By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – British Columbia’s minister of transportation and infrastructure (MOTI) has filed an application to the CRTC asking it to suspend a November decision that forces it to enter agreements with third party carriers wanting to attach equipment on poles that are being moved by the province.
The November decision was triggered by a Rogers and Shaw application, which asked that they be treated similarly to the incumbent Telus when it comes to compensation to relocate their transmission lines when the province decides to move their poles. In the decision, the CRTC said the province…
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Editor’s note: This story has been updated on March 2 with a comment from Quebecor.
By Ahmad Hathout
TORONTO – Bell is temporarily pausing its next generation 9-1-1 network until further notice, according to a Friday email from a Bell technician seen by Cartt.
“Bell Canada is advising all Originating Network Providers of a temporary embargo for NG9-1-1 Onboarding and Go-Live activities,” said Richard Little, a technical network specialist for Bell’s emergency services division said in the email to representatives of the providers. “The embargo will continue until further notice.
“ONPs will be notified once our planned resumption of activities is known,” Little…
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By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – The CRTC has put out a contract notice Thursday for a consultancy firm that will assist in analyzing the network outage at Rogers last summer and improvements the company has committed to going forward.
The July 8 network blackout brought down critical services for millions of Canadians, including government, banking and emergency services in some cases.
This week, the regulator announced the launch of the first of a number of proceedings on telecom network resiliency, the first of which will include mandatory notification requirements on all service providers when outages like these happen. As…
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By Samer Bishay, pictured above, founder, president and CEO of telecom Iristel.
On one hand, my telecom company and I have top secret security clearance from the federal government, and yet another part of the Ottawa bureaucracy is convinced we’re crooks.
It doesn’t add up.
There has been much talk lately about Canada feeling broken and our story does little to dispel such talk.
Unequivocally, we are not crooks.
And just as unequivocally, Ottawa is broken when one department – Canada Revenue Agency – accuses us of stealing from the taxman while law enforcement agencies see the value of us helping protect the treasury…
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By Ahmad Hathout
MONTREAL – Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau said on the company’s fourth quarter conference call Thursday that he is “not surprised” by the “little progress” the company has made on negotiating a deal to roam on the large carriers’ wireless networks, but said things may change with the new head at the CRTC.
The company’s Videotron subsidiary was denied last week an arbitration hearing with the regulator about a price for access to Bell’s wireless network, alleging Bell is stalling on negotiations. The CRTC, which asked about the status of those negotiations…
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By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – A thorn in the side of third party cable companies told to bear the full cost of a pole replacement to attach their telecom equipment on wood structures has been addressed Wednesday by the CRTC, which ruled that attachers should not bear more than 50 percent of the cost of a replacement in most instances.
Pole owners – mainly legacy telephone companies Bell and Telus – have historically charged full price for the pole replacement if a third party wanted to put their equipment on the wood structures (the regulator said this is “often” the case)….
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Government “disagreed” with incumbent arguments about direction usefulness and legality
By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Innovation Canada has kept its proposed policy direction to the CRTC largely intact, as the final version released Monday shores up language to reinforce the government’s perspective on the importance of competition and affordability in the wireline and wireless sectors of the telecommunications industry, while maintaining that the direction will encourage innovation and network investments.
The department clarified language in the final version that made clearer the importance in CRTC decisions of network reliability, fair roaming rates, and “just and reasonable” rates at which smaller internet service…
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By Bronwyn Howell, a fellow at think tank American Enterprise Institute with a PhD in economics and public policy, an MBA, and a BA in operations research, all from Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. She has undertaken contract work for Telus.
Canada and Australia are similar in many ways, but one area of significant difference is mobile telecommunications. While both countries share similar geographic and demographic features – vast territories very sparsely populated on average, yet highly-urbanised first-world economies, so likely face similar telecommunications costs and demands, Canada has fared less well in comparison to…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has sent a letter to the largest carriers requesting a status update on negotiations for access to their wireless networks by mobile virtual network operators.
The letter, dated yesterday, asks Bell, Rogers, Telus and SaskTel to provide the commission by February 8 a list of regional carriers that have made requests to begin negotiations for that access and when those requests were made; the current status of any negotiations and whether rates have been discussed; and a timeframe for when they expect agreements can be executed.
If the parties cannot come to an agreement on rates, they…
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By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Members of the House industry committee took issue today with Rogers being allowed to choose Videotron as its competitor to complete its acquisition of Shaw, with one member of Parliament saying it “boggles the mind” to think Rogers would sell Freedom for less if it meant more competition.
Today’s hearing was the committee’s second round at the Rogers-Shaw merger, this time with the new development that Videotron agreed to purchase Freedom from Shaw for nearly $3 billion. It also comes a day after the Federal Court of Appeal upheld a…
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