By Ahmad Hathout
MONTREAL – Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau said on the company’s fourth quarter conference call Thursday that he is “not surprised” by the “little progress” the company has made on negotiating a deal to roam on the large carriers’ wireless networks, but said things may change with the new head at the CRTC.
The company’s Videotron subsidiary was denied last week an arbitration hearing with the regulator about a price for access to Bell’s wireless network, alleging Bell is stalling on negotiations. The CRTC, which asked about the status of those negotiations…
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TORONTO – Rogers, Shaw and Quebecor have once again agreed Friday to delay the date of their respective transactions, as the previous deadline has come and after the innovation minister said this week he isn’t close to making a decision on the transfers.
The outside closing date has been pushed back several times for the deals involving the transfer of Freedom to Videotron and then Shaw to Rogers. It was previously January 31, then it was pushed to February 17, and now the parties are hoping that the minister makes a decision by March 31, which is the date…
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By Connie Thiessen
Quebecor Media has announced it’s cutting 240 jobs, including 140 positions across TVA Group’s broadcasting, publishing and film production divisions.
The restructuring was announced Thursday as Montreal-headquartered TVA Group reported its fiscal 2022 year-end results showing a drop in revenue across all of its business segments. The corporation’s consolidated adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) was $19,385,000, compared to $80,283,000 the previous year. Consolidated revenues were down 4.6% overall with the corporation recording a net loss of $0.21 per share, compared to earnings per share of $0.71 for 2021. Q4 revenues of $171.9 million marked a slight year-over-year increase…
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Government “disagreed” with incumbent arguments about direction usefulness and legality
By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Innovation Canada has kept its proposed policy direction to the CRTC largely intact, as the final version released Monday shores up language to reinforce the government’s perspective on the importance of competition and affordability in the wireline and wireless sectors of the telecommunications industry, while maintaining that the direction will encourage innovation and network investments.
The department clarified language in the final version that made clearer the importance in CRTC decisions of network reliability, fair roaming rates, and “just and reasonable” rates at which smaller internet service…
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By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Officials from Innovation Canada pushed back Tuesday against the claim that the current spectrum auction and deployment framework needs a revision to deal with providers that don’t utilize spectrum within a reasonable timeframe.
The Senate transport committee is on second reading of bill S242, which seeks to amend the Radiocommunications Act to require service providers to deploy spectrum and provide service to at least 50% of the population it covers within three years of the licence’s issuance. The idea behind the bill assumes that some service providers are hoarding spectrum and are looking to sell the…
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VANCOUVER — Telus last month completed the integration of customers of internet service provider Start.ca after acquiring the small outfit, the company confirmed.
The customer networks of the London, Ont.-based provider of internet, television and home phone services were integrated into Telus last month, “giving customer access to TELUS’ global-leading wireless network, suite of home automation and security, health and entertainment products and services,” Telus told Cartt in a statement.
Richmond, B.C.-based Altima, another ISP that Telus acquired, was integrated into Telus’s network in June 2022.
The purchases further narrow the range of service providers to choose from, as various factors have…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC today denied an application by Bell accusing Quebecor’s Videotron of giving itself an illegal preference by removing Bell’s channels from its rotation.
Videotron first proposed to remove Bell’s Vrak.tv and Z, claiming that it didn’t want to continue to pay royalties for channels that weren’t performing well. Bell fired back with a Part 1 application in August asking the CRTC to find that Videotron, by removing its channels, was giving its own channels an undue preference.
In order for Bell’s argument to work, the commission had to find that Vrak and Z were similar to Videotron’s…
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Rogers, Shaw, and Quebecor’s Videotron announced today that they have agreed to extend the closing date of their transactions to February 17.
The expected closing date of Rogers acquiring Shaw and Videotron acquiring Shaw’s Freedom Mobile assets was January 31, which was set before the Competition Bureau appealed a decision of the Competition Tribunal that denied its petition to block the deal. The Federal Court of Appeal upheld the tribunal’s decision last week, and the bureau said it will not appeal to the Supreme Court.
The transfer of Freedom’s assets to Videotron must now be approved by Innovation…
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By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Members of the House industry committee took issue today with Rogers being allowed to choose Videotron as its competitor to complete its acquisition of Shaw, with one member of Parliament saying it “boggles the mind” to think Rogers would sell Freedom for less if it meant more competition.
Today’s hearing was the committee’s second round at the Rogers-Shaw merger, this time with the new development that Videotron agreed to purchase Freedom from Shaw for nearly $3 billion. It also comes a day after the Federal Court of Appeal upheld a…
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OTTAWA – Rogers’s proposed purchase of Shaw faces just one more hurdle: the innovation minister’s approval of the transfer of Freedom spectrum assets to Videotron, which agreed to purchase the company for nearly $3 billion.
The deal’s prospects improved dramatically when it survived a Competition Bureau challenge at the Federal Court of Appeal, which denied yesterday a request to find in error the Competition Tribunal’s approval of the deal. Even more so when the bureau announced late last evening that it will not appeal the court’s decision.
But now scrutiny will be leveled against it…
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