OTTAWA – The CRTC has dismissed complaints from Wind Mobile regarding its roaming arrangements with Rogers.
The wireless newcomer accused Rogers of undue preference over its handling of call transitions, known as handoffs, in a complaint last October. As Cartt.ca reported, Wind alleged that Rogers provided seamless (soft) handoffs for its own discount Chatr brand, while not doing the same for Wind, meaning that its customers experienced dropped calls when moving out of a Wind network zone and into a Rogers area.
The Commission said Friday that the roaming agreement negotiated between Wind and Rogers does not include seamless…
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TORONTO – Making a passionate case for greater government support of wireless competition, Globalive Group Chairman Anthony Lacavera lambasted the nation’s three incumbent mobile providers, called for a full set-aside of 700 MHz spectrum for newer entrants and urged that the government ease its current restrictions on foreign investment in Canadian telecom providers.
In a wide-ranging keynote at the Canadian Telecom Summit here Thursday morning, Lacavera lit into Rogers Communications, Bell Canada and Telus for raising legal and regulatory challenges to Globalive’s entry into the Canadian market because of its international investors (wireless giant Orascom). Further, he knocked Rogers,…
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TORONTO – It was no surprise when the last member of the Canadian wireless triumvirate to address this week’s Canadian Telecom Summit made his pitch for an open auction the next time wireless spectrum goes on the block.
As George Cope, president and CEO of BCE and Bell Canada, put it during his luncheon keynote address on the final day of the Telecom Summit: why would the Canadian government put a spectrum auction process in place that would prevent one of the big three incumbent wireless carriers from participating fully in the 700MHz spectrum auction (expected in late 2012)?…
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TORONTO – It’s a message the entrenched telecom incumbents have been hammering home all three days of the 2011 Canadian Telecom Summit: Don’t hate us because we’re beautiful.
Okay, maybe “beautiful” is kind of a stretch, but executives from Bell Canada, Rogers and Telus are dying to make it clear to anyone who’ll listen that while they do have millions of subscribers and excellent profits, they have also been the ones who have taken most of the risks on wireless and other telecom investment in Canada – so how can that mean rules have to be built (like those to…
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TORONTO – Canadians are changing the way they consume Internet TV services now that they are connecting the Internet to their television sets, according to a new study from the Media Technology Monitor.
The report, The Rise of Netflix and How the Internet TV Market Has Changed, examines the shifts in the consumption of Internet TV plus the company that best symbolizes this change: Netflix. It predicts that with the underlying technologies to watch the Internet on a TV set already in many Canadian homes (e.g. broadband and a game console), the conditions are ripe for this consumer trend to spread rapidly.
Among…
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HALIFAX – Rogers will sink $80 million into its wireless voice and data network in the Maritimes in an effort to outpace rivals like EastLink and Bell Aliant.
The two year project, which will begin this month, will provide Rogers’ 4G HSPA+ coverage to almost one million more people across Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, to cover 94% of the Maritime population. Customers will also benefit from faster data speeds, stronger signal strength, and use the devices such as Android, iPhone, BlackBerry and tablets, the company said Thursday.
"Maritimers told us they wanted better coverage, faster speeds and a greater…
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I SHOULD BE FIRED as moderator. It’s as simple as that.
As referee of the lively Canadian Telecom Summit “Regulatory Blockbuster” panel in Toronto Wednesday, I accepted questions from the floor, via text and on Twitter while Ed Antecol (Globalive), Mirko Bibic (Bell), Ken Engelhart (Rogers), John Lawford (PIAC), Chris Peirce (MTS Allstream) and Michael Hennessy (Telus) lobbed verbal brickbats at each other.
How great would it have been if, while these regulatory lawyers were hurling oral grenades, the chairman of the CRTC, Konrad von Finckenstein, were to ask them a question? Turns out he did, on Twitter. And I missed it as…
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TORONTO – With the broadband market still growing briskly and shifting drastically in the direction of data and video applications, telecom service providers and equipment suppliers are scrambling desperately to keep up with the changes and find more spectrum to use.
That was the consensus that emerged from a panel discussion at the Canadian Telecom Summit earlier this week. Panelists addressed how the broadband market is changing and how they are aiming to meet its swiftly changing needs, particularly on the wireless side.
“We’re all in a race to catch up with consumer demand,” said Dean Brenner, vice-president of government affairs…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Canada’s television services are back in business. CRTC figures released Thursday in a press release, (based largely on data from individual companies which we actually broke down here and here way back in January), show that the return of the advertising market translated into some, albeit modest, profits at conventional broadcasters, though the country’s specialty and pay broadcasters fared better.
According to the Commission’s count, revenue at the country’s private conventional television climbed 9% to approximately $2.15 billion in 2010 broadcast year, while expenses increased 1.7%. This resulted in profits before interest and taxes (PBIT) rebounding from a deficit of $116.6 million in…
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Perry Hoffman
OTTAWA – Bell Canada says it’s patently wrong for Rogers Communications to suggest that the CRTC can adopt a competitive bidding process for the rights to roll out broadband networks in Bell’s deferral account communities and not experience any further delays.
In its April 18 comments, Bell highlights where the delays would come from. First, if the CRTC opted for an auction now, it would have to conduct another public consultation to determine the auction framework. “Based on prior experience, this, in and of itself, would be a very lengthy exercise which would involve many parties and competing…
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