Competitors are left wondering about rates and implications of five-year access immunity
By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC on Tuesday ordered the largest telephone companies to provide wholesale access to their existing last-mile fibre networks across the country by February 13, 2025, but is shielding from the regime any new builds for five years.
The order is an expansion of the temporary regime ordered in November 2023 that forced Bell and Telus to provide competitors bundled access to their middle- and last-mile fibre networks in Ontario and Quebec, which has been in force since May 7. The CRTC will keep the existing rates…
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Telus announced Tuesday, in partnership with Android, it is opening the fourth edition of its Telus Esports Series tournament to gamers across North America for the first time.
Happening this fall, Telus Esports Series 4 will feature the games Apex Legends, Rocket League and Valorant, powered by Telus Arena, a nationwide gaming platform that supports and empowers esport players, explains a Telus press release.
Canadian and American gamers aged 15 and up can now register and qualify at www.telus.com/tes4 by Sept. 22 at 11:59 p.m. ET to play for a chance to win from a…
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Telus and Doig River First Nation, in partnership with All Nations Trust Company (ANTCO), the governments of Canada and British Columbia, and the Northern Development Initiative Trust, last week announced ground has been broken on a $19.2-million project that will soon bring Telus PureFibre to several remote communities in Northeast B.C.
The PureFibre expansion project will connect more than 60 households and a dozen businesses in Doig River First Nation, located approximately 70 kilometres northeast of Fort St. John, as well as hundreds of households in another 14 communities, according to a Telus press release.
“This project moves…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Telus reported Friday a 3.4-per-cent decline over the year in mobile wireless average revenue per user (ARPU) in the second quarter, which executives said they are clearly not pleased about but said there are ways to improve outcomes.
For the three months that ended on June 30, the Vancouver-based telecom reported total mobile ARPU per month of $58.49 compared to the $60.56 in the same period last year.
“This was a result of continued intense promotional market activity and heightened competition,” Telus president and CEO Darren Entwistle said on the company’s second-quarter conference call Friday. “Notwithstanding the competitive pressure,…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Bell CEO Mirko Bibic said Thursday that 41 per cent of the company’s new internet subscribers in the second quarter also purchased a wireless plan, which is a testament, he said, to the attraction of the telecom’s fibre product.
Compared to last year’s second quarter, the company also saw an 18-per-cent increase in households bundling wireless and internet bundles where the company has fibre.
“We’re seeing very good bundling success, and that’s adding to the lifetime value of customers,” Bibic said. “Fibre continues to be the growth engine of Bell on the wireline side, and frankly, if you look…
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Rebranding to Telus Digital Experience later in the third quarter, Telus International announced Wednesday the launch of Fuel EX, what it calls “an enterprise-safe generative AI (GenAI) employee assistant to support productivity, creativity and research.”
Fuel EX is the first public launch of an application built on Fuel iX, Telus International’s enterprise-grade AI engine, and is currently in operation at scale within Telus, where 35,000 employees are actively using the software and seeing improved productivity, according to a Telus International press release.
The Fuel EX employee AI assistant gives companies a single point of entry…
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Telus announced Tuesday the launch of its PureFibre 5 Gigabit Internet plan in Alberta and British Columbia, offering the fastest symmetrical download and upload speeds for home internet in Western Canada, it says.
A 100-per-cent pure fibre-to-the-home service, PureFibre 5 Gigabit Internet includes next-generation Wi-Fi 6E hardware, allowing customers “to seamlessly enjoy gaming, web surfing, video calling, working and learning from home, and streaming in 4K,” a Telus press release says.
PureFibre 5 Gigabit Internet starts from $145 per month on a two-year plan.
“With the launch of our PureFibre 5 Gigabit Internet plan, TELUS is setting a new…
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Telus announced Monday a collaboration with the University of Ottawa Heart Institute and Badal — a cloud and data analytics services company acquired by Telus in 2023 — to deploy advancements to the Sayhut app, a secure, privacy-compliant point-of-care smartphone app that helps to reduce diagnostic time for patients who may be experiencing a heart attack due to a blocked artery.
The app improves the speed and accuracy of communication between first responders, emergency doctors and interventional cardiologists at regional cardiac centres by enabling instant transfer of patient data via the app, allowing medical personnel to securely…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Videotron’s Freedom Mobile announced Thursday all monthly plans will now include access to its 5G network and roaming in the United States and Mexico – including new low-cost options starting at $5 per month after a digital discount is applied.
With the $5 monthly digital discount applied across all plans, Freedom subscribers can now start at a mere $5 per month to get access to the next-generation network and roaming in the U.S. and Mexico with 100 MB of data, two hours of talk and unlimited texting. At $20, they can get 3 GB of data with two…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Rogers is not done buying premium programming after its blockbuster purchase of the rights to content from Warner Bros. Discovery and NBCUniversal, the company’s chief financial officer said Wednesday, with a strategy of cutting out the middleman and going direct-to-studio seizing a chunk of its programming costs for quarters to come.
“We are looking to source leading programming that the customers watch, making that available and making that available at lower margins by cutting out the middleman company and going direct,” Rogers’s Glenn Brandt said during the company’s second-quarter earnings conference call.
“We will continue efforts and opportunities in…
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