TORONTO — This year’s regulatory blockbuster panel at the Canadian Telecom Summit on Tuesday turned into a bit of a public hearing on wholesale telecom rates as the Big Three carriers’ pricing structures came under fire from TekSavvy and Wind Mobile.
Calling wholesale network access rates “crazy”, Bram Abramson, TekSavvy’s chief legal and regulatory officer, said wholesale prices can vary among telecom providers by as much as 700%. With the current pricing schemes of the large, vertically integrated incumbents, TekSavvy is unable to offer higher-speed services to its customers because it couldn’t be price competitive, Abramson said.
“TekSavvy is not the…
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TORONTO – Journalists treated to a showcase of City's 2015-16 Upfront programming Tuesday morning were shown a 45-minute video about Rogers Media's varied media platforms that climaxed with a 10 minute-plus reel of Vice Media's digital content.
The takeaway: Rogers Media wants to offer ad agencies and brand marketers dazzled by Google and Facebook an equally effective way to target ad dollars to young audiences increasingly migrating from traditional TV to new digital platforms. "The longest video was from Vice Media, which is a good exclamation mark for how the industry is changing," Rogers Media president Keith Pelley told Cartt.ca….
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Calling it “critical” that Canadians receive emergency alert messages on their mobile devices, the CRTC said Tuesday that an industry working group is ready to begin testing new standards that will assist in making mobile public alerting a reality.
Developed by the Network Working Group under the CRTC’s Interconnection Steering Committee, the new specifications will apply to mobile devices, as well as the interface between the national public alerting system and LTE wireless networks. Mobile devices that support the specification will be able to receive and display emergency alert messages in both English and French.
The Commission added that…
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TORONTO—Despite all the industry hype surrounding Big Data, service providers can easily fail with analytics initiatives if they focus too much on just the data itself.
That was one of a number of key takeaway points from data analytics experts at the Canadian Telecom Summit here Monday. Speaking on a packed morning panel, the six industry experts advised telecom and cable providers to put their business values and customer needs first, not the tracking, collection and analysis of all the data flowing through their networks. Otherwise, the experts warned, the data analytics projects will likely either fall short of expectations…
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TORONTO – Calling ongoing discussions on net neutrality a “distraction”, John Lawford, executive director and general counsel for the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) said the bigger issues needing to be examined currently are vertical integration and competition law in Canada. Lawford spoke during a panel discussion Monday on “Competition in Telecom: Net Neutrality and Innovation” at the Canadian Telecom Summit being held this week in Toronto.
“Net neutrality is done,” Lawford said, with the CRTC’s acceptance in 2009 that the Telecom Act’s non-discrimination provision (Section 27(2)) applies to Internet services in Canada.
“The real work is at the…
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TORONTO -Last year, while still president of Cisco Canada, “I spoke here about the opportunity to drive innovation through collaboration and improved productivity,” said Nitin Kawale, now president of Rogers Enterprise Business division, to delegates at the first day of the Canadian Telecom Summit.
“In one year, not much has changed.”
He pointed to a Conference Board of Canada study that showed Canada ranking 13th in a list of 16 peer countries when it comes to innovation. Clearly, that’s lousy.
When it comes to the consumer side of the information, communications and technology revolution, Canadians are in step with the rest of…
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THIS MONTH’S CRTC DECISION TO regulate wholesale wireless roaming rates is just the latest in a long line of seminal processes and decisions which have come under the tenure of chairman Jean-Pierre Blais.
Just about 60% the way through his five-year term, Blais has had to digest major developments in the industry, technology, and political environment—which is pushing for more competition and consumer rights – while dealing with an often-cranky TV and telecom executives trying to steer their ships through the same choppy waters.
Here are many of the key CRTC developments since Blais, a lawyer and lifelong bureaucrat, was named the…
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TORONTO – Everyone, and I mean everyone, agrees that if the Canadian TV industry is ever going to both boost revenues and build greater efficiency in the television advertising business, the companies here must work together.
More specifically, the four large vertically integrated companies must work in harmony for the greater good. It has not yet happened. This was an important focus of the discussions that happened at last week’s very informative Future TV Advertising conference in Toronto.
In theory, it should be easy. There are just four seats at the main table (Bell, Rogers, Telus and Quebecor), so the quartet…
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TORONTO – After a quarter-century with Rogers Communications, Ken Engelhart has hung out his own shingle.
Engelhart had been the leader of Rogers’ regulatory team for many years under vice-chairman Phil Lind but given all of the changes the company is undergoing (including the re-jigging of the regulatory leadership direction under new chief corporate officer Jacob Glick who is now overseeing regulatory, public affairs, policy, government relations and communications), Engelhart (pictured at last year’s Canadian Telecom Summit) decided now is the time to try something new. He left Rogers last month.
“I’ve set up my own law practice,” he…
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TORONTO – The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and the Canadian Film Centre (CFC) are joining forces on a new initiative known as the NFB/CFC Creative Doc Lab to help cultivate creative risk-taking and documentary storytellers in Canada.
Set to begin in September 2015, the talent and project lab will invite four innovative and artful storytellers to engage in group sessions, peer-to-peer collaboration, and individual project mentorship from top documentary filmmaking professionals and industry leaders, enabling filmmakers to generate and deliver materials that will catalyze real interest and support for their project in the global marketplace.
The NFB/CFC Creative Doc Lab…
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