GATINEAU – Independent ISPs and some of their supporters came under significant criticism on day two of the CRTC’s wholesale usage-based billing hearing for wanting to profit off the backs of the incumbent providers and not invest in their own networks because the deal is too good.
CRTC vice-chair of broadcasting Tom Pentefountas first took OpenMedia and the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) to task in the morning session wondering whether there is actually an incentive for the independent ISPs to invest in building out networks. “Isn’t part of the issue that the deal is so…
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GATINEAU – Aggregated volume pricing (AVP) shouldn’t be seen as a penalty on independent ISPs, but as an incentive for them to manage their network congestion, Bell Canada told the CRTC during the first day of the re-hearing of the wholesale usage-based billing issue.
Bell argued its AVP approach is a better economic internet traffic management practice (ITMP) than the 95th percentile method proposed by the Canadian Network Operators Consortium (CNOC) because it provides returns on network investments and incents independent ISPs to reduce congestion in their networks.
“ ensures that incumbents receive an appropriate return on their…
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MONTREAL – Julie Tremblay has been named chief operating officer of Sun Media Corporation, the organization announced Tuesday.
Tremblay, who joined Quebecor in 1989, has served as legal counsel, director of legal services, and as vice-president of human resources at Quebecor Inc., Quebecor Media Inc. and its predecessor Quebecor Communications Inc., and at Quebecor World Inc. Prior to joining Quebecor, she practiced law for five years with “a major law firm”.
In her new role, Tremblay will continue supporting the initiatives launched several years ago as part of the transformation plan designed to fully integrate Sun Media Corporation into a new…
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OKAY, WE’LL ADMIT IT. Sometimes it does get a little difficult in maintaining one’s attention on the fifth day into a CRTC hearing.
The questions, and quite often the answers, grow more similar as minutes turn into hours, turn into days. Those repeated questions and answers, though, do tend to allow followers of the hearing to divine just what the commissioners and the industry are aiming for. If you read between enough lines, maybe you can even predict, a little, what’s coming.
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WE’VE ALREADY EXPLAINED what the primary topics are during our extensive coverage of the CRTC’s…
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GATINEAU – Do consumers really want the ability to pick the Jenny Craig of TV packages, a.k.a. the oft-debated, ultra-lean, skinny basic package?
It has been one of the primary questions coming from CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein and his colleagues over the first three days of the Commission’s hearing into vertical integration.
The idea has been bounced around for a couple of years (especially during the fee-for-carriage battles), however it has really taken hold of the imagination of the panel of commissioners this week.
In a nutshell, a mandated skinny basic package would force cable, satellite and telco TV distributors…
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GATINEAU – When Bell Canada and Telus each spoke to the issue of exclusive content on Tuesday morning during their turns at the CRTC’s hearing into vertical integration of media and distribution companies, we thought to ourselves: “this, we’ve heard before.”
Telus, the biggest carrier in the country without media assets, is worried the likes of Rogers, Bell, Shaw and Quebecor will make acquiring ancillary content for wireless, online, and any other devices that pop up, too difficult or expensive – or give themselves unfair head starts, much to the disadvantage of Telus and other companies like it.
Allowing the Canadian…
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GATINEAU – We don’t only pay attention to the big companies and their primary talking points. Of course, we do end up telling their stories first, but there are always few other noteworthy hits during hearings such as this week’s CRTC proceeding on Vertical Integration.
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CRTC CHAIRMAN KONRAD von Finckenstein on Monday apologized for overstepping his bounds a little when he put the brakes on a line of questioning from new Commission vice-chair Tom Pentefountas. Rogers Communications EVP regulatory, Phil Lind had mentioned in the company’s opening statement how the CRTC should use this hearing to…
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GATINEAU – If the Canadian TV industry is to fend off the growing power of unregulated sources of video (yes, especially Netflix), exclusive deals on content must be allowed, Quebecor president and CEO Pierre Karl Péladeau told the CRTC Monday afternoon.
He was appearing in front of the Commission on day one of its hearing into the regulatory framework on vertically integrated corporations (those big four companies which own big broadcast assets and big distribution companies: Bell, Rogers, Shaw and Quebecor).
While noting “vertical integration is the only viable tool to allow us to protect the Canadian broadcast system,” Péladeau also…
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FOR THOSE AMONG you who use Twitter, you’ll recognize the hashtags in the headline. For those who don’t, the hashtags are those # signs attached to words or acronyms that help those of us who use and like Twitter to keep track of topics and conversations on the micro-blogging site.
There are a number of conversations I follow when I “tune in” to Twitter, like #CRTC and #UBB for example, or #cts11 during the recent Canadian Telecom Summit (although this week, that hashtag means California Travel Summit). This week, we have a new one, #ivi, which is…
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GATINEAU – There is no undue preference, no undue disadvantage in the fact that Sun TV News is not available to Bell Satellite TV customers.
In fact, it’s all Quebecor Media’s fault, according to a letter to the CRTC from Bell filed last week. Quebecor, Sun TV News’ owner, didn’t play fair, kept what it was doing a secret until the last minute and proposed a first offer that was a “take it or leave it” proposition according to Bell’s response to Quebecor’s complaint to the CRTC over the matter filed last month.
As first reported by Cartt.ca, Quebecor had…
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