TORONTO and OTTAWA-GATINEAU — Canadian Network Operators Consortium Inc. (CNOC) is asking the CRTC to mandate both Full Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) national wholesale access services and wholesale tower and site sharing services.
CNOC made the request in an application it submitted Monday to the CRTC to “review and vary” the Commission’s Regulatory framework for wholesale mobile wireless services, (Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2015-177). In its policy decision, issued in May, the Commission chose to regulate wholesale roaming services but continued to forbear from the regulation of MVNO and tower and site sharing services.
In its “review and vary”…
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TORONTO, OTTAWA, WINNIPEG and REGINA — Signalling its exit from the wireless network market in the prairie provinces, and just days after it made the original applications, Wind Mobile’s proposed sell-off of AWS-1 spectrum to Manitoba Telecom Services (MTS) and SaskTel was approved by Industry Canada on Friday.
In separate announcements, MTS said it will pay $45 million to buy 15 MHz of paired AWS-1 spectrum in Manitoba from Wind Mobile, while SaskTel will acquire six licences of paired AWS-1 spectrum in Saskatchewan for an undisclosed sum.
Industry Canada approved the two spectrum licence transfer deals Friday morning, publishing its separate…
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JOIN BILL ROBERTS (former president and CEO of VisionTV) in an exclusive Cartt.ca podcast with Conway as she talks about CBC host firings, the effect of the CRTC’s Let's Talk TV policies, staff cuts, the future of streaming content, CBC Radio 2, ad sales, NHL hockey and more. To get right to the 32-minute interview done at the CBC headquarters, click here.
(Ed note: As a busy executive, Conway doesn’t have a ton of free time for media, so our preamble you’ll read below is taken from a post-podcast interview Roberts did with her to finish…
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OTTAWA – An independent ISP and a big cable company are both lauding Wednesday’s CRTC’s wholesale wireline decision as a win-win.
TekSavvy Solutions hailed the ruling, saying that if implemented properly, it will allow independent competitors to take their game to the next level. Rogers Communications, on the other hand, said that the ruling levels the playing field between cablecos and the incumbent telcos.
Telecom Regulatory Policy 2015-326 determined that access to the ILECs last mile fibre facilities is an essential service and mandated access to competitors. It also ushers in a disaggregated wholesale high speed access (HSA) model…
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TORONTO – Despite an uptick in revenue, Rogers Communications saw its second quarter profits fall 10% amidst on-going losses of cable and home-phone customers.
Rogers said Thursday that operating revenue for the period ended June 30, 2015 totalled $3.40 billion, up 6% from $3.21 billion year-over-year, while net income was $363 million, down from $405 million. On an adjusted basis, net income fell to $412 million from $432 million in the second quarter of 2014.
Consolidated revenue increased 6% this quarter, reflecting revenue growth of 6% in Wireless and 23% in Media, though was virtually flat in its Cable and Business Solutions…
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OTTAWA – Canada’s largest communications companies acknowledge that high speed Internet is now critical for Canadians to participate in the digital economy, but they remain divided as to whether the basic service objective (BSO) should be amended to include broadband.
It’s already “self-evident,” according to Rogers Communications Inc., that broadband is a basic telecommunications service because Canadians require it to access government, health, education, business and entertainment services.
“High-speed broadband Internet access is a necessary prerequisite for Canadians to participate in the digital economy in a meaningful way and almost all Canadians now have access to this important service,” it writes…
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VANCOUVER – Rogers has begun activating some of the AWS-1 spectrum that it picked up from Shaw last month, announcing Thursday that wireless customers in BC and Alberta now have faster speeds and higher quality mobile video.
With this spectrum, which has been unused since 2008, Rogers said that it has doubled the speed that customers can get on its AWS LTE network in the two provinces. The full spectrum is first being activated in Calgary, Edmonton, Medicine Hat, Kelowna, Prince George, Vancouver and select other communities, with the remainder of the spectrum being activated by mid-2016.
"Today we're opening more lanes on…
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TORONTO – As the 2015 Toronto Pan Am Games moves into its final week, CBC-TV is boosting its daily coverage starting Monday, the second time it has pushed aside regular programming to show live and extended packages of the sporting event.
The broadcaster confirmed that an extra hour will be added during the weekdays, on top of the already expanded network coverage announced last week just after the games began. That boosts weekday coverage to seven hours a day, up from the scheduled five hours, plus the added weekend coverage.
The public broadcaster appeared to have been caught off-guard by the…
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OTTAWA – There is broad consensus among the smaller Internet providers, consumers groups and local governments that high speed Internet is a critical part of Canadian society and the economy. They are now telling the CRTC that it should take the steps necessary to include broadband as part of the basic service objective and find ways to ensure its rollout is funded by the industry and government.
As the Canadian Network Operators Consortium (CNOC) noted in its July 14 submission to the CRTC’s review of basic telecommunications services, broadband has a “prominent influence” on Canada’s economic, social and cultural identity.
“Broadband…
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OTTAWA – Industry Canada is tripling down on the number of licences up for grabs in its auction of unassigned licences from the previous 700 MHz and AWS-3 spectrum sales. The department has decided to license the bandwidth on a Tier 4 basis as well as separate the 15+15 MHz GHI AWS-3 block into three individual 5+5 MHz licences.
This means there will be three licences available in the 700 MHz band, one for each of Nunavut, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories. In the AWS-3 spectrum there are now 15 licences to buy with three in each…
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