By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Canadian Heritage and Innovation Canada are emphasizing the speed at which the CRTC makes decisions in a mandate letter to new head of the regulator, Vicky Eatrides.
“There is a perception that the CRTC is taking too long to make decisions,” the Monday letter said. “CRTC regulatory decisions are essential to creating a stable, competitive, and innovative business environment.
“Undue delays create uncertainty and potentially impact investment decisions and service offerings for Canadians,” the letter added. “As the pace of technological change continues unabated, timely decision making will only be more critical in responding to the needs…
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VANCOUVER — Telus last month completed the integration of customers of internet service provider Start.ca after acquiring the small outfit, the company confirmed.
The customer networks of the London, Ont.-based provider of internet, television and home phone services were integrated into Telus last month, “giving customer access to TELUS’ global-leading wireless network, suite of home automation and security, health and entertainment products and services,” Telus told Cartt in a statement.
Richmond, B.C.-based Altima, another ISP that Telus acquired, was integrated into Telus’s network in June 2022.
The purchases further narrow the range of service providers to choose from, as various factors have…
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By Christopher Guly
OTTAWA – As bill C-11 faces a final vote in the House of Commons this week, “it’s unclear as to how it will work in practice” and whether streaming giants will be able to “simply repurpose” already made Canadian programming to qualify as Canadian content and how they would pay their fair share toward broadcasting distribution undertakings (BDUs) that require private broadcasters to make a contribution of at least 5% of their broadcast revenues to CanCon and production, according to CBC/Radio-Canada president and CEO Catherine Tait.
The Senate’s passing of the Online Streaming Act last week was…
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By Christopher Guly
OTTAWA – As bill C-11 returns to the House of Commons after passing the Senate late Thursday, the industry affected by the online streaming legislation has called on the federal government to ensure the establishment of equal treatment between foreign and Canadian companies toward Canadian content requirements.
“We are very concerned that a provision, which remains in the bill, creates a two-tier system that will hold foreign streamers to a lower standard than Canadian companies,” said the Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA) in a statement today. “This will result in foreign streamers using fewer Canadian creators in the…
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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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