OTTAWA – The CRTC has rejected today an industry association application that challenged a CRTC decision denying mandated wholesale access to multi-dwelling building fibre.
The Competitive Network Operators of Canada, a representative of independent internet service providers, filed an application in October arguing that the regulator made errors in its 2021 decision denying the essentiality of these facilities, and that it should revisit the issue of mandating third parties’ ability to lease the fibre in these buildings to serve tenants themselves.
But in its decision today, the CRTC said CNOC failed to show that the…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC today denied an application by Bell accusing Quebecor’s Videotron of giving itself an illegal preference by removing Bell’s channels from its rotation.
Videotron first proposed to remove Bell’s Vrak.tv and Z, claiming that it didn’t want to continue to pay royalties for channels that weren’t performing well. Bell fired back with a Part 1 application in August asking the CRTC to find that Videotron, by removing its channels, was giving its own channels an undue preference.
In order for Bell’s argument to work, the commission had to find that Vrak and Z were similar to Videotron’s…
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By Christopher Guly
OTTAWA – As bill C-11 sat on the doorstep of passing third and final reading in the Senate, Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez – who introduced the Online Streaming Act a year ago to the day on Feb. 2, 2022 – told a packed audience at the Canadian Media Producers Association’s annual Prime Time conference in Ottawa on Thursday that he expected the bill could return with amendments to the House of Commons, where it passed last June and which could become law by next week.
Should that happen, Rodriguez said it…
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By Richard Stursberg, pictured above, ex-head of Telefilm, English services at the CBC, and Chair of the Canadian Television Fund.
The debate about how to define Canadian content in the future has begun. The Canada Media Fund (CMF) has launched a consultation on the subject. The passage of bill C-11 will require the CRTC to do the same thing.
In a recent article for Cartt.ca, the distinguished communications lawyer, Doug Barrett, argued for the maintenance of the existing definition of Canadian content based on the citizenship of the key members of the creative team. The points system, as…
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Company also said it is confident it will compete against fourth player in Videotron
By Ahmad Hathout
TORONTO – Rogers executives said the company expects network resiliency to be a more important factor than price in driving up new subscribers going forward.
The company is coming off a network outage last summer that paralyzed the country, impacting critical institutions like government and banking. The fallout of the outage put a spotlight on the importance of network resiliency and redundance and spawned a commitment from the large carrier to physically separate its mobile and wireline networks and invest $20 billion…
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Bell also expects millions of homes to have access to 8-gigabit internet by year-end
By Ahmad Hathout
MONTREAL – Bell CEO Mirko Bibic said today that he looks forward to communicating with new CRTC chair Vicky Eatrides about competition and investments in the industry, as he turned away suggestions that broadband prices are increasing.
Bibic was responding to an analyst question on its fourth quarter 2022 results conference call this morning about comments made by the regulator related to higher broadband prices and the need to reconfigure the wholesale access market to drive competition. Outgoing CRTC chair Ian Scott and Eatrides both…
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By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – An association representing independent internet service providers filed a submission to the CRTC yesterday requesting the regulator impose, at least temporarily, discounted wholesale access to incumbent fibre to the building.
The submission by the Competitive Network Operators of Canada is in support of a complaint filed by internet service provider TekSavvy, which alleges that some incumbents are giving to some providers wholesale access to their networks at favourable and unregulated (“off-tariff”) rates over other competitors.
TekSavvy brought the undue preference application in light of Rogers’s proposal to provide Videotron with access to its network…
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By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – As the Senate gears up for a third reading of Bill C-11 tomorrow, the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural (CDCE) is calling for last-minute changes to the Online Streaming Act to ensure an equal playing field between foreign and Canadian streamers.
The coalition is specifically referencing an amendment that was rejected by a Senate committee that would have required an equal contribution in terms of labour from the foreign streaming giants to Canadian productions. The current iteration requires a lesser level of Canadian creative and other human resources from the foreigners, which was…
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OTTAWA — Bram Abramson is the CRTC’s next commissioner representing Ontario, Canadian Heritage announced today.
The lawyer with over 20 years of experience in the communications and technology industries will complete the nine-person commission when he takes his position on February 15 for a five-year term. The vacancy was created by the exit of Monique Lafontaine.
“Bram Abramson’s extensive experience in law and telecommunications will be a great asset in his role as CRTC Ontario Regional Commissioner,” Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez said in a press release. “The CRTC’s regional commissioners ensure that the tribunal’s scope encompasses the entire country, thereby enabling…
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By Douglas Barrett, featured above, adjunct professor in the arts, media and entertainment MBA program at the Schulich School of Business at York University.
This is the fifth piece I have written for Cartt.ca on the definition of a Canadian Program (the previous pieces are listed below) and I want to focus this one on the 10-point content scale used by both CAVCO and the CRTC in determining whether to certify a program. As this measurement metric is now decades old, and as the world of production has completely changed multiple times in that period, it is almost universally assumed…
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