LONDON, U.K. – Corus Entertainment’s production division Nelvana today announced a new video on demand agreement with British Telecommunications.
Coming on the heels of recent North American partnerships with Comcast and Rogers (along with Corus’ preschool broadcaster Treehouse), this deal widens the scope of Nelvana’s on-demand initiatives to include Europe.
Maggie and the Ferocious Beast (eps 1-15), Little Bear (eps 1-15), Babar (eps 1-15), Max & Ruby (eps 1-15) and The Fairly OddParents (eps 1-15) will be among the initial family entertainment programs Nelvana will make available to BT’s next-generation broadband IPTV offering, slated to launch by late summer/fall…
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KITCHENER – With topics such as the “mapping of advanced cable services (digital video, voice and data) to the seven-layer OSI model in order to decipher the functionality associated with each layer,” the next meeting of the Ontario chapter of the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers looks to be a good one.
To be held February 2, 2006 at Bingemans Centre in Kitchener, “attendees will gain a better understanding of what OSI layers cable technicians can readily access and those levels they will be directly responsible for. The benefit of this program will be a better understanding of network…
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THE PRINCIPAL THEMES FOR TODAY were around the migration to an all digital IP distribution (IPTV like) and enabling the convergence of wireless with fixed service delivery.
Morning sessions moderated by Ken Wright CTO C-COR presented different approaches for reclaiming the cable systems distribution bandwidth and preparing it for a more unicast (enabling the distribution of a unique service to a single customer on the customer’s request) configuration. The various speakers went through alternate scenarios the cable system operators might take to evolve the current HFC analog and MPEG2 QAM digital service distribution architecture to a fully IP centric…
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THE SEMINARS KICKED OFF with the very articulate futurist Jim Carroll, an international expert on trends and innovation and an "informed" Rogers customer.
His view is convergence was talked about during the 1990s but is now for real. He likened "convergence" to "teenage sex" — "not sure what it is but everyone says they are doing it". Today he says service providers are facing a completely different customer. Today’s younger user of communications and media is tomorrows savvy customer who will be less loyal, far more demanding and expects choice.
Rate of change of services and technology today and moving…
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TORONTO – The traffic dogfight begins Monday in the skies over Toronto.
AM 640 Toronto (Corus) will challenge 680News’ (Rogers) “traffic on the ones” for the title as the go-to place on the dial for constant traffic updates.
640’s will instead be “traffic on the nines” every ten minutes – either two minutes sooner, or eight minutes later, depending on your point of view. 640 is using a brand new Robinson R44 News Copter (pictured) during morning and afternoon drive (680 uses a plane). The new Corus whirlybird flies at speeds in excess of 120 mph, “enabling…
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TORONTO – With 11 days left in the campaign, Rogers Cable is adding more and more content to Election on Demand 2006.
As reported in December, Rogers decided to deploy its video on demand servers in a neat way not seen before, adding video content from CPAC, Rogers Television and candidates themselves that digital cable customers can call up and watch whenever they want.
The service is free to Rogers Digital Cable customers on channel 100.
"In battleground Ontario, the demand for election-related information has been overwhelming," says David Purdy, vice president and general manager of television for Rogers…
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DISCUSSION WAS RIFE TUESDAY NIGHT at Opening Reception about Comcast reorganization and departure of their video guru Kip Compton to a position at Cisco.
Big loss for Comcast. The re-org direction is much like the recent Rogers Communications re-org in that its focused on bring voice, data, video and emerging wireless into one converged operation.
Also it seems the corporation’s direction for 2006 is to be more inward-focused in improving operations and hence margins etc. rather than acquisitions. Also, the engineers have been given aggressive targets for VOIP rollout during 2006 and it appears that will be…
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VANCOUVER – Shaw Communications CEO Jim Shaw said today that no matter what the rumor mill might say, the company is not for sale.
When asked specifically if the company is for sale and if Bell Canada is asking to buy, Shaw (left) said: “Lots of people have rumored that. The family has no interest in selling it, so we don’t really have any comment because it’s not for sale.”
Okay, but what about Star Choice. Its marketing was very low-key heading into Christmas compared to its competitors, especially satellite compatriot Bell ExpressVu?
Shaw: “(Star…
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TORONTO – Registrations for the 2006 Canadian Telecom Summit are tracking well ahead of last year’s sell-out crowd.
Delegates will be able to join 500 of their colleagues to listen to executive presentations from around the world from those who have the greatest influence on the direction of Canadian telecom.
For three full days, June 12 to 14, to the Canadian Telecom Summit will deliver thought-provoking insight from the prime movers of the industry such as Telus CEO Darren Entwistle, Vonage chairman Jeffrey Citron, IBM Canada president Dan Fortin, Allstream president John MacDonald, Ericsson CEO Mark Henderson, Mitel chairman…
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TORONTO – Preliminary subscriber data shows that Rogers Wireless added fewer customers in the fourth quarter of 2005 as compared to ’04, but according to a senior executive, that’s just how they wanted it.
The country’s largest wireless carrier added 216,300 net customers in the last three months of 2005, a drop from Q4 ’04 when it added 262,900 subscribers. Rogers Wireless now has 6.2 million customers
However, a dampening on growth was more or less the company’s strategy, said John Gossling, vice-president, financial operations, at Monday’s Citigroup 16th Annual Media and Telecom Conference in Phoenix, Ariz. “Not to…
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