TORONTO – With the broadband market still growing briskly and shifting drastically in the direction of data and video applications, telecom service providers and equipment suppliers are scrambling desperately to keep up with the changes and find more spectrum to use.
That was the consensus that emerged from a panel discussion at the Canadian Telecom Summit earlier this week. Panelists addressed how the broadband market is changing and how they are aiming to meet its swiftly changing needs, particularly on the wireless side.
“We’re all in a race to catch up with consumer demand,” said Dean Brenner, vice-president of government affairs…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Canada’s television services are back in business. CRTC figures released Thursday in a press release, (based largely on data from individual companies which we actually broke down here and here way back in January), show that the return of the advertising market translated into some, albeit modest, profits at conventional broadcasters, though the country’s specialty and pay broadcasters fared better.
According to the Commission’s count, revenue at the country’s private conventional television climbed 9% to approximately $2.15 billion in 2010 broadcast year, while expenses increased 1.7%. This resulted in profits before interest and taxes (PBIT) rebounding from a deficit of $116.6 million in…
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THE LITANY OF REGULATORY issues facing the Canadian telecom business is long and the stakes are huge. It’s why this year’s Regulatory Blockbuster session held Wednesday at the Canadian Telecom Summit yet again delivered a lively, sometimes heated, discourse among the industry’s key regulatory players.
Moderated by Cartt.ca’s editor and publisher Greg O’Brien, the panel featured senior regulatory experts from Bell Canada, Rogers Communications, Telus, MTS Allstream, Globalive Communications and PIAC (the Public Interest Advocacy Centre) and the issues ranged vertical integration, foreign ownership, usage-based billing, wireless spectrum auction rules, rural broadband initiatives, and so on.
With the CRTC’s public hearing…
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TORONTO – Robert Dépatie doesn’t exactly see eye-to-eye with Rob Bruce.
A day after Bruce, the president of the cable and wireless arm of Rogers Communications, called for no restrictions on the Canadian government’s upcoming auction of 700 MHz spectrum, Dépatie, the president and CEO of Videotron, called for definitive restrictions on the auction. Specifically, Dépatie made the case for an in-band spectrum cap for 700 MHz bidders while speaking at the Canadian Telecom Summit on Wednesday morning.
As the company has spelled out for Industry Canada as it prepares to write the rules of the 700 MHz spectrum auction,…
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MONTREAL – Videotron has begun implementing the IPv6 Internet Protocol, becoming the first major Internet service provider in Canada to offer all of its customers IPv6 access.
The company said Wednesday that a Beta version of IPv6 is available to residential customers who want it and who have the compatible Wi-Fi router, and that the new standard will eventually become “an integral part” of its cable Internet access service.
“The roll-out of the Beta version of IPv6 will give early adopters a chance to get in on the ground floor,” said Pierre Roy, VP of engineering, research and development, in the…
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TORONTO – Rob Bruce, the president of the cable and wireless arm of Rogers Communications, won’t be alone this week calling (as he did Tuesday opening the 2011 Canadian Telecom Summit) for a “fair and open auction” of the 700 MHz wireless spectrum.
We know enough of what the likes of Telus’ CFO Robert MacFarlane plans to say at lunch Wednesday and can hazard a guess that Bell CEO George Cope will follow up with a similar call on Thursday when he speaks to CTS delegates at the Toronto Congress Centre. The auction isn’t expected until 2012, but the…
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OTTAWA – Canada’s wireless industry injected $41.2 billion into the Canadian economy in 2009, according to a new report commissioned by the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA).
The report, The Benefit of the Wireless Telecommunications Industry to the Canadian Economy, calculated that the wireless sector contributed more than $17.2 billion in terms of direct contribution to the GDP through the sale of goods and services; an additional $14.98 billion due to the economic flow through to contributing suppliers in the supply chain; and more than $9 billion in consumer surplus – the additional benefit or satisfaction that consumers…
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TORONTO – An equal and fair spectrum auction that allows established wireless providers and newcomers to play by the same rules is critical to Rogers’ roll out of its new Long Term Evolution (LTE) network, said the company’s president of communications, Rob Bruce.
"Those who have suggested that companies like Rogers shouldn’t have fair and equal access to this spectrum are misguided," Bruce said during his the opening keynote Tuesday morning at the 2011 Canadian Telecom Summit. "Restrictions on the 700 MHz band auction would be unfair to our nine million wireless customers who have every right to access a…
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TORONTO – Despite numerous technical, operational and financial challenges, Long Term Evolution (LTE) will become a dominant wireless technology, if not the dominant wireless technology, globally by the end of the decade, according to panelists at the Canadian Telecom Summit.
Speaking in a Tuesday morning session, executives from a range of major equipment and software suppliers argued LTE will take a commanding role because of its high transmission speeds, low latency, greater capacity, more extensive coverage, and lower costs. “LTE will be the choice for all spectrum, all technologies and all networks in the next 10 years,” declared Dr. Wen…
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OTTAWA – Canada’s Telecommunications Hall of Fame has awarded the first instalment in its new telecom research and development (R&D) funding program to Ottawa’s Carleton University and Algonquin College.
The Hall of Fame said Tuesday that $60,000 was granted to Carleton’s department of electronics, and $26,587.00 was directed to Algonquin’s electronics/electro-mechanical studies department for new and on-going telecom research projects.
"Everyone wins under this new program – the industry wins through a simple mechanism to achieve and fulfil their R&D objectives and their government obligations, the academic institutions win from increased levels of funding for high-level telecom R&D and the research…
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