Telus quietly purchased the residential internet customers of wholesaler City Wide Communications through its subsidiary Altima last summer, the Vancouver-based telecom confirmed.
“As a new entrant in the region, Altima is offering customers the added benefits of greater access to a wide range of products, including mobility, home automation, security, health, and entertainment,” a Telus spokesperson told Cartt. “It is business as usual at City Wide, which continues to operate as a company serving their business customers.”
City Wide, which also offers television and landline services, is based in Nova Scotia.
Telus, which purchased Altima in 2022 and more…
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The Competitive Network Operators of Canada (CNOC) announced Tuesday a new digital advertising and social media campaign encouraging Canadians to join its fight to have the Big Three telecoms — Telus, Bell and Rogers — banned from accessing the wholesale aggregated internet regime.
CNOC’s “Break Free from the Big 3” campaign asserts, among other things, “Canadian regulators have allowed the Big 3 internet providers in Canada to freeze out the competition, giving them an unfair advantage over smaller and regional companies. Don’t fall for the illusion of choice.”
“Allowing the Big 3 to resell internet…
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Rogers and Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) announced Tuesday they have signed a three-year agreement that will see Rogers return as the official presenting partner of the festival and its People’s Choice Award through 2027.
The cable giant took over as presenting sponsor of TIFF in 2024, after long-time leading sponsor Bell ended its 28-year partnership with TIFF after the 2023 edition of the festival.
Rogers’s expanded partnership with TIFF “builds on the success of TIFF ’24, which welcomed a record-breaking 700,000 attendees and hundreds of the world’s biggest filmmakers and stars,” said a Rogers…
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By Ahmad Hathout
WildBrain is alleging that Rogers is giving competing discretionary channels and the Disney+ streaming service preferential treatment over its own programming in the cable company’s TV guide, according to a heavily-redacted Part 1 application dated September but made public by the CRTC on Monday.
The application alleges that WildBrain’s Family Channel, Family Jr., WildBrain TV and Telemagino are being torpedoed by Rogers in favour of other “comparable discretionary television programming services with which the WildBrain Services are in direct competition,” which the Toronto-based company is alleging is “disrupting the children’s discretionary television market for children’s programming, particularly on…
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By Ahmad Hathout and Linda Stuart
A watchdog that handles complaints for telecom and television services reported Wednesday that it received the highest number of complaints in its latest annual report, but its leadership stopped short of attributing the increase to more awareness of the organization.
Between August 1, 2023 and July 31, 2024, the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-Television Servies (CCTS) said it accepted 20,147 complaints, a 38 per cent increase from the 14,617 complaints a year prior. Because each complaint can raise more than one issue, the 20,147 complaints translated to a total of 38,874 issues.
Despite the significant increase,…
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Canadian satellite operator Telesat announced Monday some key changes to its executive leadership ranks.
Michel Forest will assume the role of chief technology officer following the retirement of David Wendling at the end of February 2025. In his new position, Forest will report to Dan Goldberg, Telesat’s president and CEO, and will oversee Telesat’s satellite operations, satellite and systems engineering, launch activities and program management.
Forest most recently served as Telesat’s vice president of LEO system engineering, where he led the end-to-end architecture and system performance of the Telesat Lightspeed constellation, according to a Telesat press release announcing…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Corus executives said Friday they are confident the media company can lead in the lifestyle content segment, following what they say were strong fall viewership period for its newly branded food and home channels.
Co-CEO Troy Reeb said during a first quarter earnings conference call that the networks, Flavour and Home, have seen consistent viewership since it rebranded from Food Network and HGTV Canada – the rights to which were acquired by Rogers in a blockbuster deal this past summer.
Reeb cautioned that those now-competing channels have popular programming attached to them, meaning there will be fluctuations in audiences….
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Bell and Corus announced Wednesday an expansion of a multi-year agreement that will see Corus’s networks be distributed on Bell Fibe TV and Bell Satellite TV.
The agreement includes Corus’s new channels Flavour and Home through the media company’s StackTV streaming service, which had previously launched on the Bell Fibe TV app.
“Bell is a firm supporter of independent content providers, like Corus, that deliver compelling content that audiences want,” Payal Gabrani-Bahl, Bell’s senior vice president of consumer and small business, said in a press release. “We’re pleased to offer our Bell Fibe and Satellite TV customers the premier lifestyle networks…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Bell Media has filed a complaint to the CRTC alleging Rogers wants to give itself an undue preference by replacing two of its newly rebranded channels with the cable company’s newly acquired programming — Discovery and Investigation Discovery (I.D.).
Bell previously had the rights to the Discovery and the I.D. brands, but lost them to Rogers when rights owner Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) signed a multi-year licensing deal with the cable giant this past summer. To make up for that, Bell announced in October that it acquired the rights to bring USA…
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Rogers and rSIM (which stands for resilient SIM) are collaborating to deliver innovative, high-resiliency connectivity solutions tailored specifically for IoT applications, according to a Tuesday press release.
Developed by UK-based CSL Group, rSIM is a patented, dual-core SIM designed to ensure reliable, always-on connectivity for critical IoT use cases.
“Built on GSMA standards, rSIM tests the data connection directly from the SIM and autonomously switches seamlessly to a backup profile when connectivity is lost,” the press release explains. “Designed to be device-agnostic, rSIM integrates this resilience directly into the SIM itself, ensuring uninterrupted…
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