TORONTO – Rogers Communications announced Monday the new Rogers red Mastercard offering customers cash back rewards and lower monthly payments on new phones.
“With the Rogers red credit card, customers can buy the latest phone with no mobile contract and 0% financing over 48 months on an Equal Payment Plan. This cuts monthly device payments by up to half, compared to 24-month financing at full price. Rogers is the only wireless provider that offers this affordability and flexibility,” reads a Rogers press release.
Starting Sept. 21, the new Rogers red Mastercard, which…
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By Ahmad Hathout
TORONTO – Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne announced Monday that all carriers will need to provide service to their customers on Rogers’s wireless network in Toronto’s subway system by October 3.
All carriers will need to provide service within three weeks from Monday and will have to enter commercial agreements within the next 100 days – or December 20. Those stipulations, which will apply to Bell, Quebecor’s Freedom and Telus, are as of Monday conditions of those carriers owning spectrum, the technology powering wireless communications.
Government officials said on a technical briefing with media Monday that carriers will need to…
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By Ahmad Hathout
CALGARY – Calgary has issued a notice to the public Thursday indicating its interest in entering a contract with Rogers to include a cohort of residents in the cable company’s Connected for Success low-income services program.
The pilot agreement would involve providing the city’s Fair Entry-eligible households with access to price-reduced services from Rogers, including internet, TV or wireless, for one year with an option to extend into the long term.
The city’s Fair Entry program does an income and residency assessment for residents to assess their eligibility for fee-reduced programs, which currently include property tax,…
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Quebecor CEO asks, ‘Should we be surprised…?’
By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Bell has sent a letter to the Federal Court of Appeal backing Rogers’s appeal of the CRTC’s decision to choose Quebecor’s price to access the cable company’s national wireless network.
“The proposed appeal raises crucial issues relating to the ‘just and reasonable’ standard pursuant to which the CRTC sets the rates for a wide range of regulated telecommunications services, including the facilities-based MVNO access service mandated by the CRTC in 2021,” Bell, which isn’t a party to the matter, said in a letter dated August 31.
“These issues include the ability…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has denied Tuesday an application requesting that the regulator increase the price of the basic television package from $25 to $28 per month and to index the price to inflation.
The application, filed by Bell, Cogeco, Eastlink and SaskTel, was denied on the basis that there was insufficient evidence provided to suggest that the $25 price was no longer economically viable for the providers, the regulator said, noting the “strength of the BDU industry.”
Ironically, the CRTC argued inflation actually provides more justification for a price cap on the cost of the mandatory carriage package because consumers…
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By Mark Goldberg, a telecommunications consultant
An opinion piece in Monday’s Globe and Mail included a line that caught my eye. “A 2022 study found that Canada’s wireless rates were the second most expensive in the world – seven times more expensive than Australia, 25 times more expensive than France and Ireland and 1,000 times more expensive than Finland.”
Canadians complain about mobile prices, but does anyone in Canada actually believe that they are paying one thousand times more than what they would pay in Finland?
In fact, we don’t.
So how did the author, a university professor and academic…
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OTTAWA – The government of Canada said Tuesday it is providing almost $1.2 million in federal funding through the Universal Broadband Fund for Rogers Communications to bring high-speed internet access to more than 1,600 homes — including over 440 Indigenous households — in 16 rural and remote communities on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia.
The communities to benefit from the fibre broadband project include Baddeck, Barra Head, Big Baddeck, Chapel Island (Potlotek First Nation), Grande Greve, Lynche River, Middle River, Nyanza, River Bourgeois, River Tillard, Sampsonville, Soldiers Cove, South Side of Baddeck River, St. Patricks…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC approved an application by Natyf TV forcing broadcasters in Quebec to carry its channel on basic TV packages for five years.
The regulator approved a monthly wholesale cost per subscriber to carry the channel of 12 cents for the term, which will run from September 1 this year to August 31, 2028.
The channel, owned by Melkisedek Media Inc., caters to Francophone “racialized” communities in the province, “with the aim of reflecting those communities’ interests and encouraging a new group of Francophone creators from ethnocultural communities,” the CRTC said. The programming is entirely broadcast in French and…
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OTTAWA – The Competition Tribunal has ordered the Commissioner of Competition to pay Rogers and Shaw a little more than $9.7 million and $3.2 million, respectively, to compensate for their costs associated with the Competition Bureau’s legal challenge last year of the companies’ merger.
In a decision filed Tuesday, the Tribunal says Rogers is to be paid $414,720 for counsel fees and $9,298,152.58 as reimbursement for reasonable disbursements, plus any applicable HST. Shaw is to receive $416,187 for legal costs and $2,836,920.30 to compensate for reasonable disbursements, plus applicable HST.
Quebecor’s Videotron,…
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Iristel urges PM to do something about withheld CRA funds affecting its response
By Ahmad Hathout
YELLOWKNIFE, NWT – Wildfires ravaging parts of the Northwest Territories are causing widespread devastation to homes, families and telecommunications networks, forcing operators to install backup systems and carefully enter repair territory as critical infrastructure burns.
Cartt asked some of the primary providers in the region to provide their perspectives on how they’re dealing with the wildfires that have burned many millions of hectares of land. It is Canada’s worst wildfire season ever, with more fires expected to come this fall.
Bell subsidiary Northwestel told us the company…
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