QUEBECOR PRESIDENT AND CEO Pierre Karl Péladeau released a statement yesterday criticizing an opinion piece published in the Globe and Mail last week, which itself criticized the pending merger of Rogers Communications and Shaw Communications generally and the sale of Freedom Mobile to Quebecor as a remedy for competition-related concerns about the merger specifically.
The opinion piece was written by Centre for International Governance Innovation fellow Keldon Bester (who co-founded the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project) and Carleton University PhD candidate and consultant Ben Klass in the wake of the nationwide Rogers outage earlier this month.
Péladeau is calling three…
Continue Reading
SEATTLE – Telus was Canada’s fastest national mobile operator and Shaw was the fastest fixed broadband service provider amongst the country’s top providers in the second quarter of 2022, according to Seattle-based broadband and mobile network testing company Ookla, which released its Q2 2022 results today.
Mobile
Ookla reported Telus had a median download speed of 79.09 Mbps. Bell, meanwhile, had a median speed of 72.46 Mbps and Rogers had a median speed of 60.36 Mbps. (Please see chart above.)
Rogers, however, had the fastest median upload speed for Q2 2022 at 9.21 Mbps compared to Telus (7.98 Mbps) and Bell (7.42…
Continue Reading
Expert group concludes work with little attention given to website blocking proposal
By Amanda OYE
OTTAWA – The work of the government’s Expert Advisory Group on Online Safety, which was appointed in March to provide advice on the government’s proposed approach to dealing with harmful content online, has come to an end with the summary of its final session being posted online last week, but the government will continue seeking input on the matter from Canadians and stakeholders throughout the summer.
“I thank the expert advisory group for their work,” said Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez in a statement emailed to Cartt.ca….
Continue Reading
OAKVILLE, Ont. — Pelmorex Corp.’s The Weather Network announced today the launch of its new TV app, which is available initially to Shaw TV subscribers in Canada.
“The Weather Network TV app will soon be available to subscribers on all other major telco or cable providers, with deployments scheduled throughout 2022,” according to a press release.
Beginning today, Shaw TV customers can say “The Weather Network” using their voice remote to access the app and all of its features, which include:
Access to in-depth hyper-local weather information based on postal code.
The option to personalize the weather experience by saving up…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – After meeting with representatives from several Canadian telecommunications service providers, Innovation, Science and Industry minister François-Philippe Champagne announced he has directed them to take immediate steps to address network resiliency in Canada.
The meeting, attended by representatives from Rogers, Telus, Bell, Videotron, Shaw, SaskTel and Eastlink, comes as Rogers continues to work to restore its networks, which are close but not quite fully operational, following a nationwide outage that began early Friday morning.
“I’ve demanded that they take immediate initial steps to improve the resiliency of our networks,” Champagne told reporters during a conference call this afternoon…
Continue Reading
By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Innovation Canada and the CRTC have released an advance notice today stating they intend to award a $1.5-million contract to a broadband measurement company to collect performance data on fixed-wireless speed claims of up to 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload – the federal objective.
In the notice, ISED said it is seeking only data from wireless service providers claiming to provide Internet service of “up to” 50/10 to households over wireless signals for verification purposes. The contractor will test performance by metric, time, location, service plan, distance to service towers and technology, according to…
Continue Reading
Rogers continues to monitor the situation, is aware of ongoing issues for some customers
TORONTO – Over the weekend Rogers Communications continued to make progress on getting its networks fully operational and explained what caused the nationwide outage on Friday.
“We now believe we’ve narrowed the cause to a network system failure following a maintenance update in our core network, which caused some of our routers to malfunction early Friday morning,” reads a letter from Rogers president and CEO Tony Staffieri, which was posted on the company’s website on Saturday.
“We disconnected the specific equipment and redirected traffic, which allowed…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – Videotron, a subsidiary of Quebecor, has filed a notice of motion with the Competition Tribunal, asking to be granted leave to intervene in the proceeding dealing with the Commissioner of Competition’s application to the tribunal to have the proposed merger of Rogers Communications and Shaw Communications blocked.
The notice of motion, posted to the tribunal’s website today, indicates Videotron is further seeking a confidentiality order on terms to be discussed should leave to intervene be granted.
Videotron intends to intervene in the proceeding in support of Rogers and Shaw. Last month the three companies announced they reached an…
Continue Reading
TORONTO and CALGARY – Rogers Communications and Shaw Communications released a joint statement today indicating the early mediation with the Commissioner of Competition that took place earlier this week on Monday and Tuesday did not end in a resolution to the Commissioner’s objections to the proposed merger of the two companies.
“Rogers and Shaw intend to continue to work constructively with the Commissioner to highlight the many benefits of the merger to all Canadians, including maintaining a strong and sustainable fourth wireless carrier across Canada through the proposed divestiture of Freedom Wireless to Quebecor Inc.,” the statement says.
This news…
Continue Reading
Cabinet declined to consider petition to set aside CRTC decision on Rogers merger
CALGARY – Shaw Communications announced today its financial results for Q3 2022, which shows revenue decreased 2.1% to $1.35 billion, compared to the same quarter the previous year.
The financial results for the quarter ended May 31, 2022, further show adjusted EBITDA increased slightly (0.3%) to $644 million compared to Q3 2021, while net income decreased 42.7% to $203 million.
“The prior year period included incremental Wireline Consumer revenue of approximately $20 million related to the release of a provision following the decision on final aggregated Third Party Internet…
Continue Reading
