By Ahmad Hathout
The Competition Bureau’s deceptive marketing practices lawsuit against Rogers unfairly singles out the cable company’s “unlimited” wireless plans, cherry-picks out-of-context material, and doesn’t square with the fact that the plans have followed CRTC rules since they launched in the summer of 2019, according to the company’s reply submission to the Competition Tribunal.
The competition watchdog late last year filed a suit alleging Rogers has for years been misleading Canadians with its ‘Infinite’ mobile wireless plans, which it claims gave customers the impression that they were getting unlimited high-speed data when the speed of the data…
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CNOC calls move “disappointing” but not surprising
By Ahmad Hathout
Bell CEO Mirko Bibic announced Thursday the telco is again cutting its fibre buildout target after the CRTC earlier this week refused to ban the largest internet service providers from using its last-mile fibre network in Ontario and Quebec.
Bibic said the company is now targeting less than 8.3 million homes for direct fibre by the end of this year.
“This decrease in our fibre buildout is a direct result of the CRTC’s refusal to ban Telus and other large carriers from reselling the FTTP network we’ve built,” Bibic said in a fourth-quarter…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Rogers has filed an application requesting that the CRTC reverse its decision to expand the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) regime to internet of things (IoT) and enterprise services.
The market for those services, claims Rogers in its application to review-and-vary posted last week, “is likely one of the most competitive markets for telecommunications services in the country. Beyond Canada’s domestic national and regional , there are literally hundreds of service providers, including global wireless carriers, global and regional IoT/M2M aggregators of MVNOs, and global and regional IoT/M2M solutions providers in the Canadian market.”
The regulator affirmed…
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The regulator now moves to challenges against final wholesale decision
By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC said large provider access to the aggregated last-mile fibre facilities of mainly Bell but also Telus in Ontario and Quebec have proven to increase consumer choice and competition between internet service providers, rejecting a cabinet recommendation to impose a ban on Rogers, Bell and Telus (Big 3) from accessing those facilities.
The commission’s relatively short decision hinged largely on what it said was a lack of evidence that such access would hinder network investment as well as evidence showing that Telus is now…
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The CRTC said it will not alter the Feb. 13 implementation deadline for Telus, Bell and SaskTel to provide competitors with workable access to their fibre networks in a decision last week that rejected Telus’s October 2024 request for a four-month extension to the implementation date in British Columbia and Alberta.
In arguing for the extension, Telus had said its systems would not be fully automated by Feb. 13 and using manual order processing created the potential for processing errors, which could have adverse effects on wholesale customers and their end users.
The telecom regulator…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri said more customers than expected used the company’s credit card to finance handsets in the fourth quarter, which saw lower net adds in the postpaid wireless segment.
The cableco added 69,000 net new postpaid customers, far less than the 184,000 it added in the same quarter the year prior. It added 561,000 postpaid gross subscribers, down from the 703,000 it posted in the fourth quarter of 2023. But the telecom was able to reduce its churn, or the rate of customer defections, to 1.53 per cent from 1.67 per cent in the year prior….
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More details emerge in the previously confidential monthslong battle
By Ahmad Hathout
Corus and Rogers continue to butt heads over the CRTC’s standstill rule, with the former urging the Federal Court of Appeal to affirm it and the latter asking the regulator to lift it so it can shuffle Corus channels it no longer wants out of both its rotation and certain channel slots.
The result of the back and forth has unveiled more details in a carriage dispute that is now nearly two years old.
The latest development sees Corus requesting this month that the Federal Court of Appeal reject a December…
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By Connie Thiessen
Pelmorex Corp. has named Maureen Rogers as its new president and chief executive officer, effective Feb. 1.
She succeeds Nana Banerjee, who had held the role since April 2023. Rogers has worked with Pelmorex for the last 14 years, most recently serving as CEO of Pelmorex’s TV Networks and managing director of Weather Canada, which includes digital and TV brands, The Weather Network and MétéoMédia, as well as Alert Ready/En Alerte, Canada’s public emergency alerting system.
“We are thrilled to appoint Maureen to the role of President & CEO,” said Marc Morrissette, executive chair of Pelmorex Corp., in a…
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Rogers announced Wednesday what it says is the first app-only bundle in Canada to bring live TV and streaming together in one plan.
The App TV plan for Rogers Xfinity Internet customers includes 40-plus live and on-demand channels, 20 free ad-supported (FAST) channels and Netflix Standard with ads, all for $25 per month when added to an existing Xfinity Internet package.
The app bundle allows customers to stream live and on-demand channels, including Rogers’s new HGTV, Food Network, Magnolia Network, Discovery, Investigation Discovery and Bravo channels, on the Rogers Xfinity Streaming app. Customers have the…
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By Mark Goldberg, a telecommunications consultant
The headlines were breathless – Canada’s telecom regulator is going to cut the cost of internet services for people living in the far north
What the CRTC didn’t say, and what was entirely missed in the coverage, is the regulator wants customers in the rest of Canada to pay for it.
This is the same regulator that continually chastises Canada’s internet and wireless providers for not doing enough to lower prices while pushing for more investments to connect remote areas. This, despite the federal government’s own data showing cellular and internet prices keep falling while the…
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