TORONTO – Rogers has reached an agreement with the Competition Bureau to credit or refund its customers who were charged for premium text messages that they did not ask for.
Premium texts provide information like quizzes and fun facts, horoscopes and ringtones for which customers pay a transaction or monthly fee. In the past, Rogers acted as the billing agent for the third parties who provided the premium texts, much like charging a purchase to a credit card.
The move comes as a result of a Competition Bureau investigation of Rogers, Bell, Telus and the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA) launched in 2012…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has returned applications filed by the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) and Consumers’ Association of Canada (CAC) challenging the tied selling of streaming services CraveTV and shomi to existing TV subscription services, citing Thursday’s Let’s Talk decisions.
A March 12 letter addressed to the consumer groups and signed by secretary general John Traversy said that the PIAC-CAC applications “would benefit from taking into consideration the Commission’s clarifications” in BRP 2015-86 in which the CRTC said that it would add a hybrid VoD service as a new type of exempt undertaking. “Accordingly, by majority decision, the…
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OTTAWA – Canada’s broadcasters aren’t about to give up spectrum and go through another digital upgrade again without being paid for moving – and believe some of the funds coming from the next big wireless auction must be re-directed towards a new local television production fund.
First comments were due into Industry Canada Wednesday on its consultation into repurposing the 600 MHz band – the slice of spectrum upon which much of the country’s TV signals ride.
While most agree that harmonizing our bandwidth plan framework with the United States is a good idea, independent broadcasters and vertically integrated media and…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC unveiled sweeping changes to the Canadian TV broadcasting system earlier today. The Regulator has eliminated genre protection rules, shifted from Canadian content exhibition quotas to spending requirements and created a new class of online video-on-demand (VOD) services.
In a speech to the Canadian Club of Ottawa, Commission chair Jean-Pierre Blais underscored the need to adapt the broadcasting system to meet the realities of today where “people watch content in the ways, on the devices and at the times that most suit them.” He acknowledged that content is still king, but added that the viewer is now…
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TORONTO – CTAM Canada is once again inviting members to the Rogers Centre in Toronto, this time to see the Toronto Blue Jays take on the Tampa Bay Rays on April 15, 2015.
The doors open at 6:00 PM and game time is at 7:07 PM. This will be a ticketed event for CTAM Canada members only – more details to come.
www.ctam.ca
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OTTAWA – Two big story lines emerged from Friday's Industry Canada’s AWS-3 spectrum auction results: Rogers Communications failed to secure any additional spectrum, while Telus forked over more than $1.5 billion for 15 licences with a combined population coverage of 30 million Canadians.
The results, released Friday morning, show that Bell Mobility, Bragg Communications (Eastlink), Videotron and Wind Mobile were the other winners. Full details on the amounts paid and licences won are available here.
With Mobilicity unable to secure the financing required to compete in the auction, Wind Mobile scooped up the coveted 30 MHz set-aside licences in British…
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TORONTO and MONTREAL – Sportsnet has acquired the exclusive Canadian English-language multimedia rights for the 2016 World Cup of Hockey which will take at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto in September and October of 2016.
TVA Sports, Sportsnet’s French-language partner, has in turn acquired the Canadian French-language multimedia rights, and will be the exclusive Francophone broadcaster of the tournament.
The international tournament, a joint effort of the NHLPA and the NHL, in cooperation with the International Ice Hockey Federation, will feature teams from Canada, the United States, Russia, Sweden, Finland and the Czech Republic, as well as Team North American Young…
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MONCTON and TORONTO – Rogers is rolling out two new unlimited usage Internet plans under the banner of Rogers Ignite.
All new Rogers Ignite plans come with unlimited usage and download speeds of up to 100 Mbps ($59.99 for the first three months, $84.99 thereafter) and up to 250 Mbps ($64.99/$94.99). The plans include a Wi-Fi modem rental, and subscriptions to Rogers NHL GameCentre Live and shomi. The new plans are for Rogers wired internet and not Rogers Wireless. The company also announced a lower-cost new 60 Mbps plan capped at 200 GB of data per month ($49.99/$74.99).
Rogers also released new independent…
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OTTAWA – The bidding war for AWS-3 spectrum kicked off Tuesday with Industry Minister James Moore reiterating the federal government’s commitment to “delivering more choice for consumers in the wireless market”.
"Canadians have been clear: they want their government to make decisions that will lead to more choice, lower prices and better service in the wireless sector”, Minister Moore said in a statement. “With 60 percent of the available spectrum set aside solely for bids from new competitors, this auction has been designed to support competition.”
Ten applicants qualified to bid during the AWS-3 spectrum auction: Bell Mobility, Bragg Communications (Eastlink),…
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BARCELONA, SPAIN – The M2M World Alliance, of which Rogers is a founding member, is among two major machine-to-machine (M2M) alliances that have adopted a GSMA SIM specification for the deployment of M2M devices.
The Global M2M Association (GMA) and the M2M World Alliance will deploy services using the GSMA Embedded SIM Specification for the remote over-the-air provisioning of machine-to-machine devices. In addition to these organizations, network operators América Móvil, China Mobile, KDDI and Tele2 have become the latest operators to commit to launch services based on the GSMA specification.
According to the announcement, made from the World Mobile Congress, nearly 65%…
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