MONTREAL – Revenue may have been flat for the first quarter (up just 1%) but overall EBITDA, as well as good wireless results, drove BCE Inc., the parent company of Bell Canada, to a solid first quarter of 2011.
Total EBITDA grew 6.4% while wireless operating revenues rose 9.2%, wireless EBITDA increased 12.2% and EBITDA margins increase to over 40%
Wireless postpaid net additions in the quarter ended March 31st were 80,648 and smartphones represented 55% of gross postpaid activations. Blended wireless ARPU (average revenue per subscription) increased by $1.61 to $51.68, reflecting strong data revenue growth of 38% driven…
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IT’S A PRETTY SAFE bet that many folks who visit the Columbus Communications web site will be perplexed by the music the site has running as you peruse.
Why in the world does a company serving the Caribbean, Latin America and South America feature bagpipe-driven Celtic music as an audio feature (think a meandering Great Big Sea instrumental solo)?
Long-time Cartt.ca readers will recall, however, that its investors and executives are Eastern Canadians. Columbus chairman and CEO Brendan Paddick and president John Reid are Newfoundlanders and majority owner John Risley of Clearwater Seafoods is a Nova Scotian.
We’ve dropped in a couple…
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CAMBRIDGE, ON – CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein is suggesting “a conceptual rethink” of communications regulation in Canada, perhaps with all policy united under one government department.
In a speech at the annual Broadcasting Invitational Summit in Cambridge late last week, von Finckenstein expressed frustration (as he’s done with other speeches during his tenure) with the country’s legislation, regulation and institutions that he says has failed to keep pace with “digital technology, the Internet and vertical integration”.
“Currently, we are operating under three separate and very different Acts”, he said, in reference to the Broadcasting Act, the Radiocommunication Act and the…
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ONE THING BECAME CLEAR pretty quick when I sat down to with Phil Lind a not long ago. He wanted to talk about fee-for-carriage.
The vice-chairman and executive vice-president, regulatory, at Rogers Communications gets a little animated and agitated when it comes to fee-for-carriage(or the renamed value-for-signal). Over four years ago, when we said (wrongly at the time) that it seemed inevitable the CRTC would grant OTA broadcasters the right to charge a fee for their signal, he called me up out of the blue to tell me in no uncertain terms how wrong I was.
For that particular proceeding,…
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TORONTO – Quebecor has asked the CRTC to intervene in its battle with Bell over Sun News.
As first reported by Cartt.ca, the new Quebecor’s news-talk channel was removed from the Bell TV satellite line-up at 10 a.m. Tuesday, May 3, and while Quebecor claims this is clearly a matter of undue preference under sections 9(1) and 9(2) of the Broadcast Distribution Regulations, Bell says that simply isn’t so and is but one of multiple disagreements the companies have with each other.
While the Sun News channel slot itself remains, the feed has been replaced with text telling customers that…
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SOON AFTER THE INTRODUCTION of TV in the late 1940s and early ’50s, came the 30-second commercial spot. It became the standard of television advertising and, despite complaints about its buckshot approach to hitting its intended audience, remains so today.
This celebrity of the television-advertising world feels ringed by metaphorical paparazzi, bobbing and clicking away. But there are other forms of revenue trying to nudge into the circle of stardom.
Product integration and sponsorship, a throwback from broadcast’s early days, is thriving. Online advertising, with its increased targeting capabilities is on the rise. And addressable and interactive ads—the 30-second spot…
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HAMILTON – Wednesday, May 4 marks the launch of yet more deep content from Cartt.ca, the Canadian cable, radio, television and telecom industry’s trade journal.
Cartt.ca INVESTIGATES is a new weekly series of deep analysis into topics and challenges that matter to our industry. On every Wednesday of each month, beginning tomorrow, Cartt.ca INVESTIGATES will dive into and deconstruct a major issue facing the people who work in cable, radio, television and telecom in Canada.
The first issue? TV Advertising. Is it dead? Of course not. It’s thriving! It’s the lifeblood of the business! But change is afoot. Real, substantive…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC has set a speed target for broadband Internet and has maintained the obligation for telephone companies to provide basic home telephone service in what’s widely known as its ‘obligation to serve’ decision released late Tuesday.
In what will surely be a surprise to the country’s telephone companies, the Commission mandated that all Canadians have access to broadband speeds of at least 5 Mbps for downloads and 1 Mbps for uploads by the end of 2015.
“A well-developed broadband infrastructure will serve as a gateway for Canadians to participate in the digital economy,” said CRTC chairman Konrad von…
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HAMILTON – Wednesday, May 4 marks the launch of yet more deep content from Cartt.ca, the Canadian cable, radio, television and telecom industry’s trade journal.
Cartt.ca INVESTIGATES is a new weekly series of deep analysis into topics and challenges that matter to our industry. On every Wednesday of each month, beginning tomorrow, Cartt.ca INVESTIGATES will dive into and deconstruct a major issue facing the people who work in cable, radio, television and telecom in Canada.
The first issue? TV Advertising. Is it dead? Of course not. It’s thriving! It’s the lifeblood of the business! But change is afoot. Real, substantive…
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TORONTO – Quebecor’s Sun News was removed from the Bell TV satellite line-up at 10 a.m. this morning (Tuesday, May 3) but it turns out that this is but one of multiple disagreements that the companies have with each other.
While the Sun News channel slot itself remains, the feed has been replaced with text telling customers that the channel “has been taken down at the request of the owners of Sun News."
According to Sun News head of development Luc Lavoie, Bell forced Quebecor’s hand and it had to demand signal removal. “They have carried the signal on their satellite…
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