The Telus Fund on Tuesday announced the appointment of Chantal Côté as deputy director and the promotion of Julie Lapointe to operations and communications manager.
Also announced was the retirement of Elaine Jacques, senior French analyst and operations lead, at the end of 2026.
Côté will succeed Jacques in supporting the Telus Fund’s work in Canada’s French-language market while assuming broader responsibilities across the organization. She will work closely with Leah Camenzind, executive director of the Telus Fund, to implement the fund’s programs and strategic priorities, according to a press release announcing Côté’s appointment.
Côté joins the Telus Fund from the Academy…
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The United Steelworkers union (USW) and Telus on Monday announced 3,000 unionized workers at Telus operations in four provinces have ratified a new collective agreement with the telecom.
Members of USW Local 1944, the workers include call centre and technical support staff and technicians who maintain cellular infrastructure and provide services to residential and business customers. The union members work throughout British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec.
Ratification of the new collective agreement comes five months before the existing contract expires next March. The new agreement’s term is from April 1, 2027 to December 31, 2031.
Union and company negotiators reached a…
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By Connie Thiessen
A group of private and public sector partners have announced the coordinated takedown of X.CPE, a global botnet hidden in more than 1.3 million set-top boxes across more than 200 countries, including Canada and the U.S.
Led by Google, Plume, TrendAI, Lumen, HUMAN Security and Synthient, alongside Japan’s National Police Agency, the group says X.CPE was hidden on devices before they were ever sold, using subscribers’ devices and home internet connections without their knowledge or consent.
Embedded in firmware and built to evade pre-release security checks, the botnet generated revenue from compromised devices by reselling bandwidth, delivering video content, ad…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Timeless and Rogers have agreed on rates for the cable giant to carry OneSoccer, but not yet on packaging.
The CRTC said Friday that, during final offer arbitration (FOA), Timeless agreed to Rogers’s rates to carry the discretionary sports channel. With that, the parties resolved the undue preference complaint Timeless filed against Rogers in 2023. Rogers offered rates similar to those given to comparable services – Sportsnet West, beIN Sports, and Goal TV – and to provide it to Rogers’s entire subscriber base to add on an à la carte basis or as part of a package, according…
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Reasons coming later; Rogers “considering next steps”
By Ahmad Hathout
The Competition Tribunal ordered Rogers on Wednesday to pay a $15-million penalty for marketing wireless service plans with a finite amount of high-speed data as “unlimited” and “infinite.”
The tribunal said Rogers, which also must disseminate a “corrective notice,” contravened paragraph 74.01(1)(a) of the Competition Act, which covers false or misleading representations to the public. The tribunal said it will work with the parties to redact any confidential information before releasing its reasons, which is expected within 10 business days and will include said corrective notice.
“Canadians rely on accurate…
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Bell announced Tuesday it has signed an agreement to sell a 49.9-per-cent stake in a newly formed wireless tower infrastructure company to Quebec pension fund La Caisse (formerly CDPQ) for $2.45 billion.
The new tower company (TowerCo) will own and operate Bell’s portfolio of wireless infrastructure assets, which includes more than 5,000 sites across Canada.
Under the terms of the agreement, TowerCo will lease capacity on the transferred towers to Bell, which will retain a 50.1-per-cent controlling equity interest in TowerCo.
The transaction values the new tower company at approximately $4.91 billion and is expected to close…
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As part of its ongoing review of the wholesale high-speed access (HSA) service framework, the CRTC is asking Canada’s telcos and cablecos for information regarding the appropriateness of mandating that all incumbents provide a 50 Mbps service on a wholesale basis to ensure low-cost options are available to customers.
The telecom regulator also wants to know if it would be appropriate to establish a single frozen rate for all services in the “up to 50 Mbps” rate band.
In April, the CRTC finalized the rates for aggregated wholesale HSA services over fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) facilities. At that…
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Cable giant watching AI shopping
By Ahmad Hathout
Rogers executives said Friday that the cable giant felt the full impact of the CRTC’s fees elimination decision in the third quarter, as it continues to seek ways to offset the loss of revenue that it says was used to recoup costs.
On a year-over-year basis, wireless service revenue decreased one per cent to just north of $2 billion and mobile phone ARPU fell 2.6 per cent, or $1.48, to $55.22 in the third quarter, which encompasses the months of July, August and September.
“The full run rate for the decision was felt in the…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Rogers and Corus have agreed to a new distribution deal that ends a long-running carriage dispute that involved several regulatory and court decisions.
Corus wrote a letter to the CRTC last month stating it wished to withdraw two 2024 undue preference applications, including one that targeted Rogers’s intention of removing or repackaging its Home and Flavour channels, which replaced HGTV and Food Network, respectively, after the cable giant scooped up the rights to those trademarks and content that summer.
In a reply on Tuesday, CRTC staff acknowledged that Corus and…
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Telus announced Tuesday it is now including advanced scam protection across calls, texts and emails in all new mobility data plans, in partnership with cybersecurity expert Norton.
Built directly into the My Telus app, Telus Scam Protection includes features that help identify and block scam calls, flag suspicious messages on customers’ phones and give users 24/7 on-demand access to a chat-based assistant for digital safety information.
The tool’s four distinct features include:
Safe Call: helps identify suspicious calls, automatically block calls identified as scams, and label incoming calls as scams, spam or a verified business, giving…
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