OTTAWA – The CRTC is requesting specific information from mobile wireless service providers related to its investigation into international roaming rates, including specific agreements between Canadian and international providers.
A letter dated Thursday requests of over two dozen providers, including the big three, their active or most-recently expired roaming agreements, including number of subscribers; the rates in place, including pay-per-use call minutes, data, texts, daily and multi-day plans; how rates are set, including methodology and costing analysis; the rationale for past increases in rates; and payments made to roam on foreign networks between 2018 and 2022 and revenues generated from…
Continue Reading
By Ahmad Hathout
MONTREAL – Quebecor is asking the CRTC to provide immediate relaxation of regulatory rules that require it to provide a specific amount of local programming or else it must make “difficult choices” related to TVA’s programming.
A CRTC licence renewal decision from 2017 and extended last year until August 2024 requires the TVA station CFCM-DT Quebec broadcast 18 hours of local programming per week, while requiring fewer hours in the region for other stations including CBC/Radio-Canada. Quebecor said these comparatively “unfair” requirements are strangling it, despite saying it is producing more hours than is mandated of it.
“Faced with…
Continue Reading
But Cogeco said it could still impact project cost and delivery in Ontario
By Ahmad Hathout
The replacement of utility poles preserved with pesticides using a toxic chemical called pentachlorophenol is unlikely to significantly impact broadband project rollouts, according to Innovation Canada and some telecoms, but concerns still linger.
Health Canada issued a notice in October 2022 cancelling the registration of products using the chemical, after reviews by the European Union, Switzerland, New Zealand and Japan found it posed health hazards. Health Canada’s special review found the chemical causes adverse effects on the environment and humans.
The notice ordered products using the chemical…
Continue Reading
Heritage minister denies communications with CRTC on policy directive, “myths and facts” webpage
By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – A Conservative member of Parliament is requesting information related to any documents exchanged between the CRTC and Canadian Heritage about bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act.
Martin Shields, MP for Bow River, Alberta, tabled the request Monday for detailed communications between the regulator and the department, including the minister’s office, about the legislation which would require online streaming services to contribute to the Canadian ecosystem.
Shields is specifically asking for types of documents and titles, senders, recipients, subject matter and summary of contents.
The government has…
Continue Reading
By Connie Thiessen
Without access to funding, Corus Entertainment says its Global television stations across the country will be left “in a precarious and unduly disadvantaged position” as Rogers Communications moves to redirect $13 million in local expression funding to its CityNews stations.
In a letter to the CRTC, dated May 10 and posted to the commission website this week, Corus requests confirmation of its eligibility to participate in the Independent Local News Fund (ILNF), funded by licensed broadcasting distribution undertakings (BDUs), which are required to contribute 0.3% of gross revenues from the previous broadcast year.
Corus – which is effectively controlled by the Shaw Family Living Trust – says given Rogers’s recent acquisition…
Continue Reading
By Ahmad Hathout
VICTORIA – The broadband ministry under the British Columbia government has been seeking ways to speed up broadband deployments in the province, and a recent briefing note outlines some ways it suggested to do so ahead of its utilization of federal funding.
In the Citizens’ Services briefing note from January, obtained via a freedom of information legislation, the ministry suggested that it could confidentially share with BC Hydro the poles that are expected to be impacted by broadband projects in areas with the 115,000 underserved households in the province.
“BC Hydro can take projective steps to determine the state…
Continue Reading
By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Innovation Canada “repeatedly encouraged” the sale of Xplore Mobile’s spectrum licences in Manitoba to Quebecor, according to a company executive, after CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau sent a letter to the department urging it to push for a sale to subsidiary Videotron to maintain its four-player competition policy.
The department denied the July 14 joint request to transfer the five licences worth $30 million to Telus in September on the grounds that it would hinder the ability of “fourth” players to compete because of the high concentration of spectrum control by Telus, Rogers and…
Continue Reading
MONTREAL – Videotron’s Freedom Mobile announced Thursday a $50 “unlimited” mobile wireless plan with unlimited talk and text both in Canada and the United States.
Subscribers will have 40 GB of the LTE network’s fastest speeds on the plan to use anywhere in Canada and the United States. If they go beyond that, speeds will be slowed down.
While other Canadian carriers offer similar cross-border packages with more high-speed data, Freedom appears to be seeking to capture the market at the lower $50 price point. (The $50 includes a $5 digital discount.)
The announcement comes after Videotron closed its acquisition of Shaw’s…
Continue Reading
By Ahmad Hathout
TORONTO – Executives from the largest telecoms said Wednesday that they are seeing more bundled services as the current and future competitive play in a post Rogers-Shaw merger market.
Doug French, Telus executive vice president and chief financial officer told TD Securities telecom analyst Vince Valentini that the Vancouver-based telecom’s strategy of driving more fibre in its footprint has enhanced the quality of its bundling strategy – the practice of reducing prices by selling more than one service, such as mobile wireless and internet.
French said that the company hasn’t seen a change in Rogers’s networks in western Canada…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA — The CRTC has set a deadline of Monday to submit comments on a request by a dozen organizations to extend the deadline for submissions to its three consultations related to the implementation of the Online Streaming Act.
The organizations on Friday filed the request to extend the deadlines, which were set at June 12 and June 27, to July 28. They also asked that reply deadlines be extended from June and July to September.
The regulator is now asking others to comment on the request by May 29 at 5 p.m.
The organizations said the time currently…
Continue Reading
