WITH THE SALE OF DELTA Cable to Persona Communications, a cable era continues to draw to a close.
The era, of course, is that of the independent, local cable operator. Delta is one of several to be sold (pending CRTC approval) in the past 12 months. Besides Delta, Persona recently purchased Northern Cablevision of Grande Prairie, Alta., and Shaw Cable has been on a bit of a buying spree lately, gobbling up small cablers like Pemberton Cable, Saltspring Cable, Whistler Cable and Norcom Telecommunications.
So, the shock of the Delta announcement (first reported by…
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TORONTO – Keying off an internal CableLabs research paper, a Wall Street Journal report said yesterday that cable operators may need to spend billions on more rounds of network upgrades.
The newspaper story (subscription required) quoted the leaked document from Cable Television Laboratories – the cable industry’s R&D and specifications arm – saying that broadband video growth at places such as Google and YouTube, coupled with the multibillion-dollar spend by Verizon to get fibre to the premises and roll out digital television, will require CableLabs members to dig into their wallets for yet another rebuild.
The story also…
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CALGARY – Shaw Communications’ Big Pipe division announced today the Calgary Board of Education (CBE) has chosen it to provide them with high-speed data services.
After a formal bid process, Big Pipe was contracted to provide Transparent LAN Service (TLS) between the CBE’s data centres, to facilitate high-availability bandwidth for business continuity.
"The CBE has growing data needs," said Cindy Seibel, director, information and technology services, at the CBE. "We needed a bandwidth provider to supply an innovative, custom solution for our particular network challenges, and Big Pipe delivered."
The CBE currently supports close to 100,000 students and has…
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SIGNIFICANT. MARKET. POWER.
Those three words appear all through the Telecom Policy Review Report, which Cartt.ca has covered at length. According to my search of that document, the three words appear together 62 times, and a further 65 as its SMP acronym.
When reading that huge report, it’s easy to see how SMP was and is a very big deal to its authors. The Telecom Policy Review Panel was very conscious of the concept and how the companies with SMP might still have to be watched. It’s a key concept of the report.
But you wouldn’t know it from…
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THE FOOD INDUSTRY WAS never this exciting, says Videotron president and CEO Robert Dépatie.
In the 1990s, he was in charge of the Planters brand in Quebec and prior to that, held positions with Heinz. The sheer volume of food processing technology was nothing then as compared to what his cable company faces today. The acronyms are endless: VOIP, VOD, HDTV, iTV, IPTV, DOCSIS and so on.
Last week, the MSO launched its own branded wireless service, riding on the Rogers Wireless backbone, giving it a fourth valuable service option and allowing a family’s entire telecom bill, beginning to…
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REGINA – SaskTel’s digital TV service, Max TV, will launch Turner Classic Movies Tuesday.
TBS and the Saskatchewan telco made the announcement Monday. TCM will launch as part of the Variety Theme Pack on Channel 132.
The two main cable competitors in the province, Shaw in Saskatoon and other areas, and Access Communications in Regina and surrounding communities, both carry TCM already.
TCM offers 24 hours of uncut and commercial-free movies – made anywhere from the 1920s to the 1990s – every day of the week.
www.tcm.com www.sasktel.com
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VANCOUVER – Thanks to continuing strong wireless and high speed Internet subscriber growth, Telus reported a 6% increase in revenues to $2.1 billion in the second quarter, as compared to the same period a year ago.
EBITDA increased 4% to $897.1 million and operating income jumped 10.5% to $515 million.
"Our national wireless and data growth strategy continues to generate strong consolidated top and bottom line growth for Telus despite the challenging wireline environment," said company CEO Darren Entwistle.
"Wireless revenue, which is now 44% of consolidated revenue, was up 18% in the second quarter. However, Telus’ wireless operations…
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DELTA, B.C. – One of the original British Columbia cable systems, Delta Cable, is changing hands.
Persona Communications agreed to purchase the 38,500-customer cable company based in Delta, B.C. (including its Coast Cable operation) late Wednesday. President and CEO of Delta, John Thomas, the son of late company founder Stan Thomas, is said to be retiring.
Financial terms were not released and the deal is pending CRTC approval.
Stan Thomas, one of the industry’s true pioneers, founded the cable company in 1954 and was one of the creators of the Canadian Cable Television Association, which first met in 1957….
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YELLOWKNIFE – After a year of successful operation in the north, Northwestel is launching its NetKaster satellite high speed Internet service in the south.
NetKaster has been expanded to communities throughout Alberta, expanding on its current service in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, launched a year ago. The company will target rural and remote areas not already served by cable or DSL Internet service.
NetKaster is powered by Telesat Canada’s Anik F2 satellite. The service is the result of an agreement between Northwestel Cable and Telesat Canada. Both Northwestel and Telesat are owned by Bell Canada.
"We developed this…
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TORONTO – "This year’s second quarter EBITDA is greater than the full EBITDA of 1996… the six months EBITDA is higher than the full year in 2002," Rogers Communications CEO Ted Rogers said this morning in unveiling the company’s second quarter results, for the three months ended June 30th.
Consolidated revenue grew 29% to $2.24 billion in the quarter and consolidate operating profit increased 31% to $742 Million.
As for individual customer figures, wireless postpaid ARPU grew 6.9% and postpaid Churn fell to 1.27%. Residential and business local telephony lines have passed 735,000
All three of the company’s operating…
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