Connected for Success to expand across entire cable internet footprint
OTTAWA – Rogers Communications will announce today in Ottawa that it will expand its Connected for Success program to everywhere it provides wired Internet service.
This means families and individuals living in rent-geared-to-income non-profit housing in Ontario, New Brunswick and Newfoundland & Labrador will now have the opportunity to benefit from very low-cost ($9.99/month) Internet access to help them fully participate in the digital economy.
“We’ve had a tremendous response to our pilot project with Toronto Community Housing and are thrilled to expand Connected for Success to our whole cable internet footprint,”…
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NEW YORK and TORONTO – The National Football League is teaming up with Twitter to livestream Thursday Night Football games online, but that content will most likely be tackled at the border.
The NFL said Tuesday that Twitter will stream 10 regular season Thursday Night Football games broadcast by NBC and CBS free and without authentication to the over 800 million registered and non-registered users worldwide on the Twitter platform on mobile phones, tablets, PCs and connected TVs.
But those games will only be available to Canadian viewers via Sportsnet, while Rogers holds the Canadian rights to Thursday Night Football for one more…
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TORONTO – Rogers Communications is offering Internet of Things (IoT) 'as a service' in an effort to help Canadian businesses simplify the process of managing IoT solutions.
In partnership with Canadian-based provider blueRover, the first two solutions being offered as a service include Farm & Food Monitoring and Level Monitoring. Additional services include End-to-End Incident Management plus Cold Chain Management and Food Safety Monitoring for restaurants and food kitchens.
(Ed note: while Rogers’ news release claims that it is the first Canadian carrier to offer IoT on an as a service basis, that title actually belongs to Telus which Continue Reading
Canadians are receiving the broadband speeds they're paying for
OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The majority of broadband Internet services in Canada are as fast or faster than their advertised download and upload speeds, says a CRTC report on Internet services.
The preliminary report, released Thursday, found that most services from the country's major Internet service providers delivered between 109% and 122% of the advertised download speed, and that performance was largely consistent across all geographic regions of Canada in a mix of urban and rural settings.
Services using fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) technologies delivered 119% of advertised download speed on average, while cable/hybrid-fibre co-axial (HFC) delivered 103%,…
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TORONTO – Cord-cutters or -nevers missing their live sports now have the option to buy Sportsnet Now, a direct-to-consumer service, without a pay-television subscription.
Launching nationally on Friday, the live streaming service (including the regular TV ad load) of the six Sportsnet linear channels promises select NHL, MLB, NBA, soccer and tennis events, as well as original programming like Tim & Sid and Sportsnet Central. Sportsnet Now will be available on tablet, mobile and online for a monthly subscription of $24.99 with no contract and a 7-day trial period. It remains included for existing Sportsnet TV distributors such as Shaw, Telus, Bell,…
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TV complaints on the rise
OTTAWA – Canadians had more complaints about their television services than about their telecom and Internet services combined, says the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS).
In its mid-year report released Wednesday, CCTS said it accepted 4,562 complaints between August 1, 2015 and January 31, 2016, down slightly from the 5,468 complaints received in the same period a year earlier. While the number of telecom complaints remained steady, CCTS said that it recorded over 4,650 consumer issues related to television services in the first six months of 2015-16, as compared to 7,294 in all of…
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TORONTO – Veteran radio exec Rob Farina is joining Bell Media as a senior advisor in support of the coming launch of iHeartRadio in Canada.
Effective May 1, Farina (pictured) will assist with the development, launch, and overall execution for the Canadian brand extension of the digital service. He will focus on iHeartRadio partnerships with the broadcast and music industry, as well as growing strategic relationships within the automotive and consumer electronics industries, reads Tuesday’s announcement.
Farina was program director for Toronto’s CHUM FM, then programming VP for CHUM Radio, before joining Astral Media as EVP content and platforms. He…
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TORONTO – Rogers Sportsnet will get Toronto Blue Jays fans closer to the game than ever before this season, delivering more ways to experience the 2016 regular season across TV, mobile, tablet, computer, and radio.
The channel will also produce and air all 81 home games in 4K, marking the first 4K MLB broadcast, it said in a press release today.
To bring that 4K content to life, Rogers and Sportsnet are launching North America’s first 24/7 dedicated sports feeds featuring 4K content on Friday, April 1 – Sportsnet 4K and Sportsnet ONE 4K.
The following day (April 2), the…
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TORONTO – While season one of Empire aired in simsub on Citytv in 2015, season two of the Fox series, now 10 episodes in, has had no Canadian broadcaster since City dropped it. The show will not be carried by a traditional Canadian TV channel anymore as Rogers and Shaw-owned OTT portal shomi now has the exclusive Canadian rights to the series.
New episodes will be available on shomi within 24 hours of the Fox broadcasts (Wednesdays at 9 p.m.) and shomi will host all prior episodes as well. Last season and the first…
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Commissioner Shoan wanted a hearing
GATINEAU – After the close of trading Wednesday, the CRTC announced it has approved the $2.65 billion purchase of Shaw Media by Corus Entertainment.
In legal/regulatory speak, the Commission approved “an application by Shaw Communications on behalf of Shaw Media and its licensed subsidiaries, to effect a corporate reorganization resulting in the transfer of Shaw Communication Inc.’s shares in Shaw Media Inc. to Corus Entertainment Inc.”
Essentially, the Commission continued to treat Corus and Shaw as it always has since Corus was created in 1999 as a place to house media assets controlled by the Shaw family….
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