Eastlink announced Thursday the expansion of its internet services to communities in New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador using the wholesale fibre regime.
The communities in New Brunswick include Moncton, Fredericton, Saint John, Miramichi, Tracadie and Bathurst and the capital city St. John’s in Newfoundland.
Eastlink already has its own mobile network in these communities, which it plans to bundle with these new internet services.
“The current wholesale regulatory framework has caused us to consider different ways of expanding our service footprint where investing in building new networks is no longer viable,” CEO Jeff Gillham said in a press release. “This includes…
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President says organization will submit a comprehensive application “promptly”
By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC has denied Vues & Voix a three-cent increase in the rate broadcasters must pay to carry its 24-hour French-language radio station Canal M, saying there is insufficient evidence to justify it.
The discretionary service, which provides news and current affairs programming for the accessibility community and for people with disabilities, requested a three-cent rate increase – from four cents to seven cents per subscriber, per month – due to financial pressure. The not-for-profit said it has had to implement significant budget cuts, which resulted in…
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By Ahmad Hathout
The attorney general, on behalf of Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED), is asking the Federal Court of Appeal to intervene in SaskTel’s challenge to the CRTC’s fibre access mandate, arguing the outcome could impact the ability of the federal government to shape telecom policy and impair its cabinet direction power broadly.
Late last week, the AG filed a motion for leave to intervene in SaskTel’s challenge to the CRTC’s decision to force the legacy telcos to open their bundled fibre networks to competitors. SaskTel is arguing there is an inherent conflict between Continue Reading
By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC on Friday set the final wholesale access rates to the bundled fibre networks of the incumbent telcos, keeping them “similar” to the existing rates set in 2024 because of their success in inducing new offerings in the market.
“The final rates set in this order are similar to those interim rates, which dozens of competitors have successfully been using to bring new offers to market and attract tens of thousands of new customers,” the CRTC said Friday.
Indeed, the final rates are mostly only slightly changed. For access to Bell’s FTTP facilities, between 3 Mbps and 1.5…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Cabinet has declined to overturn petitions challenging the CRTC’s decision to allow the three largest telecommunications companies access to the wholesale internet framework, arguing the regulator has instituted investment protections and has an opportunity to solidify the balance between that and competition by setting final access rates.
“The Governor in Council considers that bringing down costs for Canadians is a key priority and that restricting larger telecommunications service providers from accessing mandated wholesale high-speed access services, as requested in the petitions, would reduce the level of competition and consumer options in the retail high-speed Internet services market,” said…
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TekSavvy says regulator lacking teeth on the matter
By Ahmad Hathout
Despite CRTC letters asking them to maintain access, Cogeco and Eastlink have told the regulator they intend to move forward with decommissioning legacy facilities that will affect their wholesale customers.
In two recent letters, CRTC staff had asked Cogeco and Eastlink, who are converting their coaxial networks to fibre, to maintain those older facilities for TekSavvy and Fibernetics, respectively, and that it will embark on a review of decommissioning practices. The CRTC staff had asked the cablecos to confirm that access will be preserved.
But the…
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The CRTC in a letter last week told Eastlink to maintain Fibernetics’s access to its network, after the latter asked the commission to stop Eastlink from decommissioning coaxial facilities that the independent ISP uses to provide service to customers in Sydney, Nova Scotia.
As per Fibernetics’s request, the CRTC has told Eastlink to continue providing wholesale access to Fibernetics either by halting the removal of existing coaxial infrastructure in the Sydney area or by providing wholesale high-speed access (HSA) services using fibre facilities on an aggregated basis. Eastlink is to confirm in…
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By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC is mandating that all service providers report the origin of nuisance or spam calls, rejecting a request by some smaller service providers to be spared from the new condition of service.
“The Commission considers that excluding specific types of TSPs could leave a loophole for nuisance calls to enter Canada through TSPs excluded from the traceback process,” the CRTC said in a decision Friday.
“Requiring all TSPs that provide voice telecommunications services to participate in the traceback process would enable Commission staff to respond to complaints from customers of any TSP” and “prevent a TSP from ignoring…
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The CRTC told Cogeco in a letter last week to maintain TekSavvy’s access to its network, after the latter informed the commission that Cogeco was on the verge of decommissioning copper facilities that TekSavvy currently relies on to provide internet service to customers in Ontario.
The CRTC has instructed Cogeco to continue providing wholesale access to TekSavvy either by maintaining existing hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) wholesale infrastructure at four Ontario locations targeted for decommissioning or by providing TekSavvy access to newly installed fibre facilities at the current HFC available speed and…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Internet service provider Fibernetics is asking the CRTC to stop Eastlink from decommissioning legacy facilities it relies on to provide service to customers in Nova Scotia.
The wholesaler said in a Part 1 application, made public Thursday, that it was notified in February that Eastlink was completing a technology upgrade in Sydney that would transition its network from coaxial to fibre by September 1, meaning its third-party internet access service (TPIA) would no longer be available for two of Fibernetics’s customers.
Fibernetics claims it asked Eastlink to either suspend decommissioning until after the CRTC makes a Continue Reading
