GATINEAU — The CRTC’s public hearing into Bell’s proposed acquisition of the V television network and other assets from Groupe V Média takes place this Wednesday in Montreal.
Representatives from Bell, Groupe V Média and Québecor Media and other intervenors are scheduled to appear at the two-day hearing, which will take place at the Palais des congrès de Montréal starting at 9 a.m.
Québecor has been very vocal in its opposition to the V acquisition, going so far as taking out ads (pictured) and creating a special website outlining its concerns regarding what it sees as Bell’s dominance in…
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OTTAWA — The CRTC provided final relief to Videotron on Wednesday in its dispute with Bell over wholesale roaming. The Commission had provided interim relief in June 2019 while it processed Videotron’s Part 1 application.
In its decision Wednesday, the Commission said it approved Videotron’s application for final relief, but it expected the Quebecor-owned company to submit information showing it had resolved a couple of issues that came to light during the proceeding.
In May 2019, Bell had informed Videotron by letter that a number of its customers were allegedly using Bell Mobility’s wholesale roaming service in a manner…
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Renamed Commission would oversee all media in Canada
By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – Eighteen months, thousands of pages from more than 2000 written submissions, dozens of staff and six panel members have produced a shockingly thorough 235-page report which proposes 97 recommendations to change the Broadcasting Act, Telecommunications Act and Radiocommunications Act.
The CRTC will be dead, long live the CCC
One of the many recommendations from the Broadcasting & Telecommunications Legislative Review (BTLR) panel in its report called “Canada’s Communications Future: Time to Act” is a renamed CRTC where the new moniker would reflect the sweeping new regulatory powers found in many…
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Bell vs. Quebecor battles continue
MONTREAL – In an unusual twist in a legal saga between two rivals, Bell Canada said Quebecor’s Groupe TVA should not be forced to provide its specialty services for distribution if it doesn’t want to, because that would violate the Copyright Act.
Bell, which submitted a new legal filing in Federal Court, also said the CRTC has no jurisdiction to force a program provider to “participate in a commercial relationship with a BDU without the consent.” The Regulator only has the ability to resolve disputes between those program providers and distributors about carriage, Bell said…
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PHILADELPHIA – Comcast executives said Thursday that its subsidiary’s upcoming Peacock service, combined with the cable division’s Xfinity Flex streaming device, will make the most effective revenue-generating streaming ecosystem available anywhere.
Peacock is a streamer which will fill what the company calls a “white space” in the market: a hybrid between a subscription and ad-supported service. It will be a largely ad-supported service with three tiers: 7,500 hours of ad-supported content for free, 15,000 hours of ad-supported content for US$5 (but it, too will be free if you subscribe to a pay-TV company), and an ad-free version of the…
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MONTREAL – Another day, another Quebecor-Bell dispute.
While Bell Media announced today a new bi-lingual Crave service – which includes its French-language pay-TV channel Super Écran – Vidéotron is calling the move “another anticompetitive maneuver by Bell.”
The Quebecor-owned cable company said in a press release Tuesday afternoon it “has been forced to discontinue on-demand access to Super Écran content for its customers,” and that “as of today. Bell is also blocking access to its Super Écran Go app… for Videotron customers who subscribe to Super Écran.
“Videotron is disappointed that Bell is again using its market dominance to place its…
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OTTAWA – Bell Canada has applied to appeal to the Federal Court of Appeal (FCA) the CRTC Decision 2019-427, that found Bell guilty of undue preference.
“The Commission finds that Bell (…) has conferred an undue preference upon RDS, its discretionary sports service, and has subjected the service TVA Sports to an undue disadvantage by packaging the two services in a different manner,” the CRTC Decision reads, which we covered in December.
The main argument Bell brings forward in its motion is that in a 2018 Final Offer Arbitration (FOA) “The CRTC accepted Bell’s final offer, which was based…
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Interveners will have to sign NDA
MONTREAL and OTTAWA — Bell is ready to test an artificial intelligence-based system it has developed for blocking fraudulent phone calls, and says last week’s decision by the CRTC regarding its application brings it a step closer to launching its technology trial.
According to a Bell news release Friday, its AI-based network technology could potentially block an estimated 120 million more scam calls per month than Bell is able to stop using call-blocking methods currently mandated by the CRTC.
“Our industry has made solid progress in combatting these scam calls, and Bell’s innovative new AI…
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MONTREAL — Quebecor announced Monday some major structural changes for its Quebecor Content and TVA Group divisions.
In order to focus on creating, increasing the volume and exporting original content from Club illico, TVA and its specialty channels, Quebecor Content will now be entirely dedicated to original content around the teams of vice-president Denis Dubois and Yann Paquet, vice-president of strategy and international affairs for Quebecor Content.
As for the management of TVA brands and specialty channels and the brand deployment strategies for the group’s various programs, they will be brought together under the direction of Claude Foisy, vice-president of marketing…
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By Denis Carmel
GATINEAU – When the Competition Bureau filed in November its intervention to the CRTC’s wireless policy review, it was expected that the reactions would be spirited, and they are.
First, some objected because the Bureau (and its specially commissioned Matrix Report) reached conclusions based on confidential information and asked that some information be shared. In that regard, Bell and Rogers got what they wanted while CNOC and Telus are still waiting for word from the Commission when it comes to that data. Telus has warned the Bureau’s intervention should be deleted from the record for…
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