OTTAWA – The Wireless Code plus customer service improvements by the country’s wireless and Internet providers helped to cut telecom service complaints for a third straight year, the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS) said Thursday in its annual report.
The report, Guidance In A Sea Of Change, showed that the CCTS received 8,197 customer complaints in 2015-16, down 18% from 9,988 in 2014-15, and that it increased its resolution rate two points to 89%. Wireless services complaints once again topped the list with 50.3% of all complaints, followed by 26.5% for Internet, 19.6% for local telephone service and 3.6%…
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LAVAL — After a day of pushing major French-language television broadcasters to justify their demands for fewer regulatory burdens, the CRTC pushed the other way on Wednesday, for interest groups to justify the need for regulatory intervention as Canadians increasingly get their audiovisual content from unlicensed sources.
“I see a representation of a corporate interest, but not necessarily from the person that the CRTC must serve, the TV viewer,” chairman Jean-Pierre Blais told the Association québécoise de la production médiatique, one of many production groups to present at the licence renewal hearing in Laval, north of…
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Also offers up new best practices: PIAC says not far enough
GATINEAU – While noting Canadian subscription TV carriers are operating within the rules, the CRTC made the unprecedented decision to renew the large carriers' broadcast distribution undertaking licenses for just a single year, as opposed to the usual seven-year term.
To the CRTC, this continues its efforts to put consumers at the centre of the Canadian broadcasting system. In the November 21 decision, the Regulator offered what it sees as the best practices that broadcast distributors should undertake to ensure that Canadians are aware of small basic packages, their limits and offers related to them.
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TORONTO – Tickets are now on sale for next month’s CTAM Canada Broadcaster Forum.
Scheduled for December 1 starting at 1:00 PM at the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto, the fourth annual event will focus on Innovation in the Pay TV ecosystem and offer five distinct sessions including exclusive, Canadian-specific market research, two moderated panels of industry leaders, and a Q&A between Cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien and CBC’s EVP English Services Heather Conway. A networking reception will follow the event.
Session #1: Technology & Television Innovation – “The requirement to stay relevant”
Industry professional Norm Lem…
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TORONTO – Farewell Wind Mobile and welcome Freedom Mobile.
The once plucky wireless upstart, now owned by Shaw Communications, announced the rebrand Monday morning in Toronto plus committed to launch LTE service in Toronto and Vancouver on November 27 using its AWS-3 spectrum band. LTE service will expand to all of the Greater Toronto Area and Greater Vancouver by spring, while Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton will join by summer. The company’s remaining 3G coverage areas (including southwestern Ontario, the Hamilton-Niagara corridor, Barrie, Kingston and Peterborough) will join by the Fall. LTE roaming will be available in the U.S. and Canada in early…
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CRTC chair looks back, and ahead, and finds industry is lagging
OTTAWA – “We as a nation have to stop spinning our wheels on legacy issues and embrace where we’re heading,” CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais said Wednesday in a strongly worded speech to delegates at the International Institute of Communications Canadian chapter conference.
“We have to get ahead of the curve. I repeat, we have to get ahead of the curve,” he said in a 30-minute address that was, more or less, a self-assessment on his nearly four-and-a-half years at the helm of the Commission. Blais said at this same conference four…
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TORONTO – In an effort to expand its global reach, the Canadian Football League (CFL) will livestream the 104th Grey Cup Playoffs and 104th Grey Cup presented by Shaw on CFL.ca to some 150 countries.
The service, powered by Yare Media, will be offered to fans outside the TSN/RDS and ESPN/BT broadcast territories for subscription, and may be viewed on PCs, iOS, Android devices, and Internet-enabled televisions. Fans may purchase a complete five-game HD playoff package for $29.95 or the Grey Cup Championship Game in HD for $9.95.
"Every year we evaluate strategies to help grow our brand internationally and…
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GATINEAU – After four and a half days of a hearing on differential pricing practices, Quebecor Media Inc. took the stand on Friday to defend its Vidéotron Unlimited Music offering. In a nutshell, the company said it’s not acting as a gatekeeper and therefore not contravening the Telecommunications Act, but rather using innovation to offer its customers more services.
Unlimited Music is nothing more than a marketing instrument at aimed at growing its subscribers and targeting a younger demographic, QMI said in its opening remarks. It added the service doesn’t contravene the Internet Traffic Management Practices (ITMP) framework just…
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OTTAWA – Canadians continued to cut the TV cord in record (if still pretty small) numbers since launch of a CRTC-mandated skinny basic TV package on March 1st.
In the two fiscal quarters since phase one of the Commission’s new consumer choice policy came into effect (which mandated a $25 skinny basic package of over-the-air stations and must-carry channels and the launch of smaller, theme packs of channels), Canada’s publicly traded TV service providers combined lost approximately 98,500 TV subscribers, according to new research and analysis from Ottawa-based research and consulting firm Boon Dog Professional Services.
That’s a loss of 11,500…
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TORONTO – Food lovers may gorge on Bell Media’s Gusto over the holiday season thanks to a national free preview of the food and lifestyle channel.
The exclusive home to all-new Jamie Oliver programming in Canada, programming also features cooking series from lifestyle guru Martha Stewart, including the new Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party where she cooks and entertains alongside her unlikely friend and King of Kush, Snoop Dogg. Gusto’s lineup also includes superstar British chef Lorraine Pascale in her new series Lorraine’s Fast, Fresh And Easy Food, the perfectly paired exclusive series The Wine Show, plus hours of original Canadian programming,…
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