OTTAWA – The Federal Court of Appeal has rejected a complaint lodged by some of Canada’s biggest wireless service providers over a deadline date in the CRTC’s Wireless Code of Conduct.
In a decision issued Tuesday, Justice Denis Pelletier dismissed a challenge filed by Bell, Rogers, Telus, MTS and SaskTel over the June 3, 2015 final implementation date of the Code, referred to as “the drop-dead date”, whereby all existing wireless contracts fall subject to the Code.
Noting the high number of three-year wireless contracts that would not yet have matured by that date, the telcos claimed that they would be…
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TORONTO – Bell Canada and Larry Tanenbaum's Kilmer Group are jointly acquiring the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts from sports entrepreneur David Braley. Financial terms of the transaction, expected to close on December 31, 2015, were not disclosed.
The team will begin leave the Rogers Centre and begin playing at BMO Field beginning with the 2016 CFL season. Located at Toronto's Exhibition Place and operated by Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, BMO Field is also home to MLSE-owned Toronto FC of Major League Soccer.
Bell Media's TSN and RDS sports networks have exclusive media rights to all CFL pre-season and regular season games,…
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HAMILTON, ON – Cable 14 has been honoured with a Media Award of Distinction by the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) for its live broadcasts of a variety of McMaster University sports, as well as OUA postseason and Canadian Interuniversity Sport national championship events.
The Hamilton-based community channel, co-owned by Cogeco Cable and Rogers (formerly Shaw and Source Cable), began airing McMaster sports on tape delay in the early 2000's. In 2008, with the addition of a fibre link to the Ron Joyce Stadium building project, Cable 14 began live broadcasts from the McMaster campus on a consistent basis.
Since then, Cable…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has turned down a demand by Rogers Communications to revise the Wireless Code and exclude certain wireless service contracts for corporate individual plans and employee purchase plans.
The Commission said Friday that it is denying Rogers’ application to review and vary Telecom Decision 2014-528 (referred to as the Corporate Plans decision), as the big media company “failed to demonstrate” that there is substantial doubt as to the correctness of that decision. In that decision, the Regulator (a) reiterated that the Wireless Code applies to retail mobile wireless voice and data services provided to individuals and small…
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TORONTO – SaskTel has once again ranked highest in wireless customer satisfaction for the fourth year in a row in a study by J.D. Power & Associates released Thursday.
According to the J.D. Power 2015 Canadian Wireless Customer Care Study, many Canadian wireless carriers are modifying their customer service strategies as they brace for a surge of two-year and three-year contract expirations in June. Canadians’ satisfaction with wireless providers’ customer service heavily influences customer loyalty and carrier retention, the company continued, with timeliness, accessibility and online self-service tools helping to differentiate carriers from their competitors.
The 2015 Canadian Wireless Customer Care Study is…
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TORONTO – MTS has become the latest telco to offer their customers the option to pay for purchases with a tap of their mobile device.
According to EnStream, a mobile commerce joint venture company owned by Bell Mobility, Rogers and Telus, mobile payments are now supported by Bell, Rogers, Telus, MTS and SaskTel, who collectively provide service to over 94% of Canada's wireless subscribers. EnStream's platform acts as a hub, connecting multiple Canadian banks and mobile network operators, while securely delivering the credit, debit and pre-paid cards offered by financial institutions to wireless handsets, all while preserving each bank's direct relationship…
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TORONTO – Rogers has renewed its sponsorship agreement with Tennis Canada for the Rogers Cup tournament in Toronto and Montreal for another five years.
The new deal sees Rogers as the title sponsor of the event through 2020, with Sportsnet renewing broadcast rights with expanded coverage for all rounds of the tournament in English and French beginning in 2016. Sportsnet’s renewed broadcast agreement includes multimedia rights, including television, online and mobile.
As part of the partnership, Rogers and Tennis Canada will work together on grassroots initiatives to help build the game in Canada. Details on this and a full tournament broadcast…
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OTTAWA – Wind Mobile’s hopes of securing spectrum in the 2500 MHz band to add to its meager holdings have been dashed, while Telus Corp. was able to secure 40 MHz of the valuable bandwidth in all regions of the country, according to results of the Industry Canada spectrum auction released on Tuesday.
The auction, which had officially ended on May 5, netted federal government coffers more than $755 million. There were 11 companies to begin the auction with nine of them winning licences. Of the 318 licences available, 302 of them were sold. In addition to Wind,…
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TORONTO – Rogers and Shaw have named David Asch as senior vice president and general manager of their jointly owned streaming service shomi, effective immediately.
Asch, (pictured), comes to shomi with extensive expertise in content licensing, acquisition and development; and a proven track record of negotiating and implementing content agreements with movie studios, television networks, sports leagues, event promoters, and music distributors for television, DVD, and digital platform distribution, reads Tuesday’s announcement. His most recent role was SVP content, at Redbox Automated Retail, where he led all content, development, licensing, and acquisition activities for the U.S. renter of DVD content….
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GATINEAU – The Canadian Network Operators Consortium (CNOC) is again fighting wholesale service rates of the established telecom and cable companies. The group of independent ISPs is now telling the CRTC that it must make interim all usage sensitive rates from these companies until more fulsome analyses are done.
Bell Aliant, Bell Canada, Cogeco Cable, Rogers Communications, SaskTel, Shaw Cablesystems, Telus Communications, and Vidéotron are all party to the application.
In an application filed on April 29, CNOC argues that evidence has now come to light that demonstrates existing usage sensitive rates are too high. It points to a recent…
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