By Ahmad Hathout
GATINEAU – The CRTC has announced a second round of funding commitment from its $750-million Broadband Fund and it’s going to what the industry has often identified as a serious cost barrier to rural broadband: transport facilities.
On Thursday, the regulator announced five recipients for funds worth a total of $26.7 million, focusing on British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Ontario. Those companies are Rogers, Shaw, BH Telecom Corp., Columbia Basin Broadband Corporation, and Tough Country Communications Ltd., which are expected to connect 41 communities with 550 km of fibre transport.
The first announcement pledged $72 million for satellite and fibre…
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INUVIK, NWT — Northwestel said today it has officially launched its unlimited fibre internet service in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, with residential and business customers now able to order the service which offers speeds up to 250 Mbps.
Northwestel announced its intention last year to extend its fibre-to-the-home service to Inuvik (pop. 3,300), which is the company’s second FTTH community in the Northwest Territories, following Hay River. Both projects were funded entirely by Northwestel, the company says in a press release.
The company’s new residential fibre internet plans will deliver up to 16x faster Internet than previously offered by Northwestel, at…
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SSi Micro says northern broadband won’t grow if everything is given to incumbents
By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Last week, outgoing Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai said a chunk of the United States’ historic C-band spectrum proceeds should go toward a fund intended to help bring basic telecommunications services to all Americans.
North of the border, NDP Member of Parliament Brian Masse (and many others) has long been calling for spectrum proceeds to fund rural broadband investments — even creating a proposal to connect the entirety of the country to universal objective speeds (50 Mbps download/10 Mbps upload) much sooner than…
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TORONTO — Corus Entertainment today announced the new YTV Original family mystery series, The Hardy Boys, will premiere on YTV on Friday, March 5 at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Based on the books by Franklin W. Dixon, the series (13 episodes x 60 minutes) is produced by Lambur Productions and Nelvana, Corus’ kids content producer, in association with Corus Entertainment.
Filmed in Toronto and Southern Ontario, the much-anticipated Canadian premiere of The Hardy Boys on YTV follows the series’ U.S. debut in December 2020 on Hulu. Canadians can also stream The Hardy Boys live and on demand on StackTV with Amazon Prime…
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TORONTO – The Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University announced last week the launch of a new independent, three-year, research study on Canadian sports fan, in partnership with Sportsnet and in collaboration with the Future of Sport Lab (FSL).
Said to be the first-of-its-kind academic study, the “Canadian Sport Fan Index will provide key insights on the attitudes, behaviors and trends of sport fans across Canada,” said the press release. “The research will focus on the post-Covid era examining how fans are engaging with professional sports teams and leagues as they deal with limited access to live events,…
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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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