By Denis Carmel
GATINEAU – Until now the CRTC regime in place to compensate owners of conventional TV signals distributed by cable companies outside of their markets seem to work fairly well.
Terrestrial BDUs offer distant signals for ‘time shifting’ purposes. It allows subscribers to watch popular shows at a different time by watching a station in a different time zone. Since local stations are losing advertising money (advertisers only pay for local viewership) a compensation regime was put in place.
To distribute such signal, the cable company needs consent from and provide compensation to the owners of conventional television stations. Before…
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By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Lawmakers envisaged the Broadcasting Act giving the CRTC broad powers to temporarily regulate disputes between broadcasters and program providers in the public interest, including when they involve economic relationships, the federal government is arguing in court documents.
The argument hits at the heart of an appeal by Quebecor which last April pulled its TVA Sports signal from Bell TV subscribers because the company believed its channel was undervalued compared to the Bell Media’s RDS channel. The move caused the CRTC to convene an emergency hearing and forced Quebecor to redistribute the signal based on the…
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And beware of 5G hype, says dotmobile
By Ahmad Hathout
GATINEAU – Despite holding the largest wireless market share in Saskatchewan, crown corporation SaskTel said it doesn’t have the ability to lead on wireless prices in the province, cautioning against calls for it to be required to lease its network to mobile virtual network operators.
The comment came Thursday on the second last day of the CRTC’s wireless policy review hearing in response to a question about whether SaskTel has market power as a result of the western province being the only one in the country that isn’t majority-served by the big…
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STOCKHOLM — Ericsson announced Thursday its dynamic spectrum sharing solution, allowing for both 4G and 5G to be deployed in the same band and on the same radio through a software upgrade, is now commercially available.
Ericsson Spectrum Sharing (ESS) dynamically allocates spectrum based on user demand on a 1 millisecond basis, the news release says. ESS makes more efficient use of spectrum, allowing communications service providers to quickly and cost-effectively launch 5G on existing bands on a nationwide scale, Ericsson says.
According to Ericsson’s news release, more than 80% of service providers currently testing ESS plan to deploy it…
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And, MVNOs won’t help
By Ahmad Hathout
GATINEAU – The CRTC’s last mandate for the wireless industry – low-cost data-only plans which originally stood in lieu of a regulatory regime for mobile virtual network operators – have not been popular with customers, Rogers executives told the CRTC today.
“A substantially bigger package of data without voice and text is not as appealing” as less data with talk and text, David Watt, Rogers’ senior vice-president of regulatory affairs, said Wednesday in front of CRTC commissioners reviewing the wireless industry.
“I think we had thought low-cost data-only appeal to people who use a fair…
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MONTREAL — Canadian cloud and data centre services provider eStruxture has partnered with China Mobile International (CMI) to provide the Hong Kong-based company with its first data centre presence in Montreal, the companies announced Wednesday.
A wholly owned subsidiary of China Mobile, CMI offers international telecom services and solutions to enterprises, carriers and mobile users. CMI has a Canadian office in Markham, Ont.
Through the partnership, CMI will offer network access at eStruxture’s MTL-1 facility in Montreal. eStruxture customers can now enjoy high-speed connectivity to CMI’s extensive global infrastructure for mobile communications and cloud services, says the news release. CMI…
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Consumer groups say it’s worth risking network quality for MVNO access
GATINEAU – The only two telecoms which appeared in front of the CRTC on Tuesday during day six of the Commission’s wireless policy review took some time to urge the commissioners to look at the limitations of Cogeco’s hybrid mobile network operator model.
That model would allow MVNOs which already own and operate wired or wireless networks to lease network space from the big three national players – Bell, Rogers and Telus – in exchange for continuing to invest in their own infrastructure in their own operating territories.
Quebecor said it…
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By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Chinese telecom tech manufacturer Huawei has hired an unsuccessful 2019 Liberal Party candidate to lobby the federal government on its behalf – the latest move in a strategy to hire former political party operatives to carry the message that it’s not a security threat to Canada.
Antoine Bujold, a government affairs advisor at Consilium in Boischatel, Quebec since 2014, was registered as a Huawei lobbyist on February 21 to “assist the client in its effort to meet with the Government to discuss Huawei Canada’s current and long-term investments and business objectives in Canada,” including issues from…
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CCSA says mandated access to 5G nets is a must for rural
GATINEAU – In advising the CRTC to mandate just one national MVNO to boost mobile wireless competition here, three former wireless and telecom executives said threats from the big national players about reduced investments and job cuts are not to be taken seriously.
“The market is so clearly dominated by the Big Three ,” Alek Krstajic, the former Freedom CEO and past executive at Bell and Rogers, told CRTC commissioners at the beginning of the second week of the Regulator’s review of the wireless industry.
“In fact,…
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GATINEAU – Canada’s largest third party internet access provider, TekSavvy, wants to add wireless to its mix as a mobile virtual network operator and its executives warned the CRTC on Friday not to fall for the pretend competition it says the Big Three provide in the Canadian wireless market.
The flanker brands of the Big Three (think Koodo, chatr and Lucky, for example) were created as a way to make it look like there are loads of wireless companies in the market when Rogers, Bell and Telus own 90% of the wireless subscribers in Canada, just under various brand names,…
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