OTTAWA – The CRTC has denied Bell Mobility’s request for it to review and vary a decision directing the company, along with Rogers and Telus, to make changes to the proposed terms and conditions outlined in their GSM-based wholesale mobile roaming tariffs incorporating seamless hand-off and 5G roaming.
“Bell has not presented any compelling arguments or evidence to support its review and vary application,” reads a CRTC letter to Bell, dated July 21, 2022.
Bell’s application, submitted to the CRTC earlier this month, argued the decision (TD 2022-102) reaches beyond the scope of the proceedings that led to it and…
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IT HAS NOW BEEN over two weeks since the start of Rogers Communications’ nationwide network outage, which impacted the company’s phone, Internet and cable subscribers – some, for days.
Rogers’ president and CEO Tony Staffieri has issued an apology and attributed the outage to “a network system failure following a maintenance update in our core network”, the company submitted a detailed report to the CRTC about what happened, and a House of Commons standing committee spent the day yesterday hearing from witnesses about the outage – what went wrong, why and what needs to be done…
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By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – The House of Commons INDU committee heard from a series of witnesses today about the July 8 Rogers Communications outage that impacted Canadians across the country, including those trying to access emergency services.
Both meetings the committee decided to hold before the end of July were held today back-to-back.
First among the witnesses there were older white men in suits including François-Philippe Champagne, minister of Innovation, Science and Industry. While the soon fired Rogers CTO, Jorge Fernandes was in Portugal, the minister was in Japan when he heard in the middle of the night…
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Includes physically separating wireless and Internet services
TORONTO — In a letter to customers published Sunday on Rogers Communications’ website, company president and CEO Tony Staffieri outlined the steps the telecom is taking “to learn from” its nationwide network outage earlier this month “and deliver the reliable network you should expect from Rogers.”
Calling it the company’s “Enhanced Reliability Plan”, Staffieri said Rogers is making changes and investments to ensure a network outage like this doesn’t happen again, as part of a personal commitment he pledged in a previous letter posted to the Rogers website shortly after the…
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Bell, Telus offered to help, but Rogers determined it was not possible
OTTAWA – There were no other measures Rogers Communications could have taken to restore 911 services any quicker than it did during the July 8th network outage, the company has told the CRTC in a response to a demand for a detailed report on what happened that day and why.
In a heavily redacted document made public by the CRTC last Friday, Rogers explained it explored the possibility of shutting down its RAN (radio access network), because if customers were unable to connect to it, they would…
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CNOC largely supports the direction, asks for minor changes
By Amanda OYE
OTTAWA – While the government’s new proposed telecommunications policy direction for the CRTC and accompanying documents had some harsh words for the Commission, some are saying the direction does not go far enough to be able to ensure competition and foster affordable pricing in the industry.
Comments submitted to the government on the proposed policy direction were due yesterday.
The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC), a consumer rights advocacy organization, argued in its submission the proposed policy direction is “severely out of touch” with the context of telecommunications competition…
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By Christopher Guly
OTTAWA – The House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology (INDU) adopted a motion this afternoon by Liberal member of parliament Han Dong to conduct a study and hold two special meetings before month’s end to investigate the Rogers Communications Inc. outage that left an estimated 10 million wireless and 2.25 million retail internet subscribers across Canada without service.
“The public is owed some answers,” said Dong, who represents the Ontario riding of Don Valley North.
His motion calls on the committee to review the causes of these widespread disruptions; the impact the service outage…
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WINNIPEG – Xplore Mobile announced today it will be shutting down service as of Aug. 31, 2022, due to regulatory delays.
A letter to customers on the company’s website indicates while it was able to overcome “start up issues of our own making,” competition and the Covid-19 pandemic, it was unable to overcome the “cloud of uncertainty” caused by regulatory delays.
This includes delays around the CRTC’s mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) process, as well as “the high roaming rates that significantly exceed retail prices,” the letter says. (While the CRTC issued a decision on regulating MVNOs last year, it has…
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MONTREAL – Cogeco Inc.’s third quarter revenue increased 16.3% year-over-year to $754.8 million, according to the company’s financial results for the quarter ended May 31, 2022, announced yesterday.
On a constant currency basis, the company saw an increase in revenue of 14.9%.
“American broadband services revenue increased by 31.7% in constant currency, mostly resulting from the Ohio broadband systems acquisition completed on September 1, 2021 and organic revenue growth driven by a higher Internet service customer base, higher value product mix and annual rate increases implemented for certain services,” a press release explains.
“Canadian broadband services revenue increased by 2.5% mainly as…
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By Denis Carmel
IN A STATEMENT issued today, the CBC announced it would conform with the requirements outlined in a June decision by the CRTC, but indicated that “We do these things because we believe it is the right thing to do, not because the CRTC tells us to. Since 2020, we have continued to evolve as we strive to better reflect contemporary Canada, both in our content and in our workforce.”
The issue stems from the repetitive use, on-air, of the N-word by Radio-Canada when quoting the title of a book. That was in 2020.
In 2019, a similar controversy…
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