TORONTO – Astral's The Movie Network is offering audiences the chance to sample some of its popular series for free via the on demand and on-line platforms of Rogers, Videotron, Cogeco and EastLink.
The offer, which will run from February 11 through February 26, will include HBO series like Luck, the new horseracing drama starring Dustin Hoffman; Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire; Showtime programming such as Dexter, Nurse Jackie, Californication, and House of Lies; Spartacus: Vengeance from Starz; and original series Call Me Fitz, Less Than Kind, Good Dog and Funny As Hell.
"We are thrilled to be working with…
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OTTAWA – Rogers Communications is fighting back against product performance claims contained in the country’s Competition Act, questioning whether the law violates its freedom of expression.
According to a report in the Montreal Gazette, Rogers has asked an Ontario court to strike down the law requiring a company to have "adequate and proper" tests of a product's performance before advertising claims about the product. It also is preparing to argue before the Ontario Superior Court that the weighty financial penalties that can be imposed on a company for making a false or misleading claim are unconstitutional.
The action stems from November…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has given Bell Media the green light to add a pair of new transmitters to its CTV Two station in Barrie, a move that was opposed by two of its own commissioners in addition to a host of competing broadcasters.
Bell Media asked to add two new digital transmitters to CKVR-DT Barrie to serve the areas of Burlington, Fonthill, Fort Erie, Hamilton, Niagara Falls, St. Catharines, Oakville and Welland, Ontario. Opposing interveners, which included Channel Zero, Rogers Broadcasting, CBC, and Shaw Communications, argued that approval of the applications would have a negative impact on other Canadian…
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TORONTO – Rogers’ Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless network is now available in more cities surrounding Montréal, including Laval, Terrebonne, Brossard, Longueuil and Vaudreuil, and will expand to more than 25 additional cities this year.
Rogers also said that it will add the Samsung Galaxy Note to its LTE devices in February. The all-in-one LTE tablet and smartphone hybrid has a 5.3-inch HD Super AMOLED touchscreen display, runs on Android OS 2.3, is made of tough Gorilla Glass, has an "S Pen" stylus pen to take notes, and a 1.5GHz dual-core processor. It also offers an eight megapixel camera that allows…
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TORONTO – Wind Mobile has taken issue with the wireless spectrum auction caps proposal put forward by Telus, saying there is nothing fair about it. “Caps are no different than an open auction,” Simon Lockie, chief regulatory officer at Wind, told Cartt.ca in an interview.
The fact that Telus is advocating for caps should speak volumes to their true position, Lockie says. Since the Big Three (Rogers, Bell and Telus) don’t really compete with each other and stand to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in enterprise value (based on analysis from the investment banking community) as a result of…
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MONTREAL – While its competitors in the telecom industry are becoming more vertically integrated, Cogeco president and CEO Louis Audet says his company is comfortable in its position as a mid-sized telecom and has no plans to copy companies like Bell and Rogers by acquiring TV specialty channels or building a wireless network.
Audet has a reason to be confident. Cogeco's first-quarter earnings, released Thursday morning before the annual shareholders' meetings of the company and subsidiary Cogeco Cable, shows its profit up 20% to $47.9 million from $39.8 million for the first quarter of last year,…
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TORONTO – Rogers Communications has upgraded two of its most popular high speed Internet plans to include faster download speeds and higher monthly data allowances.
The company’s ‘Express’ package will boost its download speeds from up to 12 Mbps to up to 18 Mbps and data allowances from 60 GB to 70 GB, while its ‘Extreme’ package will see download speeds increase from up to 24 Mbps to up to 28 Mbps and data allowance from 100 GB to 120 GB. The package prices will also jump by an extra two dollars per month to $48.99 and $61.99, respectively.
Rogers said…
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GATINEAU – CRTC vice-chairman, telecom, Len Katz, has been elected acting chairman of the CRTC, the Commission confirmed Wednesday morning.
He will remain as acting, or interim, chair until such time as the Government of Canada names a new chairperson. Katz has been serving as vice-chairman of telecommunications since October 2007, and was previously the executive director of broadcasting and telecommunications. Before joining the CRTC, Katz spent 30 years in the private sector as president and COO of Digimerge Technologies and president of Rogers Business Solutions, among other senior roles. (And Cartt.ca profiled him here).
Under the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission…
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TORONTO – Rogers Radio has begun streaming the Humble and Fred Radio.com podcasts across 19 of its station's websites and through its mobile app.
Humble and Fred Radio.com is an uncut, uncensored and irreverent daily podcast hosted by Canadian radio personalities “Humble” Howard Glassman and Fred Patterson (and Cartt.ca profiled the series’ debut last October here).
“We are very proud to partner with Humble and Fred and offer this unique, innovative show to our Rogers Radio listeners,” said Julie Adam, VP of programming for Rogers Radio, in Tuesday’s announcement. “It’s like having another Rogers radio station that lives solely in…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has sided with online gamers in their complaints against Rogers Communications’ network management policies.
The Commission’s Chief Compliance and Enforcement Officer Andrea Rosen told Rogers in a letter on Friday that based on preliminary evidence, its Internet throttling practices are in breach of the net neutrality rules within the Telecommunications Act. It also gave the company two weeks to either dispute the evidence or provide a plan to come into compliance with the Act.
“Based on the preliminary results of our ongoing investigation, Commission staff is of the belief that Rogers Communications Inc. applies a technical ITMP…
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