THE ARGUMENTS FILED yesterday with Industry Canada on each side of the advanced wireless spectrum auction debate haven’t changed in a month, but circumstances have.
Reply comments on the spectrum auction framework were due into the ministry yesterday. As most will recall, the established players want an unfettered auction for new spectrum that will enable all sorts of new applications and services beyond just voice while potential newcomers want it good and fettered. The fight is still the same.
The three incumbents, Bell Canada, Rogers Communications and Telus, all argue the same thing as they did 36 days…
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THOSE IN FAVOUR OF an advance wireless spectrum auction that imposes limits on the big incumbent wireless operators were given a huge gift last week when word leaked out that Telus would make a bid to buy Bell Canada.
After weeks of pounding away at a message that said any auction which placed spectrum caps or set aside some spectrum for newcomers was an unconscionable subsidy for large corporations that Canadians would ultimately pay for, Telus dramatically changed tactics once the news broke about its involvement with Bell.
Suddenly Telus CEO Darren Entwistle and his senior executives said they…
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OTTAWA – Canadian Heritage minister Bev Oda said it would be “inappropriate to prejudge its review” of the Canadian Television Fund (CTF) currently underway by the CRTC, in her response earlier this week to a Parliamentary committee’s report on the private-public fund.
The government’s response to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage’s “The Funding Crisis of the Canadian Television Fund,” offered no opinions on the report’s conclusions.
Oda’s response consisted of a summary of events surrounding the funding crisis resulting when Shaw and Quebecor decided to withdraw their monthly contributions to the CTF. Those payments have since been resumed….
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TORONTO – Putting six fierce competitors – armed with their own facts and relative truths about the current state of the wireless industry in Canada and abroad for a discussion on next year’s advanced wireless spectrum auction – onto a stage together is likely to result in something akin to a wireless “cage match”.
And that’s exactly what happened Wednesday on the last day of the Canadian Telecom Summit.
To kick off a special panel discussion about competition in the mobile wireless services space, moderator Terence Corcoran, Financial Post editor, introduced himself to the audience as Terry Springer, setting…
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OTTAWA – While the Canadian telecom world meets this week at the Canadian Telecom Summit in Toronto, the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association today echoed many of its members in calling on the Canadian government to ensure the 2008 Advanced Wireless Services spectrum auction is “open and free of artificial measures.“
Ottawa has announced it will auction off AWS spectrum in 2008, and the CWTA is worried about how it will be done, as has been chronicled by Cartt.ca.
“To continue stimulating innovation and investment, the federal government must create a level playing field for all…
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CALGARY – Proposed changes to bylaws coming at next week’s annual general meeting of the Canadian Television Fund "seems to fly in the face of common sense," says a tersely-worded letter sent Friday by Shaw Communications CEO Jim Shaw to the fund’s chair Douglas Barrett.
Shaw noted that while Star Choice received notice of the meeting, Shaw Communications did not and that after looking at what the organization has planned for the June 12 meeting during the Banff World Television Festival, "(w)e were surprised that you and the board of the CTF have decided to pursue an aggressive and…
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OTTAWA – Quebecor and MTS Allstream are not alone among telecom and cable firms in their desire for a wireless spectrum auction that would shackle the "big three" mobile phone companies in Canada.
Among those aligned with the Quebec and Manitoba companies that have been leading the charge to have spectrum in the auction set aside for new entrants – and who have also proposed other rules like mandated roaming and tower sharing – include: Cogeco Cable, the Canadian Cable Systems Alliance, Shaw Communications, EastLink, the Assembly of First Nations and Toronto Hydro Telecom, among others.
The list…
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OTTAWA – The Minister of Industry will receive a blizzard of paper tomorrow as incumbent wireless operators, and those who would like to be one, submit their opinions on how the next auction of wireless spectrum should be run.
The newcomers, led jointly by Quebecor and MTS Allstream, have not backed off their rhetoric at all. They want into the fast-growing wireless market and they don’t want to pay through the nose for entry with a costly purchase of spectrum at auction.
Keying on a few lines from the 2006 Telecom Policy Review Report (the one which the…
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MONTREAL – Like every other conventional television broadcaster in English Canada, Quebec’s Télévision Quatre-Saisons (TQS) had argued for the CRTC’s acceptance of carriage fees to help OTAs compete with fee-supported speciality channels.
“We’re very disappointed,” said TQS President & CEO René Guimond, after the CRTC rejected the idea Thursday. “For us, it’s the continuation of the old model, a model in need of adjustments.”
“I thought we had made the clear demonstration that there is inequity between conventional broadcasters and the speciality channels. And the reason number one for the inequity is the issue of fees,” Guimond told…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC should immediately regulate monthly contributions to the Canadian Television Fund (CTF) and establish an arms length dispute resolution mechanism to deal with any concerns raised about the fund, recommended the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications in its report released Thursday.
The second recommendation of the report, The Challenges Ahead for the Canadian Television Fund, is that the government re-examine the CTF’s spending envelopes, especially with respect to the CBC/Radio-Canada.
One of the complaints of Shaw and Quebecor when they withdrew their monthly contributions earlier this year was that 37% of the CTF went…
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