By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – The Federal Court of Appeal has denied Bell’s application against a decision by the CRTC that said the company had unduly disadvantaged Quebecor’s TVA Sports in favour of its own, RDS.
The March 12 decision came after Bell requested a judicial review in January of a CRTC decision that said the company had packaged its own RDS channel differently than Quebecor’s TVA Sports, its competitor, thus muting the reach of its rival and causing a “material adverse impact on TVA Group,” the CRTC said in the December ruling.
Quebecor filed the original complaint in February…
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OTTAWA — Through a partnership with several of Canada’s telecom providers, the federal government is reaching out to Canadians living or travelling abroad via text messages containing contact information for Global Affairs Canada consular support in response to the global COVID-19 outbreak. A sample of one is pictured below.
Beginning Wednesday, Rogers, Bell, Telus, Videotron, Freedom Mobile, Eastlink and SaskTel will be sending their subscribers currently living or travelling abroad text messages containing consular support information and key contact information.
“I am pleased that Canada’s telecommunications service providers have acted quickly to help Canadians as they take steps to answer the…
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THE LATEST IMPACT of COVID-19 is the closure of retail outlets by Canada’s biggest telecom and cable companies, including Rogers, Bell and Telus. Smaller carriers are doing the same.
Starting March 18, Rogers is closing most of its retail locations until March 31. However, it’s keeping 93 store locations open across the country to deliver critical services only, including: phone repair and loaner phones, critical device activation, SIM card swap and replacements, modem and cable box swaps, and remote controls for Ignite TV. A full list of available stores can be found here for Rogers, Fido and Continue Reading
TORONTO – It appears Corus Entertainment and a number of other Canadian broadcasters have made their Canadian specialty channels free to the customers of broadcast distribution undertakings (BDUs) in Canada until April 30th.
The companies have not put out a press release or made an announcement saying so, but carriers such as Rogers Communications, Cogeco, Eastlink, SaskTel, Access Communications, Westman Communications and Quadro Communications have announced every one of Corus’ 28-plus channels (from Adult Swim to Food Network to History to YTV) are now free to all customers to watch while they hunker…
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By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Internet service provider TekSavvy said in court documents filed on Friday that the big broadcasters which were successful in bringing about the first court-ordered site-blocking decision did not put the effort in to use other methods to squash those it accused of peddling unlicensed content on the internet – making it harder to justify the use of site-blocking for that purpose.
In July, Bell, Rogers and Quebecor’s Groupe TVA Inc. brought a motion to ban alleged pirate IPTV provider GoldTV from operating until the outcome of a trial, which was granted by the court in August….
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By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – On February 20th, the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology “adopted a motion to study the influx of fraud calls in Canada, including robocalls, ghost calls, and spam calls. The Committee will also examine the successes and failures of the National Do-Not-Call List, and the STIR/SHAKEN measures that will be implemented in September 2020.”
The first meeting, held on Tuesday, March 10th, when Parliament was still running and COVID-19 wasn’t all the news, saw committee members hear two panels discuss the issue.
The first had representatives of the CRTC and the RCMP.
In their opening remarks, both…
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TORONTO — Rogers Communications today announced a series of steps to support its customers and communities during the evolving COVID-19 pandemic.
Rogers Ignite TV and Digital TV customers now have free access to a rotating selection of channels until April 30. This includes popular content for the whole family, since we are going to be spending a lot of time together for the foreseeable future, as well as news channels to stay informed.
Disney, Disney Jr., Family Channel, Family Jr., YTV, Treehouse, Teletoon, ABC Spark, FX, CP24, CTV News Channel, CBC News Network, New Tang Dynasty, TV Asia are all available…
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WHILE THERE WILL surely be more announcements in the coming days, the broadband, telecom and TV industry is responding to the COVID-19 virus in a number of ways.
All have noted in emails their networks are up to the challenge of handling whatever increased traffic that might come from thousands of people working from home rather than the office. During a conference call with financial analysts Thursday discussing its 2019 fiscal fourth quarter, Vidéotron president Jean-Francois Pruneau said, when asked he is “not worried at all about the virus impact on consumption and network capacity.”
Then, on Friday, Vidéotron said it…
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OTTAWA —Canada’s publicly traded television service providers lost a new record number of traditional pay-TV subscribers in 2019, continuing the trend of accelerating TV cord-cutting in Canada, according to new research from Ottawa-based research and consulting firm Boon Dog Professional Services Inc.
The continued launch of new Internet streaming services and the growth of such services in Canada, a slowdown in the growth of IPTV, and continued record losses of subscribers of cable TV all contributed to a record cumulative loss by the big Canadian TV service providers of an estimated 278,000 TV subscribers in their respective 2019 fiscal periods…
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VANCOUVER – Rogers Communications announced today its personalized retail service Pro On-the-Go is now available to existing and new Rogers customers in Greater Vancouver (see coverage area above).
Rogers Pro On-the-Go is a customer service effort which delivers the store to customers’ doors. Within hours of ordering a device, a Rogers pro will meet a customer at a preferred time and location with their new device and set it up based on their preferences. The Rogers employee can then walk a customer through plan options, transfer applications, sync contacts, explain its features and offer popular accessories like cases, headsets and…
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