OTTAWA – This week, the federal government announced $6.7 million in funding will go to Telus to bring its Pure Fibre high-speed Internet to rural residents of British Columbia as part of the $1.75 billion Universal Broadband Fund’s rapid response stream.
This project will connect 1,977 underserved households in Pemberton, Steelhead, Ryder Lake, northwest of Princeton and the north Sunshine Coast and as part of the rapid stream, must be complete before the end of 2021.
For the full release, please click here.
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By Lynn Greiner
THE FIRST SEVERAL WEEKS of every year are usually devoted to studying and predicting market trends, despite the fact technology is moving so fast it’s hard to predict next week, let alone the entire year. But that doesn’t stop us from trying.
We asked Rob Barton, chief architect at Cisco Canada (pictured), for his take on telecom in 2021. Here’s what he told us.
5G
“It’s good to see that everyone is excited about 5G and they want to move into it and see the benefits,” he said. “Obviously, the ability to do 10-gig throughput with low latency, like one…
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Inaugural training and mentorship/coaching program for corporate Canada recruitment
TORONTO – The Onyx Initiative, a Toronto based non-profit established to bridge the pervasive gap in the recruitment and selection of Black college and university students, and recent graduates for roles in corporate Canada, announced Thursday over 300 applications for its Scholars Program and the selection of 170 participants for the first cohort.
This is both the result of a targeted outreach and engagement campaign with regional Black Student Associations, campus career centres, community organizations, and prominent social media forums, said the press release sent out by Bell Canada, which is a…
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By Ahmad Hathout
GATINEAU – The CRTC has announced a second round of funding commitment from its $750-million Broadband Fund and it’s going to what the industry has often identified as a serious cost barrier to rural broadband: transport facilities.
On Thursday, the regulator announced five recipients for funds worth a total of $26.7 million, focusing on British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Ontario. Those companies are Rogers, Shaw, BH Telecom Corp., Columbia Basin Broadband Corporation, and Tough Country Communications Ltd., which are expected to connect 41 communities with 550 km of fibre transport.
The first announcement pledged $72 million for satellite and fibre…
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Data plan prices have dropped between 10% and 18% since last year
OTTAWA — With no fanfare, or even a press release, the ministry of Innovation, Science and Industry released its latest quarterly report on wireless plan prices last Friday, which shows the majority of monthly wireless plans with 2 GB to 6 GB continue to decrease in price across Canada.
ISI (formerly ISED) is tracking wireless plan pricing as part of the federal government’s public pledge to consumers to reduce the cost of wireless services by 25% by early 2022. Benchmark prices, or the prices to which the 25% reduction…
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SSi Micro says northern broadband won’t grow if everything is given to incumbents
By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Last week, outgoing Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai said a chunk of the United States’ historic C-band spectrum proceeds should go toward a fund intended to help bring basic telecommunications services to all Americans.
North of the border, NDP Member of Parliament Brian Masse (and many others) has long been calling for spectrum proceeds to fund rural broadband investments — even creating a proposal to connect the entirety of the country to universal objective speeds (50 Mbps download/10 Mbps upload) much sooner than…
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Telus achieves lowest network latency
SEATTLE — As was the case in the previous quarter, Rogers Communications ranked as the fastest fixed broadband provider among top Canadian providers in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to Seattle-based Ookla’s latest Speedtest Global Index measurement of network speeds in Canada.
Based on Speedtest Intelligence data from October to December 2020, Ookla awarded Rogers a fixed-broadband speed score of 147.12. Close behind was Canada’s other big cable company Shaw Communications with a speed score of 146.96, followed by Telus (105.9), Bell Canada (103.62), Cogeco (98.27), Videotron (94.65) and TekSavvy (39.36).
Ookla’s speed score…
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By Denis Carmel
GATINEAU – Late in 2019, in following up its universal service objective decision, the CRTC decided to study the barriers to building new facilities or to accessing or interconnecting with existing facilities in order to extend broadband networks more efficiently into underserved areas, including areas where, due to a lack of such networks, speeds don’t meet the service objectives.
Of course, in March 2020, the pandemic hit, and a vast number of Canadians went home to work, becoming completely dependent on their home’s high-speed Internet to continue work and school. Access to high-speed Internet rapidly became a political…
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MONTREAL – Bell Canada today expanded on its plan simplify the process for service providers needing access to aerial infrastructure (poles, mostly) in Québec.
The company has been sharply criticized from many corners for the slow, onerous processes network builders must navigate in order to attach wires and other gear to Bell poles. This year the company has acknowledged this is a problem and pledged to make changes.
The issue of support structures (on a national basis) is also the subject of a full CRTC proceeding.
Service providers, says today’s announcement, “will now be able to conduct…
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TOKYO — Japan’s international 24-hour English-language television channel, NHK World-Japan, became part of Telus’ channel lineup on Tuesday.
As the first operator in Canada to include NHK World-Japan on its platform, Telus plans to provide the channel in HD for free to its viewers in western Canada for three months. The channel will be included in the News International package on Telus’ IPTV service, Optik TV.
“Carriage on Telus in Canada is an important milestone for NHK World-Japan, and we are delighted that our channel is now available to Canadian viewers,” said Shiromoto Masaru, president and CEO of Japan International Broadcasting…
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