OTTAWA – Rogers wants a French language sports channel, while Stingray Digital Group hopes to add to its musical collection with a new channel called Concert TV, according to 36 new broadcasting applications made public by the CRTC on Wednesday.
Sports d’intérêt général de Rogers, will be, as the name suggests, a national, general-interest French-language Category 2 channel, according to the application. Stingray’s Concert TV would be devoted to contemporary and classical music concerts from a wide variety of music genres offered in SD, HD and 3-D, once readily available.
Other applications of interest include one from FreeHD Canada for…
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THUNDER BAY – Add Tbaytel to the list of IPTV providers who credit the Microsoft Mediaroom platform for smoothing the way for the rollout of video services.
After selecting the Calix B6 Ethernet Service Access Node (ESAN) for the launch of its advanced IPTV services to residential subscribers in Thunder Bay, Canada’s largest independent telco added Microsoft Mediaroom-powered TV services to its list of services last November by leveraging VDSL2 and Active Ethernet fibre access technology.
Tbaytel president and CEO Don Campbell told Cartt.ca that the VDSL2 multi-year deployment is well underway, but that it will still take “a couple of…
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TORONTO – Canada’s broadcasters and telcos are rumoured to top the list of suitors interested in acquiring the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan’s majority stake in Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment.
The OTTP confirmed Saturday that it will “explore the possibility of selling” its 66% majority share of the sports and entertainment giant which reportedly includes more than a billion dollars worth of assets ranging from Air Canada Centre to the Toronto Maple Leafs to sports channels Leafs TV, NBA TV Canada and Gol TV.
The Toronto Star published a report last December claiming that Rogers Communications was in talks to buy the…
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TORONTO – Rogers has agreed to purchase for cancellation 3,200,000 of its outstanding Class B non-voting shares for an aggregate purchase price of $100,231,680, which it says is at a discount to the current market price of the Class B shares.
The transaction represents approximately 0.73% of the Class B shares outstanding at February 28, 2011.
Pursuant to a private agreement between Rogers and an arm’s-length third party seller, the purchase was made under an issuer bid exemption order issued by the Ontario Securities Commission.
www.rogers.com
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CTAM Canada is inviting members to the Rogers Centre in Toronto to see MLB’s the Toronto Blue Jays host the New York Yankees on April 19, 2011.
Please save the date – registration and event details will follow soon.
www.ctam.ca
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TORONTO and VANCOUVER – Rogers and Telus were quick to respond to Friday’s devastating earthquake in Japan.
Rogers launched a text-to-donate campaign on Friday afternoon whereby Rogers and Fido wireless customers can text ASIA to 30333 to donate $5 to earthquake relief efforts. There are no additional charges for these texts, and 100% of all donations will go to the Canadian Red Cross Japan Earthquake/Asia-Pacific Tsunami fund.
To help customers stay up-to-date on news and information from Japan, Rogers is making TV Japan available in free preview on Channel 829 to all of its digital cable customers in Ontario.
Telus pledged to…
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TORONTO – Money worries and digital strategies seem to be the key business issues keeping radio industry honchos awake at night, judging by their comments during a special radio exec panel session at the annual Canadian Music Week convention held in Toronto last week.
“Our company is in a tremendous growth pattern right now, but I worry about 2008 happening again,” said Christopher Grossman, owner and president of Haliburton Broadcasting Group. Haliburton owns radio stations in 18 small markets in central and northern Ontario, with expansion into two more communities expected soon. “I worry about what would happen if…
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TORONTO – Rogers Communications said Friday that it is launching Canada’s first Wi-Fi voice service for smart phones.
Based on Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA), ‘Wi-Fi Calling for Business’ will allow customers to place mobile calls from their smart phones over Wi-Fi networks registered on their devices. Starting at $10 per month as an add-on to existing business voice plans, Rogers said that calls made over the Wi-Fi network won’t count towards monthly voice plan minutes, and are automatically transferred to the Rogers 3G wireless network when the caller leaves the Wi-Fi coverage area.
"Our business customers are telling us they need flexible…
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EXTON, PA – This year’s SCTE Canadian Summit attracted approximately 700 attendees, including an increased number of representatives from countries beyond North America, plus 10 first-time vendor exhibitors, organizers said Friday.
Kicking off with a keynote address by Comcast EVP and CTO Tony Werner, the two-day event featured a sweeping look at what is on the horizon for the industry. Next-generation panels addressed video architectures, access platforms, and provisioning and management, while other presentations targeted topics like business services, fibre-to-the-home, home networking and gateways, optimizing upstream capacity, and the coming transition to IPv6.
“SCTE Canadian Summit continues to evolve as a focal…
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TORONTO – Despite attempts to smooth over their differences, Comcast and Time Warner Cable appear at least somewhat at odds over a proposed next-generation architecture for the cable industry.
Hints about potentially key technical differences between Time Warner’s new convergence edge project and a similar project pioneered by Comcast kept cropping up at the SCTE Canadian Summit here the past two days. Although cable executives tried to downplay any differences between the two initiatives, it appears the two biggest U.S. MSOs may be charting somewhat divergent paths on the new architecture, frustrating the original goals of cable technologists, aggravating…
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