“EVERYBODY’S STARTING TO realize that this market isn’t what we thought it was going to be,” said Alek Krstajic, president and CEO of upstart Canadian wireless company Public Mobile.
The wireless business is a very tough game. It’s extremely costly to build out, quite difficult to convince customers to switch service providers, incumbent carriers have been ruthless and access to spectrum, especially the good stuff, looks to be a problem. Those reasons and a few others make it appear like a round of consolidation among the three new independent wireless providers is close at hand, likely before the 700 MHz…
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by Steve Faguy
GATINEAU – With the recent, unexpected and much-publicized denial of Bell Canada’s purchase of Astral Media (because the players didn't prove the transaction to be a net benefit to Canadians) as a backdrop, the CRTC made it clear to Rogers Media Wednesday that its tough line isn't limited to Canada's largest media company.
At a hearing in Gatineau on Wednesday, the commission grilled Rogers, Channel Zero and a Montreal-based start-up on their multi-part plan to essentially convert ethnic television station CJNT Montreal (branded Metro 14) into two television stations, allowing Citytv to enter Canada's second-largest…
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TORONTO – With the Ontario chapter of SCTE growing to more than 500 members since its inception in mid-2003 making it the second-largest chapter membership in North America, it is now calling for board nominations to maintain the chapter’s strong leadership.
Bylaws require six board members, elected for two-year terms, with three board members replaced each year in order to provide continuity. James Myles, Joe Ciccone and Mario Massi will reach the end of their two-year terms on Dec 31, 2012.
D'Arcy Brown, Scott McPhail and Joe Caruso will remain on the Board until…
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TORONTO – The Connection 2012 conference attracted a record number of attendees reports the Ontario Association of Broadcasters (OAB).
“ OAB Connection 2012 hit a new high level for our annual conference. Our six speakers presented a diverse set of perspectives on current trends affecting our industry through the eyes of marketers, programmes, an investment analyst, a sales professional, and a market researcher,” remarked OAB President, Doug Kirk.
The conference, at the Westin Bristol Place Hotel, featured an extensive line-up of industry speakers including Scott Cuthbertson, Sean Ross, Donald Cooper, Paul Weyland, and Alastair…
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MONTREAL – Henri Audet, the elder statesman of the Canadian cable and broadcast pioneers who built Cogeco from a single broadcast TV station, died November 3. He was 94.
With an electrical engineering degree from MIT, Audet joined the CBC in 1949 when it was just a radio broadcaster beginning to explore television. He and a few others led the public broadcaster’s push into the new medium, which saw the first station go live in Toronto in 1952 – and two years later the first French-language CBC TV station in Montreal.
However, the CBC’s television coverage was very limited then and…
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GATINEAU – The CRTC is holding a public hearing on November 7, 2012, to consider three applications:
• Rogers Broadcasting's application to acquire the assets of the Montreal-based television station CJNT
• An application to operate a new over-the-air television station in Montreal that would be called International Channel/Canal International (ICI)
• CHMZ-FM Radio Limited's application to acquire the assets of the radio station CHMZ-FM Tofino. The Commission says it will also address past and current compliance of CHMZ-FM with respect to its regulations.
The hearing will be held in the Conference…
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TORONTO – Rogers Communications will be offering its fastest Internet speeds yet, up to 150 Mbps download speeds, through a DOCSIS 3.0 technology upgrade they call “re-speeding.”
"As part of our commitment to providing customers with what's next in online experiences, we've increased our internet speeds again," said John Boynton, executive vice-president marketing, chief marketing officer, Rogers Communications. "Canadians love the internet and spend more time online than any other country in the world. We continue to make significant network investments to deliver the fastest internet speeds available to the most homes."
Rogers says the…
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TORONTO – The Ontario Association of Broadcasters will be inducting two of the great entrepreneurs in Canadian history, Peter and Tony Viner, into the OAB Hall of Fame tomorrow at the Gala Awards Dinner following the Connections 2012 fall conference.
Peter, 67, helped the late Izzy Asper build Canwest Global into a multi-billion-dollar international media powerhouse before the company fell on hard, debt-burdened, times. Tony, 65, built Rogers Media from two Toronto radio stations (Ted Rogers’ famous first media asset, CHFI-FM, and CFTR-AM, now 680News) when he came on board in 1982 to a billion-dollar…
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TORONTO – Walletless transactions will become a reality in Canada in two weeks with CIBC and Rogers unveiling their digital transaction solution that turns smartphones into mobile credit cards. The joint mobile payment solution offers an app that will allow customers with NFC-enabled smartphones to tap them at checkouts to pay for purchases using the secure SIM card inside.
Forecasts for mobile commerce suggest that it will become a significant method of payment in just the next few years. By 2016, Technology Strategy International forecasts that almost 80% of the smartphones in Canada will be…
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OTTAWA – Bell is falling far behind schedule in rolling out broadband services to rural communities using public funds and will only have 12 Commission-approved communities completed by year’s end, not the 49 communities it forecast says the CRTC. The regulator is now demanding that Bell Canada and Bell Aliant submit quarterly reports on the status of their deferral account project to ensure it gets back on schedule in order to be completed as agreed by August, 2014.
In an August, 2010 decision regarding how Bell should dispose of the funds remaining in its deferral account the…
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