TORONTO – Rogers Communications announced Tuesday the launch of its new Connected for Success 5G Mobile Plan, available to eligible low-income Canadians for $25 per month.
The new plan offers 3 GB of 5G data with no overage charges and a no-cost Samsung Galaxy A14 or Motorola G 5G smartphone with financing when eligible subscribers keep their phone for a 24-month term.
Canadians eligible for the plan include people receiving provincial income support or disability benefits, seniors receiving the federal Guaranteed Income Supplement, rent-geared-to-income tenants of a non-profit housing partner organization, recipients of…
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By Ahmad Hathout
TORONTO – The CRTC approved Monday a limited and temporary regime in which competitors can force negotiations for access the last mile fibre services under the current aggregated regime.
The regime will be narrowed to the incumbent telephone companies, who will be required within six months to provide wholesale access to their fibre-to-the-premises networks in Ontario and Quebec, noting there is increasing demand there for faster speeds that are provided by a direct fibre line to homes and businesses.
The CRTC reasoned that the fibre builds of the cable companies, which have largely relied on hybrid fibre-coax builds, are…
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By Doug Barrett, adjunct professor in the Arts, Media & Entertainment MBA Program at the Schulich School of Business. From 2004 to 2008 he was the chair of the Canadian Television Fund
Phil Lind was an unlikely hero, but a genuine one. Since his passing, much has been written about his decades’ – long service to Rogers Communications, his role as consiglieri to Ted Rogers, his determined recovery from a major stroke in his mid-fifties, his art collection, and his love of the Yukon.
However, scant attention has been paid to what I think is his greatest accomplishment: he was the…
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By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Rogers is arguing that the practice of bulk internet billing deals with residential buildings, which it says has been promoted by the CRTC, does not hamper competition, and in fact provides benefits that push forward the policies promoted by the commission.
Fibre service provider Beanfield filed a Part 1 application in late September asking the CRTC to prohibit Rogers from signing those bulk service agreements because it allegedly limits competition. Beanfield’s reasoning is that the multi-year contracts Rogers and others sign with building developers to provide default internet service disincentivizes switching service providers…
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MONTREAL – Telus, Montreal-based TerreStar Solutions (operating as Strigo) and U.S.-based Skylo announced Wednesday they have successfully used satellite connectivity to conduct voice calls and send text messages between smartphones as well as connect to IoT devices.
The trial in October combined non-terrestrial network (NTN) service provider Skylo’s software-defined network connectivity platform, TerreStar’s mobile satellite spectrum and service platform that covers most of Canada, and Telus’s network-building expertise, according to a press release. The trial was successful in making direct connections using TerreStar’s existing Echostar T1 geostationary satellite, the release says.
“This…
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By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – A coalition of public interest groups has asked the CRTC on Friday to consider a financial plan for a fund that bankrolls their involvement in broadcasting hearings.
Public interest participation in those hearings is funded through a not-for-profit organization known as the Broadcasting Participation Fund (BPF), which spawned out of Bell’s purchase of CTV network assets in 2011. The problem for the fund, according to its proponents, is that it relies on money, called tangible benefits, that only comes as a condition of approving broadcasting acquisitions that are now uncommon.
Interest groups have said the fund is…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC said in a letter Monday it expects wireless internet service providers, including current holdouts Bell, Rogers, Telus and Xplore, to participate in the commission’s data project with Innovation Canada to track fixed wireless internet performance.
The CRTC has previously asked wireless ISPs to contact their subscribers about participating in the third phase of its Measuring Broadband Canada project, which seeks to better understand how Canadians subscribing to fixed wireless internet services with the federal objective speeds of 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps (or faster) upload are experiencing internet performance in their…
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By Connie Thiessen
Rogers Sports & Media is shuttering its CityNews radio operations in Ottawa, citing low audiences, revenue declines and a restrictive regulatory environment for AM radio.
CityNews will go off the air on both the AM and FM band at 1 p.m. ET today with a Rogers Sports & Media spokesperson telling Broadcast Dialogue that resulting layoffs were in the single digits.
The company will return the licence for 1310 (CIWW-AM) to the CRTC, and restore its Country format station to 101.1 on the dial, following a series of December 2020 moves that saw Country 92.3 debut on CJET-FM in…
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By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – The CRTC on Thursday is proposing to relax Corus Entertainment’s regulatory obligations on an “exceptional basis,” as the pure-play media company saw a dramatic decline in its financials over the year.
Corus sent an application to the regulator last Wednesday stating that high inflation, its sub-$1 share price, and its debt-to-liquid cash ratio reaching “unacceptable levels” after the content company saw a 61 per cent free cash decline over the previous year have put it in a precarious position with rapidly declining profitability. The company said it has had to halve its dividend since its November…
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MONTREAL – Quebecor is patting itself on the back as Statistics Canada’s latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) report, released Tuesday, indicates cellular phone service prices have fallen considerably since this time last year.
In a press release distributed Tuesday afternoon, Quebecor claims “the decisive factor in the decline of Canadian wireless service prices shown this morning in Statistics Canada’s monthly Consumer Price Index (CPI) report is increased competition from Videotron, Fizz and Freedom Mobile.”
Quebecor notes in its release the overall CPI rose 3.8 per cent on a year-over-year basis between September 2022…
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