CIPPIC and vLex want to correct power imbalance when it comes to policy making
OTTAWA – Canada’s CIPPIC and international legal technology firm, vLex want to reduce the barriers to effective public participation in communications policy and will do so by developing a free and fully public communications law and policy research platform, the two organizations announced today.
This initiative “aims to increase access and contextual understanding of regulatory, policy and legal submissions and documentation, allowing Canadian citizens to become more informed and more influential in a policy-making process that is often dominated by multi-billion dollar telecom and broadcasting giants,” reads…
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GATINEAU – Canadians hate it when the phone rings and it is someone or a machine trying to sell them something they don’t need and the CRTC was given the mandate to deal with these nuisance calls through legislation back in 2005.
As the callers are becoming more sophisticated or rather as technology allows them to easily circumvent the rules, the regulatory bodies around the world have been struggling to keep up with the task at hand.
One of those method to circumvent the rules is called ID/spoofing. Spoofing occurs when callers deliberately falsify the caller identification (e.g. telephone number)…
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OTTAWA – The NDP’s industry critic says the federal government should have provided more detail about the promised rollout of a Digital Charter ) in Thursday’s Speech from the Throne.
Instead, it only referenced a plan to “review the rules currently in place…to ensure fairness for all in the new digital space.”
Windsor West Member of Parliament Brian Masse, the New Democratic critic for digital government; innovation, science and industry; and telecommunications, said the charter deserved a mention since it provides a “broad framework” of expectations and rules for industry, consumers and government regarding online rights that address such…
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CREATING IS SOMETHING WOMEN are known to do very well.
I have a few examples:
Alice Parker invented central heating in 1919
Josephine Cochrane invented the dishwasher in 1887
Mary Anderson invented the windshield wiper in 1903
Mary Wilcox invented the car heater in 1893
Women invented the chocolate chip cookie, Monopoly, the fire escape, the life raft and beer!
In 1941 Hedy Lamar invented the torpedo guidance system – cutting edge technology that helped win the war for the Alies and laid the foundation for todays Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
Women ahead of the curve? Always!
In 2003, when I was in Halifax in prep on the…
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OTTAWA — The Broadcasting Accessibility Fund will award $744,479 in grants to six new projects designed to advance accessibility to broadcasting content for Canadians with disabilities.
These six projects represent the completion of the Fund’s fifth round of grants, with approximately $3.3 million committed to date through five rounds of funding, to address gaps in broadcasting accessibility.
The projects approved by the Board of Directors are:
Understanding User Experiences of Play-by-Play Captioning in Fast-Paced Live Sports — Canadian Association of the Deaf — $191,570: Fast paced live sports (such as hockey) continues to be one of the most difficult genres of programming…
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GATINEAU – A number of companies are worried about Bell getting bigger.
In July 2019, Groupe V Media announced it was selling for $20 million its five conventional stations to Bell Media. V, previously known as TQS, has had a long story of financial and regulatory problems and its acquisition by Bell had been rumoured for quite some time. (Photo at right are the stars of the V show Ne Jamais Faire à la Maison, or Never do this at Home, Marie-Soleil Dion and Jonathan Roberge.)
On October 29th, the CRTC issued it Notice of Hearing with a short intervention period ending…
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Innovative broadband policy is driving investment
By Ken Campbell and Reef Read
U.K. LABOUR LEADER, Jeremy Corbyn recently announced, as part of his election platform, he would nationalise the telecom broadband infrastructure in that country and provide free broadband to all residents.
This sent a shockwave through the U.K. telecom industry.
Planned investments from the many new private fibre companies entering the market were stalled and pending transactions were stopped as investors reconsidered fibre infrastructure investment until after the U.K. election.
For his part, Tory party leader Boris Johnson has announced his government would force an accelerated deployment of fibre to all U.K. residents…
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OTTAWA – Delegates gathered in Ottawa last week to discuss spectrum policy and best practices from around the world.
A workshop, organized by the International Telecommunications Society (ITS) with local host Telus, focused primarily on auction design and spectrum policy as it pertains to the rollout of 5G services. The heavy pace of 5G auctions continues globally, with many administrations releasing new spectrum to support the introduction of next-generation wireless networks.
Telus’ VP of telecom policy Steven Schmidt, who also chairs ITS, invited Adam Scott to provide introductory remarks from a Canadian perspective. Scott is the director general of the spectrum…
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ISED arm twists itself into knots trying to give MVNO its stamp of approval, but this could be a good compromise
IF I’M RUNNING ONE of Canada’s existing wireless companies, I’m relieved after reading the Competition Bureau’s most recent submission to the CRTC’s Wireless Policy Review.
However, if I’m hoping to launch a new mobile virtual network operator once the CRTC updates said policy, I might be crying into my beer a little.
After a summer of regulatory back-and-forth where the Bureau successfully fought hard for access to confidential information that only the companies themselves and…
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OTTAWA – The Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS) said today it received nearly 19,300 complaints from Canadian telecom and TV customers, an all-time high in the organization’s 12-year history.
Given we’re also at an all-time high for wireless and broadband customers in Canada, not to mention how recent news and noise surrounding telecom companies in Canada have likely helped more Canadians realize the CCTS can help, such an increase is not surprising.
Canadians, said the CCTS annual report (which tallies complaints for the 12-months ended July 31), complained most often about…
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