WHILE THE CANADIAN WIRELESS world and the politicians who oversee it spent the dog days of summer 2013 barking at each other over policies they said were either wrecking the business or boosting competition (depending on your point of view) one player, Halifax-based Eastlink, remained largely silent.
While Eastlink is a big deal in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island especially, and does daily battle down East with Bell Aliant, CEO, Lee Bragg told Cartt.ca in a recent interview that adding his own voice to that cacophony would have accomplished little. And besides, even though he can’t side with government…
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TORONTO – Cineflix Media on July 25 surprised the production industry by saying it was restructuring as it pulls back from Canada to focus on the U.S. and U.K. markets. The reason given for the pivot was an "in-depth evaluation of our operations and our broadcasting client requirements."
Translation: Cineflix Media's business model on the factual side to create original series and intellectual property (IP) and sell those shows worldwide is being undermined by localized format adaptations like Big Brother Canada and Amazing Race Canada both of which have been hits for their Canadian broadcasters. "The general consensus in the…
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OTTAWA – The Canadian Network Operators Consortium has filed an application with the CRTC asking that a number of new regulations be applied to cable company ISPs who are not fairly treating its members acting as third party internet access providers.
The independent TPIAs (such as Teksavvy, Primus and Telnet) who provide internet service to their customers by purchasing wholesale high speed access service from the likes of Cogeco, Rogers, Shaw and Videotron say that either through malice or indifference their businesses are being seriously harmed by the cable companies and the CRTC must step in.
“This is necessary because ISPs,…
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MONT TREMBLANT – The Canadian Cable Systems Alliance celebrated its 20th anniversary in grand style Monday with top notch seminars, a well-attended trade show, awards and a gala dinner which featured Canadian comic Sugar Sammy.
After an opening speech by CRTC vice-chairman telecom Peter Menzies, “unmarketing” pro Scott Stratten wowed the audience with an entertaining take on how in order to go viral, you have to give up control (and don’t sweat your logo too much). Then, with over 300 delegates at this year’s conference, the trade show floor was packed through mid-day then customer service…
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VANCOUVER – Two of the country’s biggest unions say they’re happy that Verizon has decided against entering Canada’s wireless market, but stress that should not take public focus off the problems plaguing the telecommunications industry.
The newly merged Telecommunication Workers Union (TWU) and United Steelworkers (USW) said Monday that they support parliamentary hearings and on-going public debate about Canada’s telecommunications policy.
"We clearly and consistently pointed out that giving Verizon preferential access to Canada's wireless infrastructure and spectrum would be a bad deal for Canadian workers and consumers," said Lee Riggs, national president of the TWU, which represents 13,000 Telus, Shaw and other…
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GATINEAU – Broadcasters, distributors and special interests all took predictable stances on the CRTC's proposed framework for the distribution of national news services in interventions published this week.
The comment period for the framework, which launched from the Commission's August decision to deny mandatory distribution to Sun News Network, ended on Monday night. Last-minute submissions were posted to the CRTC site Tuesday and Wednesday. The Regulator’s proposals include rules on carriage, packaging and channel placement for national news services licensed as Category C, which would categorize all such services – new and…
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OTTAWA – There simply is not a wireless services competition problem in Canada, according to a report released today by the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy.
Wireless Competition in Canada: An Assessment argues that it’s too simplistic to draw conclusions about the state of competition by comparing Canada’s high average revenue per user (APRU) and lower penetration rates with international carriers. For instance, many countries tend to have significantly higher prepaid subscribers than in Canada and have a calling-party-pays protocol, “both of which encourage inflated user counts.”
During a press conference on Parliament Hill Thursday morning, one of the…
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TORONTO – Five major Canadian digital media funding organizations have hammered out a new framework designed to help international digital media co-productions access their respective funding programs.
The framework, developed by the Canada Media Fund, the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund, the Independent Production Fund, the Quebecor Fund, and the Shaw Rocket Fund, addresses the need to facilitate international co-productions in digital media between Canada and other countries in order to access new opportunities and partnerships. Furthermore, existing audiovisual co-production treaties do not address digital media production, the announcement continues.
The framework is being implemented on a trial basis and applies…
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GATINEAU – The CRTC has decided November 5th is the day it will hear why Corus Entertainment should be able to purchase French specialty channels Historia and Series+, three Ottawa radio stations and the piece of Teletoon (including its other animation brands) it does not yet own.
In March, Corus agreed to purchase the assets in question as part of the divestitures required as conditions of the Bell Media purchase of Astral Media. While it already held 50% of Teletoon/Télétoon (as well as Teletoon Retro in English and French, and the Cartoon Network) with Astral, it…
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TORONTO – Shaw Media is supporting today’s kickoff of its newest (read “TVTropolis rebranded”) lifestyle channel DTOUR with a national multi-platform marketing and advertising campaign.
Shaw's DTOUR specialty channel launched today with a national promo campaign that included blanketing Toronto's Bloor subway station (above) with images from various reality series, including this one from Continue Reading
