By Greg O’Brien
ALL ACROSS THE COUNTRY, millions of Canadians are working from home, or sadly just staying home after their job was placed on indefinite hold. Students don’t know when they will go back to class and seniors are being told going for groceries is dangerous because of the deadly Covid-19.
Politicians of all stripe are telling us to stay home – a call which most of us are thankfully heeding – and one which we will need to obey for some weeks to come to try and slow the spread of the virus.
We’ve hunkered down at home with our…
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TORONTO — Corus Entertainment has provided an update regarding its response to the Covid-19 outbreak, while also trying to address rumours circulating regarding the company’s liquidity and compliance with its loan covenants.
In the company’s Covid-19 update, Corus president and CEO Doug Murphy says the company remains committed to delivering high-quality news and entertainment programming across multiple platforms to audiences across the country.
“The health, safety and well-being of our people is our utmost priority. We’ve focused the support efforts of our internal technology team to enable as many people as possible to work from home. For those job functions…
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GATINEAU – In a wholesale TV rates battle between Bragg Communications (Eastlink) and Rogers Media, the CRTC today gave both sides a win with a final offer arbitration decision.
The two companies have not been able to settle on wholesale rates for Sportsnet and Sportsnet One for some time and approached the CRTC for an FOA process in October 2019.
With Sportsnet (which has five regional feeds), the Commission said Thursday it has selected Rogers’ offer, while for Sportsnet One, it chose the Eastlink offer.
Eastlink fought for its offered rates (none of which were made public) by telling the Commission it…
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OTTAWA — Through a partnership with several of Canada’s telecom providers, the federal government is reaching out to Canadians living or travelling abroad via text messages containing contact information for Global Affairs Canada consular support in response to the global COVID-19 outbreak. A sample of one is pictured below.
Beginning Wednesday, Rogers, Bell, Telus, Videotron, Freedom Mobile, Eastlink and SaskTel will be sending their subscribers currently living or travelling abroad text messages containing consular support information and key contact information.
“I am pleased that Canada’s telecommunications service providers have acted quickly to help Canadians as they take steps to answer the…
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TORONTO – It appears Corus Entertainment and a number of other Canadian broadcasters have made their Canadian specialty channels free to the customers of broadcast distribution undertakings (BDUs) in Canada until April 30th.
The companies have not put out a press release or made an announcement saying so, but carriers such as Rogers Communications, Cogeco, Eastlink, SaskTel, Access Communications, Westman Communications and Quadro Communications have announced every one of Corus’ 28-plus channels (from Adult Swim to Food Network to History to YTV) are now free to all customers to watch while they hunker…
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By Christopher Guly
OTTAWA – In Toronto on Thursday, Innovation, Science and Industry Navdeep Bains gave Canada’s Big Three wireless carriers an ultimatum to lower their prices within two years while increasing competition by giving smaller and regional telecom companies a chance to bid on 50MHz of a 3500 MHz spectrum auction to be held later this year.
Bains spoke to Parliament Hill correspondent Christopher Guly prior to making his major announcement.
Christopher Guly: So you’re forcing the big guys to lower their prices and giving smaller, regional guys a break to help do that.
Navdeep Bains: You’re right. The spectrum set-aside is…
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OTTAWA — On Tuesday, the same day it denied an application by the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) and the National Pensioners Federation (NPF) to require Koodo Mobile and other wireless service providers to provide paper bills upon request, the CRTC announced a new proceeding looking into the issue of paper billing.
In its decision against PIAC and NPF, the Commission says it found “there was no existing legislature or regulatory obligation that mandated the provision of paper bills and, since the rationale and evidence on the record of this proceeding related largely to Koodo alone, it would not…
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TORONTO — Independent Internet and TV service provider VMedia Inc. has submitted an objection to cabinet (officially the Governor-in-Council) in response to Bell Canada’s and the major incumbent cablecos’ petitions in November, in which they asked cabinet to overturn the CRTC’s August decision concerning final rates for aggregated wholesale high-speed access (HSA) services.
VMedia filed its submission on February 14, the last day to do so, and has posted a copy on its website. On Thursday, the independent ISP issued a news release to publicize its submission to cabinet and to explain its arguments for why the Commission’s decision…
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And, MVNOs won’t help
By Ahmad Hathout
GATINEAU – The CRTC’s last mandate for the wireless industry – low-cost data-only plans which originally stood in lieu of a regulatory regime for mobile virtual network operators – have not been popular with customers, Rogers executives told the CRTC today.
“A substantially bigger package of data without voice and text is not as appealing” as less data with talk and text, David Watt, Rogers’ senior vice-president of regulatory affairs, said Wednesday in front of CRTC commissioners reviewing the wireless industry.
“I think we had thought low-cost data-only appeal to people who use a fair…
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Consumer groups say it’s worth risking network quality for MVNO access
GATINEAU – The only two telecoms which appeared in front of the CRTC on Tuesday during day six of the Commission’s wireless policy review took some time to urge the commissioners to look at the limitations of Cogeco’s hybrid mobile network operator model.
That model would allow MVNOs which already own and operate wired or wireless networks to lease network space from the big three national players – Bell, Rogers and Telus – in exchange for continuing to invest in their own infrastructure in their own operating territories.
Quebecor said it…
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