IT’S BEEN A NUMBER OF months since we last tried to publicly discomfit the Canadian Internet service provider industry over its lack of action on delivering a cohesive, national, inexpensive broadband program to low income urban Canadians.
As we’ve noted, it’s happening south of the border. A program (the creation of private industry done at the urging of the Federal Communications Commission and with zero government money) called Connect 2 Compete allows qualifying low income families to get access to broadband for $9.95 a month as well as to low cost computers and tech support.
In the…
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TORONTO – There is no shortage of people who believe, thanks to our exploding new media world, that: “Television is dead”, or some variation of that theme.
At the TV Bureau of Canada’s TV Day, held Thursday at the Carlu in Toronto, broadcasters, agencies and media buyers were given ample reasons to believe that not only is TV not dead, it has never been stronger. Of course, one would expect the TV Bureau and all the broadcasters to scream that from the rooftops because that’s their business, however, the numbers and the work being done, seem to back the notion…
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Perry Hoffman
GATINEAU – Telcos Telus and MTS Allstream are urging the CRTC to remove vertically integrated broadcasters/distributors from eligibility under the Local Programming Improvement Fund (LPIF).
While Rogers, Shaw and Quebecor all want the LPIF program eliminated, Bell Media Inc. is neither for or against continuing the program. However, each have local stations who are collectively getting millions from the LPIF fund.
Ann Mainville-Neeson, director of broadcast regulation at Telus, noted during her opening remarks, that of the large vertically integrated providers, only Bell is clinging to LPIF despite the fact that it could save more than $1 million if the…
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GATINEAU – Bell Canada is now prepared to allow the Canadian Broadcast Corp. to receive money from the Local Programming Improvement Fund (LPIF) as long as the pubcaster is the sole provider of local TV services in a particular small market.
The media and communications giant had argued in comments that since the CBC receives approximately $1 billion from the federal government it shouldn’t qualify for funds from LPIF. But during opening remarks, Mirko Bibic, executive VP and chief legal and regulatory officer at BCE, said private local TV remains in a difficult financial situation and could see station closures,…
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TORONTO – Canada's three new wireless-only carriers are having little impact on the country’s big telecom incumbents, according to a new report from Moody's Investors Service.
The report, ‘Canadian Telecommunications and Cable Industries: Consolidation Could Be in Store as New Wireless Companies Appear to Struggle’, says Wind Mobile, Mobilicity and Public Mobile, which are not rated by Moody’s, do not have the economies of scale, the access to funding, or the latest products to undercut or challenge the incumbents' market share. Rogers (Baa1 stable), Bell Canada (Baa1 stable) and Telus (Baa1 stable) together make up nearly 92% of Canada’s market…
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GATINEAU – The CRTC will hear why the Local Programming Improvement Fund (LPIF) needs to be kept – and why it should be killed off – when a public hearing over its existence gets under way in Gatineau Monday morning.
The fund was created almost three years ago (in the midst of the financial crisis and just prior to the destructive Stop-The-TV-Tax vs. Local-TV-Matters battle), before Shaw and Bell bought into broadcasting, to support the creation of local television programming, particularly local news, in smaller markets. At that time, it was determined broadcaster spending on local programming had stagnated or…
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IT’S PRETTY UNUSUAL for dropped cellular phone calls to be mentioned in a Speech from the Throne.
But, that’s exactly what happened last fall when Saskatchewan Lieutenant-Governor Gordon Barnhart said in that speech that “improving digital and electronic infrastructure is essential to the new economy,” and that “(d)ropped cell phone calls are still a problem, despite an increased investment in SaskTel’s 4G network of $170 million in my government’s first term.”
SaskTel’s ownership – the taxpayers of Saskatchewan – is a holdover of the past, when many telcos were government-owned. While its competitors feel competing against the government is unfair, the…
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I READ WITH INTEREST your commentary concerning the dispute between the independent BDUs (CIDG) and Bell Media.
Like Kevin Crull, the CEO of Bell Media, I too have “walked on both sides of the fence” (as noted in his letter of March 28). I was the president of the Canadian Cable Television Association and the CEO of Star Choice, Bell ExpressVu’s principal competitor, now known as Shaw Direct. More recently, I was the head of English services at the CBC, which, like Bell Media, includes a big conventional network and a number…
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ON THURSDAY, A PANEL of seven CRTC commissioners and a dozen industry executives took part in a hearing where they all must have asked themselves repeatedly, “Geez, how often have I heard this before?” At least, that’s the question that popped into my head as I listened in.
Bell Media faced off against the Canadian Independent Distributors Group during an expedited hearing concerning the parties’ fight over Bell Media’s 2011 wholesale carriage agreement, as we have already covered extensively. The CIDG (Telus, Cogeco, EastLink, Canadian Cable Systems Alliance and MTS) say the dispute isn’t primarily about…
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GATINEAU – There was little love for the CRTC when, on the day before St. Valentine’s Day, Videotron filed its appeal of the wholesale Internet billing decision (more popularly known as the usage-based-billing issue). However, the Quebec cableco wasn’t the only provider to let its feelings be known regarding the matter, other network owners as well as the independent ISPs have taken the Commission to task over the appropriate rates for wholesale network access and use.
The issue that never seems to go away is not focused on the capacity-based billing framework, which most agree is a good idea, but…
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