MONTREAL – Could Vidéotron be forced to refund cash to its TV subscribers for failing to give them proper community access television?
A grassroots community TV group that got the CRTC to declare Videotron’s MAtv community channel non-compliant with regulations has filed a class action lawsuit against the company on behalf of all subscribers in the greater Montreal area. The group is seeking a refund of part of the two per cent of gross revenues that are redirected to MAtv for greater Montreal over the past three years (roughly $4 total per subscriber), plus moral and punitive damages of $2…
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TORONTO – Bell Media’s CraveTV streaming service will be available to all Canadians with an Internet connection beginning early in 2016, the company said Monday.
When it launched last December, the service was firmly tied to a paid TV service subscription. But that strategy has changed, just weeks after Rogers and Shaw-owned shomi announced that it would open up to all Canadian Internet users this summer. It was not revealed whether CraveTV would continue with its $4 per month price tag.
“As our business model has continued to evolve, the time is right to also offer CraveTV as a standalone product,”…
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TORONTO – Children’s series The Moblees is taking its show on the road this summer plus has launched a free app for iPad for its young viewers.
The live-action interactive musical adventure series airs weekdays at 8:00 AM (8:30 AM NT) on Kids' CBC. Aimed at kids aged 3 – 5, The Moblees features fun moves, memorable music and catchy lyrics and stars five loveable characters who – along with doers at home – overcome obstacles through teamwork and movement: feisty Bailey Butterfly (Shannon Hamilton); her spontaneous younger brother, Carlin Caterpillar (Scott Farley); brainy perfectionist Gisbert Grasshopper (Chris George); tail-waggity optimist Dasha Dog (Michelle Bouey); and super smooth Sylvio Snake (Matthew Nethersole). Kids…
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VANCOUVER – Telus is offering a new app from the National Film Board that will allow Optik TV customers to stream new and classic NFB films to their televisions.
The content includes 1,100 NFB films, including Oscar-winning animated shorts, new and classic documentaries, great Canadian dramas, and films for kids. To access the NFB film app on Optik TV, customers must tune to channel 452 or 738 or press the "Apps/Interactive" button on their remote and select NFB.
“Conceived specifically for Telus Optik TV, this free streaming service is the latest in a growing family of NFB applications and digital platforms”,…
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GATINEAU – Canada’s Privacy Commissioner is praising new transparency reporting guidelines that should help Canadians understand how often, and in what circumstances, businesses provide their personal customer information to law enforcement and security agencies.
The new federal transparency reporting guidelines, released Tuesday by Industry Canada, were developed in consultation with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC), government departments and industry stakeholders. They are designed to provide direction to companies on making public information related to requests from government agencies to access customer information.
“The new transparency guidelines will help to close existing gaps in transparency reporting," said Commissioner…
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CALGARY – The announcement yesterday that Shaw Communications plans to roll out U.S. cable giant Comcast’s X1 platform shows how the company is continuing an extensive internal makeover.
Last quarter, it told analysts it was moving away from bundling home phone in with all of its products because it no longer makes business sense and wasn’t particularly customer-friendly. Shortly before that, it restructured its TV business to move away from old silos and towards thinking more completely like a digital media company.
This quarter, during its Q3 conference call,…
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TORONTO – Bell Canada said today it will spend $1.4 billion in Toronto alone to bring fibre to every home and business, and then upped the stakes even further by announcing it will soon bring 1 Gbps speeds to many cities in its footprint – which is up to four times as fast as cable companies offer most of their subscribers in Bell's area.
BCE CEO George Cope said Thursday that Gigabit Fibe Internet and television service will start this summer some Toronto neighborhoods, and will be extended to all of Toronto in three years. Quebec City and Halifax will…
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GATINEAU – Consumer representatives say the CRTC’s proposed TV Service Provider (TVSP) Code of Conduct should mirror many aspects and be “as consistent with the Wireless Code as possible.” The broadcast distributors, on the other hand, say that while having a standard set of practices for all TV providers is a worthwhile initiative, using the wireless code as a template just won’t work.
The TV providers Code of Conduct idea is something that came out of the CRTC's Let's Talk TV, TV Policy Review.
In a joint submission, the National Pensioners Federation (NPF) and Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) argue that…
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TORONTO – Mobilicity has accepted, and Industry Canada, the Ontario Superior Court and late Wednesday the Competition Bureau, have blessed, Rogers’ proposal to acquire 100% of Mobilicity’s ownership for $465 million, the communications giant confirmed Wednesday morning.
The announcement also said Rogers will buy Shaw's unused AWS-1 spectrum for $100 million, in addition to the down payments made when an option agreement was originally announced in January 2013, and will then divest some of that spectrum to Wind Mobile. Specifically, Rogers and Wind will undertake an AWS-1 spectrum swap in Southern Ontario to create contiguous spectrum for Rogers, and Rogers will also divest certain…
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TORONTO – After close to two years in creditor protection and having had a pair of prior sales to Telus rejected by the federal government, Mobilicity and its creditors believe it finally has its suitor.
The company and its creditors will file this motion with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice Wednesday morning to approve and authorize the sale of the company to Rogers Communications for $465 million, a deal which was accepted yesterday by the shareholders, according to the court documents. That is substantially more than what Telus offered ($380 million) in June of 2013, before the…
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