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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CALGARY – Rogers Cable and Yellow Pages Group are part of a pilot project with Calgary company Call Genie to test a voice-activated, business search feature available through the 411 directory assistance service offered by Rogers Home Phone.
In the test, Rogers’ wireline callers are given the option to find a business listing using the interactive Yellow Pages directory automated process. The majority of 411 callers use directory assistance to search for business listings. Most of those callers have a specific business name in mind, but may also be interested in other business listings within a particular geographic area….
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TORONTO – Rogers Digital will be the first carrier to offer MHD, a dedicated high-definition classics movie channel from Astral Media. MHD will offer select HD simulcasts of programming from The Movie Network’s classics movie channels Mpix and Mescape.
Programming on MHD consists of films five years or older ranging from Mpix’s suspense, thriller and action-packed movies to the quality drama and light-hearted entertainment found on Mescape. MHD is currently available at no additional cost in an uncut and commercial-free environment to Rogers Digital Cable subscribers in eastern Canada.
“As the first high-definition classics movie channel…
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TORONTO – NTV Canada has been added to Rogers Cable’s big list of multicultural programming.
For a limited time, Rogers Digital Cable customers can enjoy a free preview of NTV Canada on channel 634 in Ontario.
NTV Canada is a Russian-language channel which broadcasts original NTV programming from Moscow and Canada. The channel offers seven daily live news broadcasts from Russia, a variety of feature films, TV serials, popular game shows and analyses of Russian/European soccer as well as local Canadian news and programming of interest to Russian Canadians.
With the addition of NTV Canada, Rogers continues to offer…
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