TORONTO – The cable telecommunications industry in Canada has a long and illustrious engineering history.
(This is an excerpt of a speech written and delivered by Cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien and Aurora Networks CTO Oleh Sniezko in presenting the first ever Young Canadian Engineering Professional of the Year Award at the SCTE Canadian Summit held Tuesday and Wednesday at the Toronto Congress Centre. Aurora was the sponsor of the award and Cartt.ca the media partner.)
Over its 57 years, Canadian engineers, technologists and technicians built and directed many industry firsts, whether it was microwave relay, fibre optic…
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TORONTO – Peer-to-peer file sharing is no longer the number one concern for cable company engineers managing their IP networks as web surfing – thanks to the growing popularity of streaming video – has taken over as the top consumer of bandwidth.
Shaw Cable’s director of Internet systems engineering, David Wodelet, during a session Tuesday morning on Internet capacity management at the SCTE Canadian Summit at the Toronto Congress Centre, noted that “P2P is on the decline… web traffic has now exceeded P2P,” thanks to the likes of YouTube, Google Video and myriad other sites where high quality video…
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WASHINGTON, DC – Two plenary sessions featuring high level cable industry technology and marketing executives will highlight The Cable Show ’09.
The technology session, called ‘Cable Technology and the Platform for Change’, will see senior technology and strategy executives from various cable companies, including Rogers’ chief strategy officer Michael Lee, share how they’re preparing their technology platforms to serve new consumer demands while leveraging existing investments in plant, performance and potential.
‘Welcome to the Jungle: Marketing to Win’, is the name of the marketing session which will focus on communicating to consumers cable’s value and evolving product in a highly…
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OTTAWA – Canadian wireless companies say they will be ready for the CRTC’s new deadline for the launch of phase two of wireless emergency 911 service.
The Commission said today the deadline for wireless carriers to upgrade their technology – so that people can more easily be found in an emergency – is February 1, 2010. A combination of GPS or radio triangulation will be deployed and the Commission has mandated the technology be precise enough to be able to say where a handset is, within a radius of 10 to 300 metres.
Right now, emergency operators rely on…
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GATINEAU – The CRTC will set a deadline of February 1, 2010 for a new wireless emergency 911 standard to be implemented by Canadian wireless carriers. The announcement is expected at 11 a.m. this morning.
Canada’s wireless e911 service is not as advanced as compared to the U.S. marketplace. In Canada, 911 operators who field an emergency call made from a cell phone normally must ask where the caller is. Of course, that’s a problem if the caller either can’t talk, or doesn’t know where they are.
Thanks to an FCC edict in the States, wireless carriers there already use…
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PETERBOROUGH, ON – Telecommunications supplier Capella has added Laura O’Hare to its sales team in the newly created role of director of product management.
O’Hare was previously at White Radio as national product development manager, and at Rogers Cable engineering. She is also chapter president of the Ontario Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers board of directors.
“Capella built its business on identifying innovative and high quality manufacturers and bringing them to market. We’re delighted that Laura has joined Capella’s team to continue this tradition,” said Capella’s president Norm Slater, in a press release announcing the appointment. “We have confidence…
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GATINEAU – London, Ontario will be getting a new FM radio station.
The CRTC has approved an application by Blackburn Radio Inc. for a station operating at 98.1 FM that will target adults aged 34-64 in the adult album alternative format.
It also approved the re-launch of Sound of Faith Broadcasting’s Christian music specialty station in that market, replacing its existing low-power FM radio station CHJX-FM.
Nine applications for new radio licenses were considered after the CRTC determined that the London radio market could support one new mainstream commercial radio station.
Blackburn, which currently operates radio stations in Chatham,…
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EXTON, PA and TORONTO – The inaugural Canadian Summit of The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) will be held in at the Toronto Congress Cente next week, February 3 – 4, 2009.
It is designed to facilitate the exchange of technical information specific to Canada among engineering professionals. Cartt.ca is the media partner for the event.
Speakers will include Dermot O’Carroll and Tony Faccia of Rogers Cable, Chris MacFarlane of Cogeco Cable, Dennis Steiger of Shaw Cablesytems, Pierre Roy Poretta of Videotron, Steve Irvine of EastLink, Preston Gilmer of Sigma Systems, Oleh Sneizko of Aurora Networks, Scott Atkinson of Shaw…
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I JUST FINISHED READING your e911 article and response from Rogers Communications. I find this interesting because I am a volunteer firefighter and EMS first responder in the small community of Delisle just 40 kms from Saskatoon.
I can speak to how things work in the (regional municipality) of Vanscoy and I suspect it works in a similar manner for other RM’s in the province. If you are in the RM of Vanscoy and you call 911, the operator will ask a few questions to determine the nature of the incident and your location. As soon as they understand…
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TORONTO – The general consensus has long been that in times of economic distress, staying home to watch TV takes precedence over heading to the mall or a movie, so a recession isn’t quite as hard on cable companies and channels, for example, as it is on companies in other sectors.
While this is the first painful recession of the new media age (when home entertainment options are now far more diverse), that cocooning reflex we seem to exhibit when under financial duress seems so far to be holding true and helping according to High Fidelity HDTV co-founder Ken…
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