GATINEAU – The CRTC today invited Canadians “to share their opinions on applications received to operate a multilingual, multi-ethnic channel with mandatory distribution across Canada.”
In May of last year, the Commission approved a request by Rogers Media to turn its struggling OMNI local OTA stations into regional, must carry specialty channels, complete with a subscriber fee of $0.12 per subscriber per month.
The Commission granted OMNI that status under the provisions of section 9(1)(h) of the Broadcasting Act (Rogers had all but said it would close the multilingual, multi-ethnic OMNI stations without that Commission decision), but…
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MISSISSAUGA – The Canadian CommTech Show and Seminars recognized the winners of its inaugural CommTech Information Communications Technology Awards gala Monday night at the Mississauga Convention Centre.
Event emcee and TSOC president Imran Hasan began the evening with a moment of silence in recognition of those impacted by the Humboldt Broncos tragedy, before announcing the following awards:
– Canadian Individual, Excellence and Innovation in ICT: Serge Rochette, senior vice-president of technical operations, Rogers Communications;
– Canadian Organization, Excellence and Innovation in ICT: T2 Utility Engineers; and
– Canadian Volunteer of the Year: Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE), Ontario chapter, board of directors and associates;
U.S.-based networking equipment…
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OTTAWA – Seeking to address a “noticeable gap” in affordable, occasional-use pay-as-you-go wireless plans, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) and National Pensioners Federation (NPF) have asked the CRTC to order the national wireless carriers to offer them.
In an application filed Friday, PIAC-NPF asked the Commission to apply a condition of service directing Rogers, Bell and Telus to make occasional-use retail wireless plans broadly available to consumers in the same manner as the Commission proposed to do with lower-cost data-only plans in its ‘skinny wireless’ decision last month. The application also asks to combine the two proceedings “to…
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TORONTO – The second season of hit drama The Handmaid’s Tale will headline Bravo’s nation-wide free preview that will kick off April 24.
The Bell Media-owned service said that other high profile premieres rolling out during the freeview include original Canadian crime drama series Carter, starring Jerry O’Connell, on May 15 at 8:00 PM ET, plus detective crime drama Hard Sun, which will make its exclusive Canadian series premiere on May 6.
Season two of the Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning The Handmaid’s Tale will debut with a two-episode premiere event on April 29 at 9:00 PM ET. Viewers wishing to catch…
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TORONTO – Rogers Communications has unveiled a multi-year network plan which includes working with Ericsson to bring Canadians even closer to 5G.
At an event Monday morning at the Rogers Centre in Toronto, the companies demonstrated live what 5G will be able to do in the not-too-distant future. Participants wore augmented reality (AR) gear to toss a baseball back and forth, virtually shopped in a retail store complete with a haptic feedback device on their hands, and controlled robots showing real-time responsiveness over the internet.
Rogers also demonstrated Quad-band Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) on Gigabit LTE to show how LAA…
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TORONTO – Sportsnet has extended its sponsorship with Pinty’s as the exclusive title sponsor of the Grand Slam of Curling as it seeks to establish the Grand Slam series as the world’s elite curling tour.
The deal, which extends the current sponsorship agreement through to the end of the 2022-23 curling season, includes in-venue sponsorship such as in-ice logos and branded rinkboards plus broadcast commercial spots, on-air mentions and integration across Sportsnet platforms.
In addition, the deal introduces the new Pinty’s Cup, a season-long race amongst all competing men’s and women’s curling teams that will kick off at the start of…
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EXTON, PA – SCTE•ISBE and cable heavyweights Comcast and Liberty Global are challenging the tech industry to devise new solutions to manage energy across broadband networks.
The Adaptive Power Challenge is focussing on finding solutions in the following three areas deemed integral to the delivery of cable communications services:
Monitoring & Measurement – Monitoring and measuring energy consumption and ambient conditions correlating quality and health of services with energy;
Demand Response – The ability to implement “peak shaving” and functionality that results in load shedding; and
Supply & Control – Using the functionality of adaptive power DOCSIS-enabled devices to control consumption profiles…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has dismissed a complaint against OMNI Regional’s parent Rogers Media that alleged non-compliance with the service’s third-language news requirement.
The complaint, filed last October by Unifor on behalf of media workers at OMNI, claimed that Rogers’ decision to hire Fairchild TV to create its Cantonese and Mandarin newscasts rather than produce them in-house violated its condition of licence. The Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic and the Urban Alliance on Race Relations (CSALC/UARR) filed a similar application.
The applicants also raised concerns about the loss of editorial diversity and local news coverage for Chinese-speaking Canadians due to…
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OTTAWA – Complaints to the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS) shot up 73% over last year, led by Canadian wireless customers’ grievances over non-disclosure or inaccurate information about their terms of service.
In its mid-year report released Tuesday, CCTS said it accepted 6,849 complaints between August 1, 2017 and January 31, 2017, up by more than 2,800 from the 3,955 complaints that it received in the same period a year earlier.
While CCTS began accepting TV complaints on September 1st, it received only 846 complaints that contained TV issues. Of those, 230 were solely about TV; in the…
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TORONTO – Encore+ is partnering with Hot Docs on a new collection of Canadian productions previously screened at either Hot Docs Festival or the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema, or which have been created by Hot Docs production fund recipients or market program alumni.
The Hot Docs Collection Playlist on Encore+ is available now for free with English and French-language titles such as Kanhesatake:270 Years of Resistance, Rocks at Whiskey Trench, Actuality: The Art and Life of Allan King, Tu as crié Let Me Go, Yo-Yo Ma: Inspired by Bach, Pour la suite du monde, and…
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