OTTAWA – Canadians in every region of the country now have a choice between four wireless providers as a result of Wednesday’s spectrum licence transfers between Rogers, Shaw, Mobilicity and Wind as part of Rogers’ acquisition of Mobilicity.
As a result, says Industry Canada, new wireless companies now hold approximately 25% of the total wireless spectrum available, up from only 2% in 2006.
"The approval of these spectrum licence transfers is a win for Canadian consumers. A new wireless competitor has secured valuable spectrum it needs, and high-quality spectrum that went unused for almost a decade will now be…
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TORONTO – The new Rogers-Mobilicity agreement, which will see Wind Mobile bulk up its wireless spectrum in five provinces, will help to solidify its role as Canada’s fourth national carrier, the wireless provider said Wednesday.
Under the terms of the acquisition, Wind Mobile will receive new spectrum previously held by Mobilicity and Shaw Communications, which it says will at least double its network capacity in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Northern and Eastern Ontario.
"This new spectrum acquisition means Wind Mobile now has a 20 megahertz AWS-1 corridor from Victoria to Ottawa," said CEO Alek Krstajic, in a statement. "This will significantly…
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TORONTO – Mobilicity has accepted, and Industry Canada, the Ontario Superior Court and late Wednesday the Competition Bureau, have blessed, Rogers’ proposal to acquire 100% of Mobilicity’s ownership for $465 million, the communications giant confirmed Wednesday morning.
The announcement also said Rogers will buy Shaw's unused AWS-1 spectrum for $100 million, in addition to the down payments made when an option agreement was originally announced in January 2013, and will then divest some of that spectrum to Wind Mobile. Specifically, Rogers and Wind will undertake an AWS-1 spectrum swap in Southern Ontario to create contiguous spectrum for Rogers, and Rogers will also divest certain…
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TORONTO – Amidst reports that Rogers and Telus are battling to acquire Mobilicity, the owners and employees of the struggling wireless provider said Monday that have made an offer to Industry Canada and the federal government to acquire Mobilicity’s current subscribers, dealers, and partial infrastructure by setting up a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) relationship with any potential acquirer.
Obelysk Inc., the holding company of Mobilicity founder John Bitove, issued a statement saying that it wants to maintain the Mobilicity brand in Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Ottawa where it currently operates, retain its 155,000 subscribers and current dealer network of…
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OTTAWA – Despite a drop in prices for many high-volume talk, text and data plans, Canada’s mobile wireless prices once again rank among the highest when compared to other G7 countries and Australia, according to an annual report commissioned by Industry Canada and the CRTC.
Prepared by Ottawa’s Wall Communications, the 2015 edition of Price Comparisons of Wireline, Wireless and Internet Services in Canada and with Foreign Jurisdictions is an annual telecom services price comparison study that combines and averages wireline, mobile wireless, broadband Internet, and mobile Internet service rates, as well as bundles of these services along with basic digital TV…
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THERE ARE TWO Canadian TV carriers who offer Netflix to their customers directly via their advanced television set top boxes: Cogeco Cable and Telus Optik TV.
After seeing a recent demo of Optik TV’s impressive capabilities and living with the Cogeco TiVo system for several months, it’s become impossible to imagine what all the other carriers could possibly be waiting for. Offering Netflix to existing customers this way is an utter slam dunk.
While my wife was once ambivalent about our cable subscription and asked repeatedly if it was worth what we pay, I’d have to move into my…
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BANFF – Telling trends from fads is too often a mugs game. A peek at Amazon suggests that a book on trends seems to be written every 15 minutes and at times, here in Banff, it was frequently difficult to parse true trends from professional aspiration or wishful thinking.
But we did get some glimpses.
Canadians have over 600 television services to choose from, and one in four of us is a four screen consumer (TV, tablet, PC, phone) and the emerging bias to enhanced pick-and-pay was viewed by many as heralding more investment in programming to survive in a world…
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BANFF – Ireland (the republic), has a population of roughly 4.5 million folks, and yet it was one of the first countries to create a tax relief program for independent producers back in 1987.
That original approach is now much like the U.K. tax credit scheme. Although it still retains a penchant for encouraging doctors and dentists to invest, an approach Canada found illusory and awkward in our salad days of tax credits, it has succeeded – the Canada-Ireland co-pro Vikings series being a powerful case in point. The show has won eight major awards and been nominated for another…
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TORONTO — Juggling the daily demands of directing one of Canada’s major national news organizations, while also overseeing a structural migration to digital and maintaining journalistic integrity in the face of internal and external attempts to influence editorial decisions, is keeping the country’s top news executives on their toes.
The heads of the three major Canadian television news organizations (two of which are also the biggest radio operators) took part in a panel discussion Friday that kicked off RTDNA Canada’s annual conference in Toronto. The special “Bear Pit” panel, moderated by Cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien, featured a lively…
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TORONTO — Adding some broadcast content into the mix at the Canadian Telecom Summit last week, experts from the video content creation and distribution industries discussed the challenges and opportunities arising from the advent of over-the-top services during a special panel discussion.
OTT is about a “content revolution”, said George Burger, advisor at Internet TV provider VMedia, an upstart BDU. “ a massively disruptive event…and it’s going to make the disruption that happened to the music industry, with Napster, pale in comparison completely,” Burger said.
“It’s flourishing from the consumer point of view. Consumers have never, ever had it better,”…
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