TORONTO – Sportsnet announced yesterday the national broadcast schedule for the upcoming 2021-22 National Hockey League season.
Coverage will begin with two all-Canadian matchups on October 13 – the Toronto Maple Leafs will face the Montreal Canadiens and the Vancouver Canucks will take on the Edmonton Oilers.
The full schedule includes 168 exclusive matchups, aired across the country on Sportsnet’s television channels as well as on SN Now, according to a press release. Regular season coverage will be featured on Sportsnet’s three marquee broadcast nights – Hockey Night in Canada, Scotiabank Wednesday Night Hockey, and Rogers Hometown Hockey, which will be…
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ONTARIO – While Ontario Connects has generally been welcomed by the industry, organizations that represent small, independent internet service providers have some concerns about how the province’s $4 billion plan to bring high-speed Internet access to the entire province by 2025 will unfold.
“We of course welcome the Ontario government’s substantial investment in extending broadband to everyone across the province,” said Jay Thomson, CEO of the Canadian Communication Systems Alliance (CCSA), in an email to Cartt.ca.
“We question, however, whether a reverse auction approach will generate the best return on the government’s investment. Cheapest is not always best, especially when…
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TORONTO — Rogers Communications this morning reported solid results for the second quarter of 2021, including strong wireless and Ignite TV subscriber net additions and a 14% increase in total revenue.
For the three months ended June 30, 2021, Rogers reported wireless postpaid net subscriber additions of 99,000, Internet net subscriber adds of 9,000 (including 15,000 net new broadband subscribers), and Ignite TV net subscriber adds of 66,000.
That brings Rogers’s subscriber totals to 9.8 million wireless postpaid subscribers, 1.2 million wireless prepaid subscribers, 2.6 million Internet subscribers and 668,000 Ignite TV subscribers as of the end of the quarter.
“Our solid…
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TORONTO — Rogers Communications ranked highest overall among Canadian wireless carriers in a new study released today by umlaut, a global mobile network testing and benchmarking company.
For its audit report, which was commissioned by Rogers, umlaut tested and measured the performance of voice and data services on smartphones based on drive tests in Canadian cities and towns, as well as on connection roads, between March 22 and June 18, 2021.
Overall, Rogers was the winner of umlaut’s “Best in Test” mobile benchmark award with a total score of 911 points out of a maximum of 1,000 points.
In addition, Rogers was…
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The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC), wrote the CRTC last week to express “serious concerns regarding the actions” of Bell, Telus, and Rogers with regards to their recently released low-cost plans.
On July 14, Bell, Telus and Rogers each released new low-cost and occasional-use plans, as directed by the CRTC in Telecommunications Regulatory Policy CRTC 2021-130. PIAC, in its letter to the CRTC, noted the policy indicated “the Commission expected that the incumbents provide at least one low-cost plan on their premium brands.”
Despite this, PIAC did not find any such plan on the any of the companies’ premium brand…
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MONTREAL — Third-party internet access (TPIA) provider oxio announced today it has raised $25 million in Series A funding, bringing its total funding to $40 million.
Xavier Niel, founder of France-based telecom company Free, is the lead investor for Montreal-based oxio’s first significant venture capital financing, with additional investors including Investissement Québec, Desjardins Capital, Desjardins Entreprise, WndrCo and Dispatch Ventures.
“We have a very different way of looking at telecommunications; we see a separation between physical networks and digital providers, much like what cloud-computing has done with servers,” says Marc-André Campagna, oxio co-founder and CEO, in a press release.
“We foresee a future…
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Telus fastest mobile operator during the quarter
SEATTLE — Shaw Communications and Rogers Communications were the fastest fixed broadband providers in Canada in the second quarter of 2021, according to Seattle-based broadband and mobile network testing company Ookla, which released its Q2 2021 Canada Market Report today.
Using Speedtest Intelligence data from the second quarter, Ookla gave Shaw and Rogers speed scores of 181.66 and 179.95, respectively, for their fixed broadband network performance. Ookla’s speed score incorporates measurements of each provider’s download and upload speeds to rank network speed performance, with 90% of the final score being attributed to download…
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Rogers, Telus and Bell have all put out new low-cost and occasional-use wireless plans in compliance with a CRTC directive to do so by today.
The directive was part of the outcome of the CRTC’s recent review of mobile wireless services and required each of the three national companies to provide customers with three new low-cost mobile plan options.
The Commission mandate says the carriers must include unlimited Canada-wide calling, unlimited text messaging, and a minimum of 3 GB of data. Fido (owned by Rogers), Koodo (owned by Telus) and Virgin (owned by Bell), are all…
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MONTREAL — Rogers Communications announced today it has expanded its 5G network to reach 14 new communities in Quebec, bringing the total number of towns and cities in the province that currently have access to Rogers 5G to more than 80.
The 14 communities where Rogers has recently expanded its 5G network are Beauharnois, Beloeil, Blainville, Châteauguay, Dollard-des-Ormeaux, La Prairie, L’île-Perrot, Pointe-Claire, Repentigny, Rosemère, Saint-Augustin-de-Desmaures, Saint-Charles-Borromée, Saint-Lazare and Vaudreuil-Dorion.
The 5G expansion is part of Rogers’s investments over the last 18 months to enhance wireless network connectivity in more than 162 communities throughout the province, according to a Rogers press…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Canada’s large internet service providers (ISPs) are testing the court system’s appetite for further precedent-setting decisions on piracy, requesting the court force blocks on live streaming hockey content with changing IP addresses.
In May, the Federal Court of Appeal upheld an order by a lower court forcing ISPs to block the websites of alleged copyright infringer GoldTV, which used an IPTV service to allegedly sell unlicensed content for a monthly fee. The ISPs initially asked the court in July 2019 to rule against GoldTV by temporarily banning the service from operating until a decision to permanently ban…
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