FORT FRANCES, Ont. – Tbaytel Fibre is now available to homes and businesses in Fort Frances, a town of about 7,800 right near the border with Minnesota, about 350 kms from Thunder Bay. The move brings it in direct competition with regional incumbents Shaw and Bell.
Tbaytel announced 11 months ago it would be embarking on a project to add wireline fibre services to its existing mobility offering in the Fort Frances area and since that time, the city of Thunder Bay-owned company has completed a regional network centre along with the new fibre runs.
Customers in Fort Frances now…
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TORONTO – Hollywood Suite is gearing up for a five-week national free preview promising a slew of films including 28 premieres.
From December 1 through January 5, viewers can stoke their holiday spirit with perennial festive favourites such as Die Hard, Gremlins, Scrooged and White Christmas; celebrate John Lennon on December 8 with A Hard Day’s Night, Imagine: John Lennon, and Across the Universe; remember Carrie Fisher on December 27 with When Harry Met Sally and Postcards from the Edge; plus ring in the new year with a Star Trek marathon.
Hollywood Suite owns and operates four exclusive HDTV channels featuring…
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Shaw says it’s a must if the government truly wants competition
OTTAWA – The large incumbent wireless operators and their smaller rivals continue to spar over proposed 600 MHz spectrum licensing rules in reply comments to Innovation, Science and Economic Development’s (ISED) consultation. There are several sticking points over ISED’s pro-competitive ideas but the most contentious revolve around the provision to set aside spectrum for companies which aren’t Bell, Rogers or Telus.
Rogers and Telus remain convinced that setting aside spectrum for the regional wireless players isn’t the right approach. (Bell Canada’s reply comments weren’t made available at the time…
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DENVER – With cable operators under mounting pressure to boost the capacity of their beleaguered networks and offer faster broadband speeds without overloading their headends and hubs with more costly equipment, the industry is now adopting a distributed access architecture (DAA) approach that will spread out the gear throughout their networks.
In particular, cable technologists are embracing a promising DAA option known as Remote PHY. Under this scheme, the physical layer (or PHY) of a traditional, dense cable headend CMTS or CCAP chassis is shifted to the fiber-optic nodes in the access network, allowing the data processing functions to occur…
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GATINEAU – The CRTC has pushed back its deadline for comments pertaining to TV channels wishing to renew their places in the basic programming package.
After recently announcing that it would kick off its 9(1)(h) hearing on April 30, the Commission said Wednesday that the deadline to submit interventions, comments and answers is now December 8, 2017, and not November 16 as first announced. The deadline for the applicants to submit their replies is December 18.
The new deadlines comes as a result of a joint procedural request from BCE, the Canadian Cable Systems Alliance, Cogeco, Quebecor, Rogers, Shaw and…
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TORONTO – Newcomers to Canada use their mobile phone more than the general Canadian population, stream more content, and enjoy watching basketball, according to a new report released Tuesday.
Solution Research Group’s Newcomers to Canada research study explores consumer behaviours, social attitudes and demographics of newcomers in the last 10 years. The study polled 1,149 newcomers from China, South Asia, The Philippines, North Africa and the Middle East, as well as Latin and Central America.
According to the report, the newcomer market is increasing in importance socially and economically because of their record numbers (2.6 million since 2007) and habits that…
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CALGARY – Shaw Communications saw fourth quarter profits more than triple, helped by a lift in wireless and internet subscribers, the company reported Thursday.
For the three month period ended August 31, 2017, Shaw saw net income jump to $481 million from $154 million in the same period last year, which it said reflects a $330 million gain on the sale of U.S. data centre business ViaWest Inc.
Net income for fiscal 2017 was $851 million, down from the $1.2 billion reported in fiscal 2016, due to higher net income from discontinued operations in fiscal 2016, including the gain on the…
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CALGARY – Shaw’s Freedom Mobile has announced plans to deploy its recently acquired spectrum to enhance its network in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton.
The company said Thursday that the move will improve Freedom Mobile's LTE-Advanced network performance, especially in dense urban areas, and support nearly all LTE devices currently in use in Canada, making it easier for Canadians use their own devices on its LTE-A network.
These latest network upgrades – specifically deploying 2500 MHz spectrum and “refarming” a portion of its existing AWS-1 spectrum – are already underway, and are expected to be completed by early December 2017…
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RANDY LENNOX IS beloved in the music business. Leading Universal Music Canada for close to 20 years, he was instrumental in finding and developing Canadian talent and growing the Canadian music industry into an acknowledged international force.
The Weeknd, Shawn Mendes, Justin Beiber, Shania Twain, Drake, Hedley, The Tragically Hip are all artists Lennox signed or helped build up. He probably could have remained at Universal until he was old and grey, if he wanted. Earlier this year the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS) awarded Lennox (pictured*) the Walt Grealis Special Achievement Award for his longstanding…
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GATINEAU – It looks as though a portion of a CRTC decision that flew under the radar for many people has wrecked what was an excellent promotional outlet for Canadian specialty services and charities.
In decision CRTC 2015-86, part of the Let’s Talk TV process, the Commission surprised the industry by tightening the rules surrounding how the two minutes of local advertising time made available each hour by U.S. channels such as CNN, A&E, Golf Channel and TLC could be used.
Dubbed “local avail” time, American cablecos and other pay TV carriers have turned the sales of…
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