Newspapers already filed suit against OpenAI
By Ahmad Hathout
Canada’s major newspapers are alleging in a lawsuit filed against Anthropic that the company is scraping their content to train its artificial intelligence models without consent, according to a statement of claim filed in Ontario Superior Court of Justice this month.
The San Francisco-based company behind the family of large language models (LLMs) known as Claude is scraping text data from the news websites and then using that “proprietary content to develop its models, without authorization or consent,” says the October 6 statement of claim from Torstar, The Globe and Mail, Postmedia, and…
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Telus and AST SpaceMobile announced Monday they have successfully completed their first integration test between Telus’s wireless network and AST SpaceMobile’s satellite-based network, marking a milestone in their partnership to enable direct satellite-to-smartphone connectivity.
By combining AST SpaceMobile’s low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation and Telus’s wireless network, this space-based technology will allow Canadian customers to use eligible smartphones beyond the reach of traditional cell towers, helping to close existing coverage gaps and to enhance access to critical emergency services, Telus said in a press release.
“Connecting smartphones directly to satellites…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Corus is suing Telus for $32.5 million after allegedly discovering that the broadcaster had been improperly collecting a wholesale rate discount on the distribution of its channels.
Corus and Telus are currently negotiating the terms on which the latter will continue to distribute the former’s services. The last distribution agreement, which currently governs their relationship, has not yet been renewed past its expiry on December 31, 2023.
Under the current distribution agreement, Telus pays a lower wholesale rate if it rolls Corus’s services in a package with at least five services – “theme packs” and “pick packs” – which…
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Telus Health announced last week a new mobile health clinic will soon be bringing primary care directly to residents of the Kikino and Buffalo Lake Metis Settlements in northeast Alberta, starting in late September.
Expected to visit the two communities two days a week, the Wâhkôhtowin Mobile Health Clinic powered by Telus Health will provide non-emergency healthcare services, including routine health check-ups, assessment and treatment of common health concerns, chronic disease management and care planning, and health screening, prevention and wellness supports.
The custom-built clinic-on-wheels will be operated by Primary Care Alberta and its services shaped and delivered in collaboration with…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Canada’s largest telecoms are welcoming news that the federal government will invest in a national internet backbone.
Prime Minister Mark Carney announced at the Canada Investment Summit in Toronto on Tuesday that the government will spend money from private investment, including in the country’s four largest airports, on “new nation-building infrastructure, including a sovereign broadband backbone” that connects Canadians across the country “with more direct and secure links to Europe and Asia.”
When reached for comment, Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) only added Wednesday: “Further details regarding the initiative will be provided in due course.”
One…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Rogers and Telus want the Federal Court of Appeal to determine whether the CRTC adequately established why it believes the three largest telecoms may be violating a new rule that bans fees discouraging customers from switching providers.
The CRTC launched a show-cause proceeding on June 30 ordering Rogers, Bell and Telus to show why their new device setup and SIM card fees are not in violation of the June 12 rule that eliminates fees on activation, changing and canceling internet and wireless plans. The proceeding came before the Big Three tried…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Rogers’s chief financial officer said Tuesday that offsetting the CRTC’s ban on activation fees has become part of the company’s strategy.
“The headwinds we have going into the second half of this year are coming from the ongoing effects of that first quarter discounting, but then also the CRTC regulation around fees,” Glenn Brandt said at the BMO TMT conference Tuesday. “As all of us adjust to figure out how to offset the loss of that fee income … we’re all doing it with setup fees, shipping fees, delivery fees that have always been there, but they become more…
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The Telus Fund, a certified independent production fund, announced last week Juggy Sihota has been appointed as chair of the fund’s board of directors.
Sihota succeeds Jack Shute who will remain on the board as a director.
As chair, Sihota “will guide the Fund as it continues to provide critical financial support to independent Canadian producers for development, production, and audience discoverability,” reads a press release announcing her appointment.
A long-time senior executive at Telus, Sihota is the telecom’s senior vice president of social impact and chair of the Telus Friendly Future Foundation. Previously, she was a founding executive of Telus Health,…
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By Alistair Vigier, CEO of Caseway, an AI company that co-creates products with large enterprises and shares the revenue with them
Canadian telecom has spent the better part of 20 years arguing about who gets access to whose infrastructure: wholesale rates, resale, aggregated and disaggregated access, fibre. Anyone who works in this business knows how long those arguments can run.
Watching Bell and Telus build their AI businesses, I would like us to ask a few of the same questions earlier this time.
Bell announced its AI Fabric in May 2025, with plans for more than 500 megawatts of…
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Bell and Telus are among several high-profile companies that have signed onto a framework, announced by Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) Thursday, that establishes baseline responsibilities for data centre projects.
The framework has five core expectations for data centres: they must create lasting local benefits, must not shift electricity costs to Canadians, must minimize water use and environmental impacts, must be transparent about local impacts, and must bring strategic value to Canada.
“These national principles are intended to complement existing provincial, territorial, municipal and Indigenous regulatory processes by setting a nationally recognized baseline that communities can use when considering major…
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