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…
Continue Reading
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…
Continue Reading
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,…
Continue Reading
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…
Continue Reading
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…
Continue Reading
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
Continue Reading
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…
Continue Reading
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…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Broadcaster Crossroads Television (CITS) will stay on basic cable on Videotron’s Quebec-Ontario border systems, the CRTC told the company today.
Videotron wanted to distribute the Christian broadcast channel as a digital basic service to its Gatineau, Buckingham, Thurso and Montebello, Quebec – and Rockland, Ontario, systems.
CTS said it would submit to digital basic distribution, so long as Videotron wanted to do it province-wide.
The Quebecor Media-owned cable company, however, added that moving it to digital would free up network space to other specialties and new services.
“Videotron noted that CITS-TV-1, an English-language television programming undertaking devoted…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – The Government of Canada Wednesday dismissed complaints filed with the Governor in Council over two CRTC decisions awarding Vancouver radio station licenses.
On July 21, 2005, the CRTC awarded a radio license to South Asian Broadcasting Corporation Inc. to operate a new commercial specialty FM (ethnic) radio station at Vancouver at 93.1 MHz aimed at the South Asian community.
The same day, it also approved an AM radio application by I.T. Productions Ltd. for a new station at 1200 kHz also targeting Vancouver’s South Asian communities.
“The decisions… were found to be consistent with the policy objectives…
Continue Reading
