Advanced service joins all-in-one-video push
By Greg O’Brien
MONTREAL – This week, Cogeco Connexion became the latest company to tell consumers if they want all of their video in one place, epico is the best place to find it.
After an extended trial period with employees (1,200 of the company’s 2,000 Canadian employees have it in their homes) and a handful of customers (over 12,000 customers now have epico), the company took the wrapper off the newest, and for now the most advanced, pay-TV system in Canada. We’re calling it that because its Android TV operator tier operating system from MediaKind gives…
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POND INLET, Nunavut — Uvagut TV, Canada’s first Inuit-language TV channel (which launched on January 18), said today it will broadcast live coverage of the upcoming environmental hearing on Baffinland Iron Mine’s proposed Mary River Phase 2 Expansion, direct from Pond Inlet (located in northern Baffin Island).
Uvagut TV says the unprecedented coverage will give Inuit and concerned audiences “unfiltered access” to the proceeding being conducted by the Nunavut Impact Review Board (NIRB) in Iqaluit and Pond Inlet, starting on January 25. The hearing is expected to run until February 6.
The NIRB in-person hearings were suspended in March 2020…
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But really, everyone is pretty good, winning in one metric or another…
SEATTLE — According to Seattle-based Ookla’s latest Speedtest Global Index, Telus was the fastest mobile operator among the top Canadian providers in the fourth quarter of 2020.
Using Speedtest Intelligence data from October to December 2020, Ookla gave Telus a speed score of 87.88 (calculated using results from devices built on modern chipsets). The next-highest speed score in Q4 2020 was awarded to Bell (84.51), followed by Rogers (73.05), Rogers’s flanker brand Fido (71.64) and Shaw’s Freedom Mobile (35.62).
In terms of latency, Freedom Mobile had the lowest…
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IGLOOLIK, Nunavut — Canada’s first Inuit-language TV channel officially launched on Monday, January 18, having secured carriage on Shaw’s satellite TV service.
The new channel, Uvagut TV, will broadcast 168 hours a week of Inuit-produced culture, arts, movies and information programming, says the press release issued last week by Igloolik-based Nunavut Independent Television Network (NITV) and IsumaTV. The channel was created by NITV and IsumaTV with programs from Inuit Broadcasting Corporation (IBC) and other Inuit independent producers.
The channel is available nationally to more than 610,000 Shaw Direct satellite customers (basic package) as well as Arctic Co-operatives Limited’s cable subscribers…
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Telus achieves lowest network latency
SEATTLE — As was the case in the previous quarter, Rogers Communications ranked as the fastest fixed broadband provider among top Canadian providers in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to Seattle-based Ookla’s latest Speedtest Global Index measurement of network speeds in Canada.
Based on Speedtest Intelligence data from October to December 2020, Ookla awarded Rogers a fixed-broadband speed score of 147.12. Close behind was Canada’s other big cable company Shaw Communications with a speed score of 146.96, followed by Telus (105.9), Bell Canada (103.62), Cogeco (98.27), Videotron (94.65) and TekSavvy (39.36).
Ookla’s speed score…
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By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Canada’s largest telecoms are telling the Supreme Court of Canada a lower court fumbled a decision in favour of lower wholesale rates by attributing a line of reasoning that was allegedly never made by the CRTC, abrogating its responsibilities to review the correctness of the regulator’s decision.
That line of reasoning is based on how the CRTC structured its decision in the summer of 2019, when it ordered a lower rate at which smaller telecoms pay for and sell bandwidth from the larger telecoms. At issue in front of the Federal Court of Appeal was whether…
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CALGARY — Thanks to its Shaw Mobile bundling strategy, leveraging its Fibre+ Internet customer base, Shaw Communications reported record wireless subscriber growth with approximately 101,000 net additions in the first quarter of 2021, the company announced today.
The wireless net additions included a 31% year-over-year increase in postpaid net adds to 87,300, as well as 13,700 prepaid net additions in the quarter ended November 30, 2020. The company enjoyed continued growth in wireless service revenue of 9.7% year-over-year to $215 million over the comparable period in fiscal 2020.
Shaw’s wireless adjusted EBITDA totalled $75 million in the first quarter of 2021,…
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OTTAWA — With Navdeep Bains set to retire from politics by not running in the next federal election, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a cabinet shuffle this morning that now sees Saint-Maurice—Champlain MP François-Philippe Champagne (above), currently foreign affairs minister, become the minister of Innovation, Science and Industry (which we’ve been stuck on calling ISED, the ministry’s former name. We’ll start calling it ISI after this).
The largely rural riding’s primary community is Shawinigan.
“In his new role, Minister Champagne will rely on his extensive business experience in the fields of energy, engineering, and innovation to assist our economic recovery from…
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KINGSTON — Radio industry veteran Bob Willette (above) has been hired as the new program director of Corus Radio Kingston’s 96.3 Big FM (CFMK-FM) and 104.3 Fresh Radio (CKWS-FM), Corus Entertainment announced today.
Willette was most recently program director of Bell Media’s 102.9 K-Lite FM in Hamilton and 105.7 EZ Rock in St. Catharines, Ont. Prior to that, he was an on-air host and music director at Durham Radio’s 94.9 The Rock in Oshawa, music director at 99.9 Virgin Radio in Toronto, and program director at Evanov Radio Group’s 103.9 Proud FM in Toronto.
He previously worked for Corus Entertainment during…
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By Denis Carmel
GATINEAU – Late in 2019, in following up its universal service objective decision, the CRTC decided to study the barriers to building new facilities or to accessing or interconnecting with existing facilities in order to extend broadband networks more efficiently into underserved areas, including areas where, due to a lack of such networks, speeds don’t meet the service objectives.
Of course, in March 2020, the pandemic hit, and a vast number of Canadians went home to work, becoming completely dependent on their home’s high-speed Internet to continue work and school. Access to high-speed Internet rapidly became a political…
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