TORONTO – Rogers, Shaw and Quebecor have once again agreed Friday to delay the date of their respective transactions, as the previous deadline has come and after the innovation minister said this week he isn’t close to making a decision on the transfers.
The outside closing date has been pushed back several times for the deals involving the transfer of Freedom to Videotron and then Shaw to Rogers. It was previously January 31, then it was pushed to February 17, and now the parties are hoping that the minister makes a decision by March 31, which is the date…
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By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said Monday during a House industry committee hearing that he is “no near” a decision on the spectrum transfer from Shaw to Videotron that would trigger Rogers’s acquisition of Shaw.
The comments were made in a back-and-forth between Champagne and Conservative member of Parliament Ryan Williams, who was asserting that the conditions that the minister said were required on Videotron’s ownership of the Freedom assets – including spectrum ownership of at least 10 years and lower prices applied to other provinces – are not enforceable.
“That’s what you say, but trust me…you’ll be…
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By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Officials from Innovation Canada pushed back Tuesday against the claim that the current spectrum auction and deployment framework needs a revision to deal with providers that don’t utilize spectrum within a reasonable timeframe.
The Senate transport committee is on second reading of bill S242, which seeks to amend the Radiocommunications Act to require service providers to deploy spectrum and provide service to at least 50% of the population it covers within three years of the licence’s issuance. The idea behind the bill assumes that some service providers are hoarding spectrum and are looking to sell the…
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VANCOUVER — Telus last month completed the integration of customers of internet service provider Start.ca after acquiring the small outfit, the company confirmed.
The customer networks of the London, Ont.-based provider of internet, television and home phone services were integrated into Telus last month, “giving customer access to TELUS’ global-leading wireless network, suite of home automation and security, health and entertainment products and services,” Telus told Cartt in a statement.
Richmond, B.C.-based Altima, another ISP that Telus acquired, was integrated into Telus’s network in June 2022.
The purchases further narrow the range of service providers to choose from, as various factors have…
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Company also said it is confident it will compete against fourth player in Videotron
By Ahmad Hathout
TORONTO – Rogers executives said the company expects network resiliency to be a more important factor than price in driving up new subscribers going forward.
The company is coming off a network outage last summer that paralyzed the country, impacting critical institutions like government and banking. The fallout of the outage put a spotlight on the importance of network resiliency and redundance and spawned a commitment from the large carrier to physically separate its mobile and wireline networks and invest $20 billion…
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By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – An association representing independent internet service providers filed a submission to the CRTC yesterday requesting the regulator impose, at least temporarily, discounted wholesale access to incumbent fibre to the building.
The submission by the Competitive Network Operators of Canada is in support of a complaint filed by internet service provider TekSavvy, which alleges that some incumbents are giving to some providers wholesale access to their networks at favourable and unregulated (“off-tariff”) rates over other competitors.
TekSavvy brought the undue preference application in light of Rogers’s proposal to provide Videotron with access to its network…
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Rogers, Shaw, and Quebecor’s Videotron announced today that they have agreed to extend the closing date of their transactions to February 17.
The expected closing date of Rogers acquiring Shaw and Videotron acquiring Shaw’s Freedom Mobile assets was January 31, which was set before the Competition Bureau appealed a decision of the Competition Tribunal that denied its petition to block the deal. The Federal Court of Appeal upheld the tribunal’s decision last week, and the bureau said it will not appeal to the Supreme Court.
The transfer of Freedom’s assets to Videotron must now be approved by Innovation…
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MPs will discuss the deal on Monday, letter says
By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA — Five members of Parliament sent a letter dated today to Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne urging him not to approve the transfer of Freedom’s spectrum assets to Videotron until a “free and open” process, approved by the Competition Bureau, is held to determine the suitor of the assets.
During a House industry committee hearing Wednesday, some MPs were concerned as to how Rogers ended up getting to pick Videotron as the buyer of Freedom to complete its acquisition of Shaw (the bureau has remained steadfast in…
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By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Members of the House industry committee took issue today with Rogers being allowed to choose Videotron as its competitor to complete its acquisition of Shaw, with one member of Parliament saying it “boggles the mind” to think Rogers would sell Freedom for less if it meant more competition.
Today’s hearing was the committee’s second round at the Rogers-Shaw merger, this time with the new development that Videotron agreed to purchase Freedom from Shaw for nearly $3 billion. It also comes a day after the Federal Court of Appeal upheld a…
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OTTAWA – Rogers’s proposed purchase of Shaw faces just one more hurdle: the innovation minister’s approval of the transfer of Freedom spectrum assets to Videotron, which agreed to purchase the company for nearly $3 billion.
The deal’s prospects improved dramatically when it survived a Competition Bureau challenge at the Federal Court of Appeal, which denied yesterday a request to find in error the Competition Tribunal’s approval of the deal. Even more so when the bureau announced late last evening that it will not appeal the court’s decision.
But now scrutiny will be leveled against it…
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