By Ahmad Hathout
TORONTO – Shaw Communications plans to push Ontario to make mandatory the municipalities’ co-operation with telecommunications service providers to allow access to their infrastructure quickly for network builds, as urgency to lay the groundwork for 5G picks up.
The Alberta-based company registered lobby files with the province last week that reflect the telecom’s intention to bring the case to ministers that there is an urgent need for telecoms to obtain easy access to city infrastructure “to ensure connectivity can be built in a timely manner,” the registration says. It’s unclear how Shaw would like that co-operation to be…
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TORONTO — Evanov Communications Inc. announced last week the company’s founder and president, Vasil William (Bill) Evanov, died on February 28 at the age of 77.
Born in 1942, Evanov was the son of Bulgarian immigrant parents. After learning the business during his tenure with CHIN Radio, working with the legendary Johnny Lombardi, Evanov launched his first radio station, CIAO-AM 530, a multilingual station in the Brampton/Toronto market in 1984. Evanov Communications now operates 19 stations across the country and has several hundred employees. According to the company statement, Evanov’s children, Paul and Kristina, will continue to run the…
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OTTAWA – The Canadian Chapter of the International Institute of Communications last week announced its keynote speakers for IIC Canada 2020, to be held April 20-21, at the Shaw Centre in Ottawa.
The big names are:
Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Canadian Heritage
Monika Ille, president and CEO, APTN
Grace Koh, U.S. representative and head of delegation to the International Telecommunication Union World Radiocommunication Conference 2019
Pierre Karl Péladeau, president and CEO, Quebecor
Ian Scott, CRTC chair
Catherine Tait, CBC president and CEO
Details of IIC Canada plenary sessions are also now available on the IIC Canada website. The session subjects…
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CALGARY – Shaw Communications announced Thursday it was substantially finished with its total business transformation plan announced in February 2018.
The TBT was focused on “reinventing our operating model to better meet the changing needs and expectations of consumers and businesses,” reads the press release. The program saw a large number of employees leave the company, cushioned by a generous voluntary departure package.
“As part of this journey, we have become a more focused, agile and accountable organization, which has allowed us to drive meaningful productivity improvements in the way we operate and invest so that we can deliver a…
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OTTAWA — On Tuesday, the same day it denied an application by the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) and the National Pensioners Federation (NPF) to require Koodo Mobile and other wireless service providers to provide paper bills upon request, the CRTC announced a new proceeding looking into the issue of paper billing.
In its decision against PIAC and NPF, the Commission says it found “there was no existing legislature or regulatory obligation that mandated the provision of paper bills and, since the rationale and evidence on the record of this proceeding related largely to Koodo alone, it would not…
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TORONTO — Effective Tuesday, Corus Entertainment appointed three new independent members to its board of directors. Joining the board are Alex Carloss, Stephanie Coyles and Sameer Deen.
“We are thrilled to welcome such a high impact group of individuals to our board of directors,” said Heather Shaw, Corus’s executive chair of the board, in the news release. “They each bring decades of leadership and experience in key areas of opportunity for Corus. Their appointments increase the diversity, knowledge and experience of our board.”
Doug Murphy, president and CEO, added: “This is an exciting new chapter for Corus as we pursue…
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Bitrates will have to be lowered
By Steve Faguy
GATINEAU – Faced with escalating costs amid the coming 600 MHz repack of television stations, Corus Entertainment is proposing an “innovative solution” by using digital TV multiplexing to combine nearby Global TV over-the-air transmitters in eastern Ontario and the Okanagan region of B.C.
The CRTC published applications on Monday to remove seven retransmitters and instead put their programming as subchannels of another Global stations whose signal at least partially overlaps:
CIII-DT-6 Ottawa (Global Toronto) would carry CKWS-TV-2 Prescott (Global Kingston)
CHEX-DT Peterborough would carry CIII-DT-27 Peterborough (Global Toronto) and CKWS-DT-1 Brighton (Global Kingston)
…
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TORONTO — A new multi-year media rights extension will see TSN and RDS continuing to provide exclusive Canadian coverage of FIA Formula One (F1) Grand Prix events through the 2024 season, Bell Media announced Monday.
TSN and RDS will broadcast all F1 World Championship races, as well as qualifying and practice sessions and encore presentations. The 2020 Canadian Grand Prix takes place at the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in Montreal on the weekend of June 12-14.
In addition, with the new agreement, F1 fans who subscribe to TSN or RDS will now have access to a multitude of all-new F1 live feeds, including…
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TORONTO — Independent Internet and TV service provider VMedia Inc. has submitted an objection to cabinet (officially the Governor-in-Council) in response to Bell Canada’s and the major incumbent cablecos’ petitions in November, in which they asked cabinet to overturn the CRTC’s August decision concerning final rates for aggregated wholesale high-speed access (HSA) services.
VMedia filed its submission on February 14, the last day to do so, and has posted a copy on its website. On Thursday, the independent ISP issued a news release to publicize its submission to cabinet and to explain its arguments for why the Commission’s decision…
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EDMONTON — Allarco Entertainment’s pay-TV network Super Channel announced Wednesday its new six-part international spy thriller Mirage will make its Canadian English broadcast premiere on Sunday, March 8 at 8 p.m. on Super Channel Fuse.
Each one-hour episode will also be available on Super Channel On Demand the day following its weekly linear broadcast.
The series about nuclear proliferation in the Middle East tells the story of Claire (played by Quebec native Marie-Josée Croze, pictured), an expatriate starting over in Abu Dhabi with her son and husband Lukas (German actor Hannes Jaenicke). Claire is thrust into the shadowy world of espionage…
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