TORONTO – Alliance Atlantis Communications Inc. last month launched three new video-on-demand (VOD) services on Rogers Cable.
The VOD channels for the specialty TV broadcaster’s HGTV, Food Network and National Geographic channels contain up to 40 hours of programming.
Shows on HGTV On Demand (channel 92) include Home to Stay, Design Inc., Designer Guys, Holmes on Homes and Neat, on Food Network On Demand (channel 93) include I Do Let’s Eat, Surreal Gourmet, Fixing Dinner, Sugar, Crash My Kitchen, and Thirsty Traveler and on National Geographic Channel On Demand (channel 94) include Deep Jungle, Demolition Dynasty, Seconds From Disaster,…
Continue Reading
AURORA, ON —York Region District School Board has signed a 10-year, $15-million deal with Rogers Business Solutions to provide an Internet network in all of its 179 elementary and secondary schools.
“This high capacity network is a long-term investment by the school board that will ensure that our students benefit from the most modern learning opportunities available today,” said York Region District School Board Chair Bill Crothers. “Rogers Business Solutions demonstrated that they understood our mission and our ‘anytime, anywhere access vision’. This technology will allow the board to continue to ensure that the base requirements for new technology…
Continue Reading
LONDON – Ed Jarmain, the man widely considered to be the first to bring cable television to Canada died yesterday. He was 99.
Born and raised in London, Ont., Jarmain originally ran his father’s dry cleaning business in the city in the 1930s through the ’60s. In the 1950s, however, as one of the first families in London with a TV set, he suffered through spotty reception from U.S. signals (there were no local broadcasters at the time). As an engineer, he thought there must be a better way to get these signals.
After reading about cable and then…
Continue Reading
LAS VEGAS – While there are a lot of new companies with nifty new products and services out there, what will carry the day are two plain old business benchmarks: execution and customer service.
In today’s closing session of the 2007 Cable Show, Cox Communications president Pat Esser said that most of what customers desire now is the same as what they wanted when he began in the cable industry in 1979: “They expect reliability and responsiveness,” he said, along with relevance. The key differentiation nowadays is the level of personalization those customers want.
“That’s the world we’re going…
Continue Reading
WINNIPEG – MTS Allstream recorded double-digit customer and revenue growth in its wireless, high-speed Internet, digital TV and converged IP services in the first quarter ended March 31, according to financial results released May 8.
But the company had 3,000 fewer residential phone lines as continued competitive pressures impacted all lines of business related to MTS Allstream’s traditional legacy services in the quarter with customers migrating to newer IP-based growth services.
Although the number of residential phone lines was down 3,000 lines in the first quarter of 2007, the figure is about half the loss recorded in the same quarter of 2006. The…
Continue Reading
TORONTO – Rogers Wireless on Tuesday launched the Nokia 6682RVI, a cellphone that converts displayed text on the handset into speech so it can be used by people with a visual impairment.
Nuance TALKS(TM) software from Nuance Communications converts the phone’s menus, instructions and content displayed on the screen into audio output through its internal speaker, or an optional wired or Bluetooth headset.
The phone application, available in English and French, allows users to send and receive emails and text messages with audio feedback, to customize phone settings and profiles, to manage call logs and personal phone directory, to…
Continue Reading
VERNON, BC – The Jim Pattison Broadcast Group has agreed to buy the FM radio station CKIZ-FM (KISS-FM) that services this community located north of Kelowna, BC from Rogers Broadcasting. Financial details of the transaction, which is still subject to CRTC approval, were not released.
“We are great believers in the growth of prospects of BC’s interior, especially in the Okanagan Valley,” said Jim Pattison Broadcast Group President Rick Arnish. “We consider this to be an important acquisition – one that expands our presence in the north Okanagan and will complement our two radio stations located in Kelowna and…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – The CRTC is asking if it should eliminate winback rules for incumbent cablecos with 6,000 or more subscribers serving multiple-unit dwellings (MUD).
Broadcasting Public Notice 2007-48 was issued Tuesday following a request last month from Rogers Cable Communications Inc. for the elimination of the remaining winback restrictions. The cableco argued the imposition of winback rules on the cable industry creates an asymmetry in the broadcasting system that protects telephone companies entering the TV distribution business and the country’s two satellite TV distributors from the normal workings of a competitive market.
Rogers noted that a similar winback restriction…
Continue Reading
HALIFAX – If you thought Bragg Communications, parent company of EastLink, was content with being the dominant cable operator in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island – not to mention a painful, persistent competitive thorn in Bell Aliant’s side, you’d be wrong.
On Friday, Bragg more than doubled its size by announcing it has signed a purchase agreement with Persona Communications. The combined company – when you add in its impending purchase of Amtelecom – will have close to half a million basic cable subscribers (260,000 from Persona added to EastLink’s approximate 230,000).
The agreement to purchase the shares…
Continue Reading
TORONTO – Most Rogers Wireless customers still on its old TDMA/analogue network have already made the upgrade to a new handset and are now on the company’s GSM net, the company announced today. But there are still a few stragglers.
Rogers issued a release to remind the rest that their old phones won’t work come June 1.
On January 10, 2007, Rogers announced that it would be "turning down" its older TDMA and analog networks effective May 31, 2007 and move the remaining customers on these older networks onto its advanced GSM network.
TDMA and analogue customers can keep…
Continue Reading
