VANCOUVER – Bell Mobility has launched a lawsuit against Telus over the latter’s recent ad campaign, saying it’s wireless plans are every bit as flexible as Telus’.
Telus launched an ad campaign this month touting its Flexible Share Plans", where more than one family member can share their wireless minutes.
Bell’s problem is the Telus line found in the ads: "only from Telus." Bell’s statement of claim decries its rival’s "exclusivity claim" as false and misleading.
"The Exclusivity Claim is calculated to give the impression, and does give the impression, that only Telus Mobility offers wireless communications services rate…
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IF CANADA’S INCUMBENT TELEPHONE companies want total deregulation quickly, they’re going to have to do it for (and to) themselves, in the marketplace.
Yesterday Industry Minister Maxime Bernier told the Economic Club of Toronto, with numerous telecom executives in the audience, that the federal government will force the CRTC to deregulate "access independent" VOIP services, no matter which company offers them or where.
The voice services offered by Primus and Vonage are prime examples. The consumer buys a special box, perhaps downloads some software and "poof", they have VOIP service in their homes –and perhaps portably, too.
The Commission’s Continue Reading
HALIFAX – Almost a year after his death at 72 of cancer, The Canadian Red Cross presented its 2006 Humanitarian Award posthumously to former Canadian cable executive Charlie Keating.
According to a story in the Halifax Daily News last week, 600 people gathered at the World Trade and Convention Centre to remember Keating and his philanthropic endeavours. Keating was the founder of Access Cable in Dartmouth before selling to Shaw Communications in 1999. He died on November 22, 2005.
"Among his biggest contributions were $5 million to his alma mater and $2 million to the QEII Health Sciences Centre,"…
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TORONTO – Saying it makes the company the fastest wireless carrier in Canada, Rogers Wireless today launched high speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) technology – its next generation voice and data network.
Available for now throughout Ontario’s "Golden Horseshoe", the debut of HSDPA places the company among the first operators in the world to deploy this latest evolution of GSM, the dominant global standard for mobile wireless communications with over two billion users worldwide, says the company.
HSDPA is a 3.5G protocol for mobile data transmission that, says the release, "significantly improves data transfer rates, enabling network users to download…
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WHILE THE SENIOR REGULATORY EXECUTIVES of all the nation’s telcos, cablecos and other parties met with federal MPs Thursday in Ottawa to plead their cases on telecom regulation, across the river in Gatineau, the CRTC was receiving its newest application for local forbearance – in Fort McMurray, Alberta.
Saying it has already passed the threshold of local line customer losses (25%) in the Alberta oil-boom-town about 450 kms north of Edmonton – thanks to rigorous competition from Shaw Cable – Telus wants the CRTC to deregulate the market, as outlined in its April 2006 local forbearance decision.
Shaw…
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OSHAWA – The 50,000th vehicle with factory-installed XM Satellite Radio was delivered this week.
“Delivering 50,000 vehicles with factory-installed XM Satellite Radio in less than a year has exceeded our expectations,” says Marc Comeau, vice-president, sales, service and marketing, GM Canada, in a press release. “Customers have embraced satellite radio and we continue to see an increased demand for the service. In fact, along with our 50,000th delivery, we have an additional 50,000 customer orders for vehicles with XM Satellite Radio in our production schedule.”
GM Canada factory-installs XM Satellite Radio in more than 50 models and GM Canada…
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OTTAWA – No longer will DTH customers with a system at their home and their cottage be able to pay just a single bill.
The CRTC calls it account stacking, while others call it account splitting. Specialty service owners in Canada called it a way to siphon off revenue and want to be paid a wholesale fee for each address. Cable companies called it an unfair advantage. The DTH companies called it consumer-friendly since, because if people are watching TV at the cottage, they aren’t watching at home, too, and should be treated as a single account.
As noted…
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TORONTO – The owners of Bridges TV took their fight for carriage on Rogers Cable to the media late on Wednesday.
An incendiary press release from the English-language Muslim specialty service obviously meant as an unvarnished public attempt to bully the cable company into capitulation, says that by not letting Bridges TV into its channel lineup Rogers is ignoring and discriminating against the Muslim community, is censoring Islam and disrupting dialog between the Muslim community and all Canadians.
By not adding American-owned Bridges TV, Rogers may even be at fault for the fact Muslims in Canada "continue to bear…
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WHEN NBTEL FIRST CAME to market in 1998 with a digital TV product serving customers in Moncton and Saint John, N.B., the cable industry laughed.
Sure, it was all-digital television, but each TV needed its own set top box, channel-changing latency was a problem and due to the limitations of the early ADSL technology it used, all the TVs in the house had to be tuned to the same channel. Fine for homes without a second TV, but not so much for most folks.
At the time, NBTel (which is now Aliant) was the North American leader on the…
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REGINA – On Friday, the Access Communications Children’s Fund and the WHL team the Regina Pats will launch the new “Brady Brady, Make Reading a Fun Goal” literacy program.
The goal of the program is to encourage young students to read. The program is supported by the donation of complete sets of the new Brady Brady children’s books to all elementary schools in communities served by Access Communications across Saskatchewan. The Regina Pats players will support the program by reading the books to students during school visits in Regina. The program is being launched in Regina first, with other…
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