LONDON, UK – Canadian wireless carriers received high marks for its consumer mobile video experience, ranking ahead of all other countries in North and South America, including the U.S., says mobile analytics company OpenSignal.
As a follow up to last month's State of Mobile Video Report, OpenSignal is now drilling down into the specifics of various regions, starting first with the Americas. Canada and Bolivia lead the Americas in the video experience analysis, with scores of 59.9 and 55, respectively, on a 100 point scale, landing both countries firmly in the Good category of video experience scale. The U.S. fell into to the Fair…
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MONTREAL – Videotron has unveiled the name of its new IPTV platform based on Comcast’s Xfinity X1 platform, à la Rogers and Shaw.
Speaking at the Canadian Club of Montreal on Monday, outgoing Videotron president and CEO Manon Brouillette said that the platform will be called Helix and will hit the market in 2019.
Helix will deliver smarter and more powerful Wi-Fi, an enhanced TV experience thanks to IP technology and seamless integration of Web content platforms, as well as home automation services, she added.
"Helix is revolutionary. It is a fast-changing, adaptive ecosystem that is ready to compete with the international…
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The TV tax battle
By Phil Lind with Robert Brehl
FEW THINGS GET ME SEETHING like the Canadian television networks’ attempted fee-for-carriage cash grab, the so-called “TV tax.” After everything cable did to increase their TV licences’ value over the years, in 2006 the broadcasters ignited a six-year battle to get us to pay them for carrying their signals. It went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, and they came very close to winning.
Just writing this raises my hackles. Ken Engelhart and Jan Innes would joke that fee-for-carriage was my “Wullerton.” I had no idea what they meant…
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Cable technologists embrace DAA as a complement to DOCSIS 3.1, fibre deep and other technologies
ATLANTA – Believing their industry's hybrid fibre-coax (HFC) networks have plenty of life left in them, cablecos are pushing forward with distributed access architectures (DAA) designed to enable them to boost capacity for gigabit and other advanced services.
Speaking here at the annual SCTE Cable-Tec Expo show last week, top cable technologists from North America and Europe said they are turning to on DAA and new versions of the industry's DOCSIS broadband specs to meet the bandwidth demand with their existing networks. Rather than junk their…
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SMITHERS, B.C. – A new Rogers’ cell tower being installed along Highway 16 that promises to bring continuous network coverage from New Hazelton to Smithers, as well as to Witset First Nation for the first time.
The project was made possible by a one-time $1.2 million grant from the province, administered by the Northern Development Initiative Trust, to expand cellular services along Highway 16. Northern Development Initiative Trust chose Rogers for the project following an open-procurement process.
Construction of the cell tower began in late September and is expected to be completed in the coming months. After it is in service, every…
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GATINEAU – With the large Canadian telecom players reading the writing on the wall (where it appears the Commission is seriously considering some sort of new code of conduct for telecom sales practices) a few of the larger carriers last week set out some ideas for commissioners to consider while they deliberate.
Each company last week essentially told the CRTC during its hearing into telecom sales practices the same thing: “There’s no problem with us when it comes to selling wired or wireless products and services to Canadians.” If there is, added most of the intervenors, the problem stems mainly…
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GATINEAU – Back in August, when the CRTC and researcher Ipsos launched a survey on what Canadians think of the sales practices of Canadian telecom companies, much private (and some public) hue and cry arose from the carriers across the country.
The tight timeline for Ipsos to finish the survey and the weak overall structure and wording of the questions could only lead to negative answers, they said. They were right. The results came back substantially negative, but does that mean they have a point? Does the survey’s supposedly skewed queries mean the results should be tossed out?
Consumers and consumer…
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ATLANTA – It's safe to say U.S. cable tech executives don’t seem to be overly impressed with the oft-promoted prospects of the forthcoming 5G wireless technology.
Speaking at the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo show here earlier this week, three top cable industry officials downplayed 5G's supposed promise, dismissing the rival wireless technology as largely full of hype. The three executives – NCTA president and CEO Michael Powell, CableLabs president and CEO Phil McKinney and Cox Communications CTO Kevin Hart – also (unsurprisingly) pronounced 5G to be far inferior to cable's emerging Full Duplex DOCSIS standard, which is the latest in…
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GATINEAU – "I'm doing this for everyone."
So said Tony Wacheski to Cartt.ca as he headed into the hearing room for his individual presentation to the CRTC on day one of its hearing into telecom sales practices. He was one of several individual Canadians to face the Commission either in person, on the phone or Skype on Monday, including Ryan Adams, pictured at right.
(You, too, can be part of the public record, at least via Twitter, if you hashtag your tweets #CRTCforum)
We happened to sit down with him at lunch as he tapped on his tablet to fine-tune his…
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BURLINGTON, ON – Hamilton-area community television channel Cable 14 has completed its upgrade to the DreamCatcher (DC-ONE) replay system and live production suite offered by Evertz Technologies.
DC-ONE provides the advanced production tools needed for any demanding live production, including zooming, splitscreens, ganged inputs and transcoding in a streamlined, easy to use platform that is fully upgradable, reads the news release.
Noting that its replay system operators come from a variety of backgrounds, including college and high-school interns, Cable 14 said that the DC-ONE platform’s intuitive interface enabled operators to rapidly adapt to live production workflows. In addition, DC-ONE’s feature…
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