TORONTO – Premium sports network beIN SPORT Canada has signed a national broadcast television deal with The National Basketball League of Canada (NBLC).
The three-year deal will include live NBL Canada games in HD on Thursday and Saturday nights starting with the 2014-15 season, plus additional coverage for playoffs and special events like the All Star Weekend. The NBLC was founded in 2011, and is Canada's only professional domestic basketball league. There are currently nine teams within two divisions: Central and Atlantic.
“Together with the NBL Canada, we share a vision to showcase premium Canadian sporting content to the Canadian audience”, said Slava Levin, co-founder…
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QUINCY, MA and PRINCETON, NJ – Cogeco Cable subsidiary Atlantic Broadband, as well as Grande Communications and RCN are the first U.S. cable providers to offer Netflix through the same set-top box used to watch live television.
The companies said Friday that the Netflix App will be fully integrated into their TiVo DVR service distributed by the three providers, meaning customers who subscribe to Netflix will be able to access the OTT service in addition to live TV, On Demand shows and other web content through one single device.
The partnership eliminates the complexity of multiple boxes, remote controls, input…
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THE CRTC IS EXPECTED TO launch its formal TV hearing process imminently. Much of the focus going into it has been on what Canadians want from their broadcasting system.
Without diminishing the importance of this, in all likelihood, Canadians will continue to want from the Canadian broadcasting system what they’ve always wanted.
To paraphrase Fred Sherratt, former COO of CHUM, from 15 to 20 years ago: “Canadians have more television than anyone else in the world. We get everything Americans get, plus Canadian content, at a lower price.”
Canadian television has delivered on this in spades for more than half a century,…
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TORONTO – Rogers president and CEO Guy Laurence, Shaw EVP and COO Jay Mehr, and MTS Allstream CEO Pierre Blouin are just three of the high level keynote speakers confirmed for the 2014 Canadian Telecom Summit which will take place June 16 – 18 at the Toronto Congress Centre in Toronto.
Now in its 13th year, the Canadian Telecom Summit has grown to become Canada's most important annual telecommunications and IT event, attracting hundreds of attendees from around the world. This year’s event will feature over a dozen keynote addresses and more than 50 panelists.
In addition to the popular Regulatory…
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TORONTO – A pair of individual complaints do not a trend make, but it’s worth noting that two questions from the floor of the annual general meeting of Rogers Communications were from individual shareholders concerned about poor customer service (something that has been explored here).
It’s worth noting because very often at these meetings there are no questions from the floor at all, let alone ones that are direct complaints to management. One shareholder, who admitted he has switched his television service to a competitor, voiced an oft-heard complaint about channel deletions: that a specialty service…
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TORONTO – While there were some bright spots during Rogers Communications first quarter, they weren’t enough to make up for weaker results than what Bay Street was expecting.
While wireless adjusted operating profit increased 3%, margin grew to 48.3% and postpaid churn declined to 1.20%, revenue dropped by 2%, the company reported today for the three month period ended March 31st.
According to the company’s release, “consolidated operating revenue was nominally lower than the first quarter of 2013, reflecting a 2% decline in wireless revenue, offset by growth at business solutions (up 1%) and media (up 8%). The decline at wireless…
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TORONTO – Rogers Communications executive vice-president, regulatory and vice-chairman Phil Lind has let it be known inside Rogers that this will be his last year in an operations role at the company for which he has worked for 45 years.
Lind has had a storied career with Rogers, working together with founder Ted Rogers until the latter’s death in 2008 (Lind is pictured here with Shaw Communications president Peter Bissonnette, left and Astral Media co-founder Ian Greenberg, right, upon his induction into the Cable Hall of Fame in 2012). He was seen as the man who…
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TORONTO – Telus really wants to buy Mobilicity and has made another bid for the company, despite the knowledge the federal government really doesn’t want to see this deal happen.
Late Thursday, Data & Audio-Visual Enterprises Holdings and its affiliates (collectively, Mobilicity) announced Telus would acquire it for $350 million. The proposed transaction will move forward under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act rules. Mobilicity has been under creditor protection since September.
"The transaction is a good outcome from Mobilicity's restructuring efforts and extensive sales process," said William Aziz, Mobilicity's chief restructuring officer, in the press release. "I am confident the transaction…
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VANCOUVER, CALGARY, and TORONTO – Rogers wasted no time in deploying its new 700 MHz spectrum, flipping the switch for customers in select Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto communities on Thursday.
Rogers said that its 700 MHz spectrum makes its LTE network even better for customers by offering improved signal quality in basements, elevators and in buildings with thick concrete walls, meaning customers will have more LTE signal bars on their phones and tablets and will be less likely to drop down to lower speeds.
The company added that it will continue to roll out 700 MHz in both rural and urban…
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ANOTHER ROUND OF LAYOFFS has led inexorably to another spasm of handwringing, navel gazing and a week of “what are we going to do about the CBC?” The reactions have largely been predictable, eye-rolling and boring – generally a waste of everyone’s time.
It was shocking when last Thursday’s big town hall meeting called by CBC leadership turned out to be, for the most part, just about cutting the public broadcaster’s head count yet again – with a vague promise about a new vision for the pubcaster to come sometime before the summer. Many honestly believed…
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