TORONTO – We’ve seen e-commerce, t-commerce and plain old commerce, but thanks to an intiative by the country’s big three wireless operators, we’re about to see m-commerce.
Bell Mobility, Rogers Wireless and Telus Mobility, today announced the launch of Wireless Payment Services. The jointly-owned venture “will act as a mobile commerce, or m-commerce, gateway, facilitating secure wireless payment transactions while standardizing the user experience across Canadian wireless providers, devices and payment mechanisms,” says today’s press release.
"With anytime, anywhere payments representing the next frontier of wireless service, Wireless Payment Services’ mandate is to develop standardized, secure and easy-to-use mobile…
Continue Reading
WINNIPEG – The CAB ended its two-day conference with a rocking mini-concert put on by Canadian music legends Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman.
After hearing Doc Walker and Eagle & Hawk (in between awards, the winners of which are outlined below) Cummings and Bachman (The Guess Who, BTO, etc.), Winnipeg natives who were inducted into the CAB Hall of Fame on Tuesday, played a four-song set and were coaxed into an encore, too.
How many times has your station played these favourites, which Cummings (on the piano, flute and vocals) and Bachman (on guitar and vocals) performed as a…
Continue Reading
WINNIPEG – It’s still early days for high definition in Canada but with costs for broadcast equipment and the sets themselves coming down, it won’t be early for long.
Randall Dark, one of the speakers at the HDTV session Tuesday at the Canadian Association of Broadcasters annual convention in Winnipeg, runs HD Vision Studios and says he sees no reason why the whole industry can’t more quickly move into HD.
In the U.S., where he’s based, it’s taken off “like a rocket ship,” and if broadcasters and the production industry don’t move on HD, “you will lose market share,”…
Continue Reading
TORONTO – There’s just one week to go to the groundbreaking CTAM event in Toronto . “Delivering Hyper-targeted TV Advertising” will be held November 15th.
Leonard Asper says that conventional broadcasters should be paid for their signal. Is that the answer? Can Hyper-targeted TV Advertising create new revenue streams and actually raise CPM’s. Hear the panel of experts as they present their insights into the future.
Go to www.ctam.ca, click on Events for complete details, and see below
———————–
What if we could send an ad for Wal-Mart to Scarborough and one for Holt Renfrew to Rosedale, during the same 30…
Continue Reading
WINNIPEG – The media supply chain is irrevocably more complicated and potentially scary for Canadian broadcasters, according to two sessions on personal media on Monday at the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ annual convention.
The morning session was called “Personal Media Models: Who will supply the media-savvy consumer” and the afternoon session was entitled: “New Models, New Rules: Managing the personalized media revolution.”
On demand technology of all sorts, delivered from all platforms, is irrevocably altering the way media companies do business and on demand, specifically wireless on demand, content was front and centre for panelists as they discussed how…
Continue Reading
ALVISO, Calif. – DVR manufacturer TiVo today announced a partnership with Yahoo! TV to enable users to remotely program their digital video recorder to record programs.
Yahoo! TV users can now request, via TiVo’s scheduling technology, recordings of their favorite TV shows on their TiVo Series2 devices from anywhere they access Yahoo!. Subscribers with a TiVo Series2 box and a standard Yahoo! user ID can use the service starting today.
“(C)onsumers using Yahoo! TV can easily program their TiVo devices remotely to record that new show they read about or catch their favorite show they discovered is being re-aired….
Continue Reading
WINNIPEG – Cable and satellite companies paying fees for the Global TV signal is just one of the major structural changes that must happen if conventional broadcast television is to endure, CanWest Global Communications CEO Leonard Asper said on Wednesday.
While the company’s fourth quarter press release made a vague, innocuous reference to “structural and regulatory” issues that need to be addressed, Asper was much more specific in his comments to financial analysts in a conference call late in the afternoon.
Referring to a “rigorous regulatory plan”, Asper said the company wants: * Cable and satellite companies to pay…
Continue Reading
I THINK WE’VE ALL HIT the point of severe fatigue when it comes to talking about telecom policy.
A number of senior telecom executives rehashed their recent regulatory presentations this week in Toronto during the third annual Canadian Telecommunications Forum, put on by Insight Communications.
The sessions featured all the usual suspects from Telus (EVP Janet Yale), MTS (SVP Chris Peirce), the CCTA (president Michael Hennessy) and others. But in their sessions on Monday, let’s just say the spark was missing that has been there at other times this year.
Bell’s main regulatory honchos, Lawson Hunter and Mirko Bibic actually…
Continue Reading
CALGARY – Shaw Communications became the first BDU in Canada to add Turner Classic Movies to its channel lineup, both on Shaw Cable and Star Choice.
TCM has actually been on the eligible satellite list for about eight years but because of movie copyright ownership issues, Canadian cable and satellite companies have been reluctant to carry a channel which would then need to be blacked out often.
However, executive vice-president Tom Karsch told www.cartt.ca in an interview on Tuesday that the channel has been working on new deals to gain the North American rights to its classic movies (primarily…
Continue Reading
MONTREAL – Inukshuk Internet has announced the launch of its 2005 Calls for Proposals in Alberta, British Columbia, Eastern Ontario and Outaouais, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Québec and Yukon.
Inukshuk, which has had a number of owners in its lifespan, but is not a commercial service as yet, was granted licenses from Industry Canada for multipoint communications systems (MCS) spectrum in the 2500 MHz frequency range, to build a unique, "last mile" broadband wireless access network.
On November 8, 2004, Rogers acquired the control of Microcell, including Inukshuk. On September 16, 2005…
Continue Reading