to rebroadcast programming from its English-language campus radio station CIVL-FM, located at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, B.C.
Operating at 92.3 MHz, the new transmitter will allow UFV to broadcast relevant programming to the university’s students, faculty and staff residing in Chilliwack, the location of its second campus, and the surrounding community.
Continue Reading
By Ahmad Hathout
The News Forum allegedly entered into an affiliation agreement with Rogers knowing that the CRTC may grant it mandatory distribution, so it is inappropriate for the national news service to now ask the regulator to revisit the terms of that 2021 agreement after it was granted must-offer status, Rogers argues.
The ad-based service “understood the commercial implications of the Affiliation Agreement and was aware of the regulatory environment under which that Agreement would operate, and agreed to a period,” Rogers said in its April 14 response to The News Forum’s application to the CRTC…
Continue Reading
The CRTC in an April 8 letter has directed Iristel to make payments past due to Bell that the far north telecom provider had been withholding in response to an interconnection dispute between the two companies.
The commission has told Iristel to pay the amounts owed to Bell based on the payment plan proposed by Iristel in a Part 1 application it filed with the CRTC in March. The commission’s requirements regarding these payments have been provided in confidence to Iristel and Bell, and have not been made public.
In addition, the…
Continue Reading
In two unrelated broadcasting decisions published Monday, the CRTC has approved Local Radio Lab’s acquisition of Vista Radio’s CJFB-FM Bolton station, and Blackburn Media-owned CFCO Chatham’s conversion to the FM band.
In the case of CJFB-FM in Bolton, Ont., new owner Local Radio Lab is expected to devote at least five per cent of the station’s musical selections in each broadcast week to selections from Canadian emerging artists. In addition, the broadcast regulator expects CJFB-FM to include indigenous musical selections on its playlist. Local Radio Lab is required to report annually on how…
Continue Reading
By Connie Thiessen
John Meisel, who served as the chair of the CRTC from 1979 to 1983, has passed away at the age of 101.
According to an obituary published in the Kingston Whig Standard this week, the Queen’s University Professor Emeritus died peacefully on March 30.
Born in Vienna, Austria to Jewish Czech parents, the Meisel family was sent abroad by the Bata Shoe Company where Meisel’s father worked, as the Nazi occupation loomed. Jewish employees were dispatched to other Bata facilities, taking Meisel to the Netherlands, Morocco and Haiti before arriving in Canada in 1942.
He attended Ottershaw College in the…
Continue Reading
The CRTC announced Friday its hearing on the definition of Canadian content for audio platforms will occur starting September 18.
The regulator originally scheduled the hearing for June 18 but postponed it – as well as two other hearings collectively called “The Path Forward” consultations on the implementation of the new Broadcasting Act – to accommodate the caretaker convention during the federal election period.
The convention limits the regulator’s ability to launch new regulatory initiatives and engage stakeholders.
As such, and after requests from parties, the regulator also extended the intervention deadline from April 7 to May 5 for the…
Continue Reading
Telco suggests ‘rare’ use of subpoena power if AG doesn’t hand over materials
By Ahmad Hathout
Last month, Canada’s attorney general (AG) filed a motion to strike as moot an application filed by Telus in December that asked the Federal Court to quash a cabinet order that asked the CRTC to reconsider allowing the three largest telecoms to use the fibre facilities of Bell and Telus in Ontario and Quebec.
The AG argues that, because the CRTC declined to change the interim decision after a proceeding on that order, Telus’s application – which alleges that cabinet…
Continue Reading
