TORONTO – Wind Mobile Canada has never been so candid, or detailed, about its numbers.
During his luncheon keynote Tuesday, Wind CEO Tony Lacavera released subscriber, ARPU and various other metrics that make Wind, now with about 740,000 Canadian customers, look like a growing, viable, business – despite the hundreds of millions in debt owed from 2008 spectrum purchases and its network build since then.
But there’s a method to that data dump. Wind needs investors. With its foreign backer Vimpelcom having written Wind Canada’s value down to zero, that gave license to pundits, analysts and competitors…
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OTTAWA – The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) and the Consumers’ Association of Canada (CAC) have filed a joint application challenging the wireless device deposit programs offered by Rogers and Telus.
According to the press release, the Rogers “NEXT” and Telus “T-Up” programs require subscribers to pre-pay a monthly fee in addition to their usual service charges for at least 12 months. These payments, which range from $17 to nearly $30 a month, claims the application, go toward the partial cost of a new cellphone. If the customer stays subscribed and returns their old phone and signs a new two year contract,…
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TORONTO – Service providers should be working together, collaboratively, to build a truly integrated ecosystem for delivering next-generation, personalized customer services, said Telus CTO Ibrahim Gedeon during his Monday afternoon keynote at the Canadian Telecom Summit.
Admitting that no single service provider will ever own its clients’ end-to-end business, he added: “Not every service is 100% Telus, or CIBC, or Air Canada, or Rogers or Bell.”
He pointed out Telus was able to work with Bell and Rogers in the past on the OneAPI initiative that created a single API for the mobile industry in Canada. “How many people know that…
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TORONTO – Wholesale wireless service continues to be a prickly topic between wireless incumbents and new entrants, and quickly became a dominant theme Tuesday morning during the Canadian Telecom Summit’s annual regulatory blockbuster panel, moderated again this year by Cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien.
Bell, Rogers and Telus remained steadfast in their collective belief that increased regulation on wholesale wireless services will result in decreased network investments. Ken Engelhart, SVP regulatory for Rogers Communications, got that ball rolling early in the 90 minute panel, raising the matter in his opening “trite observations”.
“Wholesale regulation inevitably leads to a reduction in investment,…
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TORONTO – Wind Mobile chairman and CEO Tony Lacavera was on the attack again today during a luncheon keynote at CTS in Toronto, going after what he says are continuing anti-competitive behaviours of the big three wireless companies and suggesting further policy changes to the federal government.
However, Lacavera lifted the veil off of a range of Wind Canada financial metrics, too, today. So many in fact, it made us believe he is casting as wide a net as possible for more investors, or even preparing the company for a public offering.
Wind, as Lacavera’s speech also pointed out, is trapped….
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LOS ANGELES – Keri Levinsky has been promoted to the role of vice president, Canada Television Distribution for MGM Television, where she will oversee MGM Television’s Canada office.
Levinsky (pictured) will continue reporting to John Bryan, president of domestic television distribution for MGM. She previously served as director, Canada Television Distribution for MGM Television where she was responsible for feature film and television distribution to pay TV, free TV, cable TV, PPV/VOD, EST, SVOD and FVOD providers, for English and French Canada. Prior to joining MGM Television in 2011, Levinsky was senior manager, business development and content for Telus.
Additionally, Greg…
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WATERLOO, ON – BlackBerry has signed a new three-year agreement with EnStream, a mobile payments joint venture between Bell, Rogers and Telus, to provide a secure platform that supports transaction services between banks and consumers.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Under the agreement, EnStream will use infrastructure to enable financial institutions, like Royal Bank, TD Bank, CIBC and Desjardins, and mobile operators to securely provision sensitive payment card credentials into any smartphone capable of near field communication.
BlackBerry said that given its requirements for security, the mobile payments space continues to be an area of focus. The company…
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PORT COQUITLAM, BC – Telus has thrown its support behind a new text messaging pilot program that will provide support to young people who have been bullied or are bullying others.
The I Am Someone Ending Bullying Society, together with bc211 and Telus, are launching the service in September as a pilot in the Tri-City area of Port Coquitlam, Coquitlam and Port Moody. With a focus on the 12,250 students in public and private secondary schools in SD43, the pilot will run between September and December 2014 with hours of texting service Wednesday to Sunday from 3:30 PM – 11:00 PM…
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DENVER and TORONTO – World Fishing Network posted the highest single-month viewership in the history of the network during the month of April as part of its North American free preview.
Overall, WFN said that it experienced a 265% increase in average audience viewership in the U.S. during the preview period. Participating providers included Antietam Cable, Bright House Networks, Cablevision (Optimum), CenturyLink, Cox Communications, DISH, MetroNet and Verizon FiOS.
In Canada, Access, Bell, Cablevision du Nord du Quebec, Cogeco, Eastlink, MTS, Rogers, SaskTel, Shaw Cable, Shaw Direct, Source Cable, TBayTel, Telus, Videotron and Westman participated in the preview. While Canadian television…
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TORONTO – Rogers received close to 175,000 requests for customer data from federal agencies in 2013, the company disclosed Thursday in its first ever Transparency Report.
As Cartt.ca reported, a coalition of Canadian academics and consumer groups asked the country’s biggest telecommunications service providers in January to reveal the extent to which they pass on their customers’ private information to government agencies when asked. Sixteen different telcos were asked to respond or commit to responding by March 3, 2014.
Rogers said in the report that it fully complies with Canadian privacy law and actively safeguards its customers’ information. At the…
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