GATINEAU – The CRTC on Friday announced that it’s renewing the transitional digital radio licences for another 12 months for some 73 stations in large centres across Canada.
The commission is extending the licence terms from Sept. 1, 2006 to Aug. 31, 2007, to buy time while it develops its new commercial radio policy, following its extensive public hearing held last month in Gatineau, and while it makes changes to its transitional digital radio policy, introduced in 1995.
The licences allow existing stations to operate a digital audio broadcasting signal. Of the 73 licences, 20 are not yet on…
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TORONTO – There’s no business like show business, as meteorologist Harold Hosein has found out. The 17-year veteran weatherman on Toronto’s Citytv told The Sun that he was fired with no reason last weekend.
A Citytv spokesperson told cartt.ca in an email that “Harold is no longer with us. He has decided to move on. He is launching a new business venture in the fall.”
According to the Sun report, Hosein has no plans to start his own business. "I didn’t leave, I was pushed out," he is quoted as saying.
The 66-year-old was apparently shoved aside…
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TORONTO – Rogers Cable is launching the Rogers Yahoo! portable Internet service for wireless access in 20 cities across Canada.
The service is plug and play, requiring a specially designed modem to be connected to a computer and a power source. It uses wireless technology to transmit signals to and from the special modem, without phone or cable lines.
It offers download speeds of up to 1.5 mbps, and upload speeds of 256 kbps, which is up to 25 times faster than dial-up Internet service, Rogers says.
It uses a non line-of-sight wireless broadband network currently available in Greater Vancouver…
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TORONTO – Sports broadcaster James Cybulski will be joining TSN as a Toronto reporter on SportsCentre, starting July 1. He’ll be covering major sports stories in city, including the Toronto Maple Leafs, Raptors, Blue Jays, and Argonauts, as well as national and international sporting events.
Cybulski had spent the past eight years as a reporter at The Score. He’s also worked at several Ottawa area radio stations, hosted a weekly show about the Ottawa Senators on Rogers Television, and was the public address announcer at Ottawa 67’s games. He’s covered two Olympic Games, three IIHF World Junior Championships, four…
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TORONTO – JACK FM in Toronto will be participating in the city’s annual Pride Parade this Sunday as a “major” radio sponsor of the 2006 Pride celebrations.
The station will have its special events vehicle, mascot, and representatives in the parade. It will also have a booth on Church Street in the heart of the gay village with JACK reps handing out free limited edition JACK slinkies to the first 5,000 people to visit the booth featuring a rainbow logo, the international symbol of gay support.
“We’re proud to support the gay community and show our support of Pride…
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EVERY VOICE OVER IP CALL that is routed through the PSTN is a lost opportunity, says Dr. Baruch Sterman, CEO of Kayote Networks, a company which can provide and operate a complete VOIP system for any size broadband operator.
Cable companies and other VOIP companies should be peering, he says, working together to make sure that calls placed on a cable system, for example, are routed over IP from cable company to cable company. Not only will it save money, but it will boost the feature set.
Every call that hits the PSTN will have features VOIP providers would…
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GATINEAU – Bell Canada has applied to the CRTC to be allowed to carry one or both of Canada’s satellite radio subscription services on its cable BDUs serving parts of Ontario and Quebec.
Bell has two regional Class 1 digital licences, serving Toronto, Hamilton/Niagara, Oshawa, Kitchener, London, Windsor, Ottawa, and the surrounding areas, and one serving Montreal, Gatineau, Sherbrooke, Quebec City, and the surrounding areas. The Ontario BDU will roll out starting in Toronto later this year, while the Quebec service is already operating in parts of Montreal, the company said in its application. Bell wants to be able…
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TORONTO – It’s fitting that a company so committed to technology has commissioned an electronic work of art. Rogers Communications has unveiled a piece of public art at its downtown Toronto building on Bloor near Jarvis.
Created by British artist Julian Opie, “People Walking 2006” is a huge flatscreen, measuring 10 feet by 6 feet, using tens of thousands of tiny LED lights that form life-sized electronic stick figure drawings that seem to walk. There are nine figures, male and female, based on the artist’s line drawings of actual people, whose patterns of movement are generated at random. It is…
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TORONTO – Rogers Cable is offering its high-speed Internet service to customers in Vancouver and southern Ontario who are outside their cabled areas.
Customers in Greater Vancouver and Ontario communities including St. Catharines, Hamilton, Burlington, and Oakville will get the Rogers Yahoo! Hi-Speed Internet at three levels of service, starting from $24.95 a month. The Internet service is available outside of Rogers Cable areas only when customers sign up for the Home Phone service, which ranges from $29.95 to $46.95 a month.
"Customers now have an alternative choice for their high speed Internet connection," said Terry Canning, Vice-President and…
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IF RHETORIC AND HYPERBOLE were gasoline, a single spark would have razed the entire Toronto Congress Centre this week.
The speeches from Bell Canada Enterprises CEO Michael Sabia and Telus CEO Darren Entwistle at this week’s excellent Canadian Telecom Summit – as well as comments from a few others who work under them – suggest that not only are the communications of all Canadians utterly crippled by wacky regulation, but that our CRTC stands in the way of all Canuck creativity, innovation and productivity.
It’s an absurd notion, really. But it’s one much of the nation’s consumer media has…
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