By Ahmad Hathout
Telus is asking the CRTC to ensure that all Canadian distributors get a fair shot at negotiating carriage of content held by Rogers and Bell.
“It ensures that Canadians nationwide will have competitively priced access to readily discoverable Canadian content that should be accessible to Canadians across the country at fair prices because it precludes vertically integrated companies like Rogers and Bell from keeping important content to themselves,” Daniel Stern, Telus’s associate general counsel, said Thursday.
The overarching Telus position is that service providers must be able to bundle television and internet to compete against these VIs. The…
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By Ahmad Hathout
In an extraordinary legal filing, Bell is accusing Telus of training and using door-to-door salespeople to pitch an unlicensed IPTV application to get customers to switch to Telus internet services.
The activity is allegedly taking place in areas where Telus wholesales internet service from Bell, according to a statement of claim in Ontario Superior Court, filed Thursday.
The representatives “promote, facilitate, authorize, and assist in the installation of an illegal, unlicensed IPTV application … that reproduces and retransmits Canadian and international programming, including works and signals in which Bell and its affiliated programmers hold copyright,” the statement alleges.
The representatives…
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By Ahmad Hathout
An Eastlink executive said Wednesday that the company has experienced challenges getting large streaming platforms to do deals with a smaller distributor like itself, as more Canadians seek bundles with both linear and online options.
“It is extremely key,” Andy Garrett, vice president of product management, said about being able to do package deals with big streamers like Netflix and Apple TV. “I know a lot of the larger streamers are looking for or wanting to do business with a large provider. So they would typically say that we’re too small and we’re not worth their time.
“Not being…
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Appeals on the horizon
By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC ruled Friday that it will continue allowing the three largest internet service providers to use the wholesale access regime, pointing to the “several thousand” Canadian households now on service plans offered by the “dozens of providers” using the final framework from August 2024.
The decision flies in the face of concern from a broad swath of ISPs big and small, who have argued this would be a disastrous decision for investment in networks and for the viability of regional players as the deeper-pocketed, bigger brands will now be able to ride on their…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Quebecor said Thursday that the CRTC should consider eliminating rules that have no equivalent in the online world, including what it calls micromanaging of commercial relationships under the decade-old Wholesale Code.
Similar to sentiment from Bell on Wednesday, Quebecor executives told the CRTC studying the market dynamics between broadcasters and programmers that the Canadian system is no longer a “walled garden” environment closed off from the myriad of online options, and that more needs to be done to level the playing field.
Quebecor’s recommendations in general include the removal of the Wholesale Code; in particular, it…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Bell urged the CRTC on Wednesday to loosen the rigid rules surrounding how broadcasters and programmers are allowed to negotiate the packaging and payment of content.
The vertically-integrated company said there are certain commission rules dating back to 2015 that are hampering the ability of both the distributor and programmer to get the best commercial outcome in a system that is now flooded with online options.
“Since the introduction of the Wholesale Code, there’s a lot of prohibitions on specific packaging terms in our negotiations with BDUs,” Ben Keys, Bell Media’s director of content distribution, said Wednesday. “And what…
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Telus alleges Bell complaint a delay tactic
By Ahmad Hathout
Bell is alleging that Telus is unduly disadvantaging its newly branded television networks after the broadcaster signed a deal in March to carry Rogers’s Warner Bros. Discovery programming.
In the partially redacted complaint, dated late April but only made public by the CRTC last week, Bell says its USA Network, Oxygen True Crime, CTV Nature, CTV Speed, and CTV Wild services are being treated unfairly because the broadcaster is allegedly looking to remove the services from some packages containing Rogers’s Discovery content.
“We are not trying to maintain a de facto access right…
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Telus announced last week it has submitted a non-binding indication of interest (IOI) to the board of directors of Telus Digital (formerly known as Telus International) to acquire all of the outstanding subordinate voting shares and multiple voting shares of Telus Digital not already owned by Telus for a proposed price per share of US$3.40.
To be paid in cash, Telus common shares or a combination of both, the proposed price represents a premium of approximately 15 per cent to Telus Digital’s closing share price on the New York Stock…
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By Ahmad Hathout
If the CRTC mandates information disclosure for wireless services like its 5G home internet, then it could stunt Rogers’s effort to bridge the digital divide, the cable giant said Thursday.
“Introducing what’s being considered here, for something that’s not captured by the legislation, could impose costs and burdens upon Rogers in the infancy of its launch of this product that actually undermine achievement of that critical public policy objective,” Dean Shaikh, Rogers’s senior vice president of regulatory affairs, told the commission studying the implementation of standardized information to make it easier for customers to choose internet services.
“This is…
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By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC should specifically tailor its broadband transparency efforts on certain technologies that have been shown to demonstrate more variation in internet speeds, such as satellite and fixed-wireless services, according to Bell executives.
Otherwise, if the CRTC must impose standardized transparency language to make it easier for consumers to choose services, it can force internet service providers to change their “up-to” or “maximum” language to “typical” because that’s what most service providers are already offering on wireline.
“We’d be well within … the margins by which what we advertise as a maximum speed would be advertised as a typical…
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