TORONTO – Spectrum hoarders need to “use it, lose it, or pay” was the message from wireless broadband services providers who spoke Wednesday afternoon during the closing session of the 2013 Canadian Telecom Summit.
“Our challenge is there are people out there who hoard spectrum and don’t make it readily available for people who need it,” said Michael Stephens, vice-president of marketing for TeraGo Networks, a provider of business broadband and cellular backhaul services during the panel discussion about the next generation of wireless.
Stephens said TeraGo would like to see the enforcement of spectrum implementation. “As long as people are…
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EDMONTON and BEVERLY HILLS – Super Channel announced today it has expanded its exclusive licensing and programming distribution deal with Starz Worldwide Distribution.
The agreement makes Super Channel the exclusive English pay television home in Canada for several Starz original series including David S. Goyer’s Da Vinci’s Demons, and the second season of Magic City, starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Olga Kurylenko, and James Caan. Each program will have a Canadian premiere on June 14, 2013 during a special two-hour programming block at 9pm ET.
Other TV series as part of the agreement include the widely…
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TORONTO – Telus officially terminated its plan to buy Mobilicity today after last week’s refusal by Industry Canada to okay the deal.
The struggling wireless provider announced it will now pursue its earlier recapitalization plan, which will be voted on by Mobilicity’s debtholders at a meeting on June 25. In a statement, the company said it “will continue to provide updates as warranted. Mobilicity continues to deliver an affordable wireless experience to its customers.”
The federal government rejected Telus’ proposal of $380 million to acquire Mobilicity on June 4, stating that it would not allow…
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TORONTO – With an aging population that will help Canada spend $250 billion annually on health care by 2020, it’s absolutely imperative that our health care providers dramatically accelerate their adoption of broadband technology and all that can mean, Telus chief commercial officer Joe Natale told Canadian Telecom Summit delegates on Tuesday.
The message was overshadowed completely by the federal government’s announcement on wireless spectrum which, in part, denied the application made by Telus to acquire Mobilicity, but Natale’s main theme is one our country absolutely needs to hear.
“Today, healthcare spending consumes 42 cents of every…
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TORONTO – The idea of “TV anywhere” has not yet been realized in Canada, but it’s what consumers will demand very soon, according to industry experts who spoke during a special panel titled “The Revolution of TV: Content Anywhere and Anyhow” at the Canadian Telecom Summit on Tuesday afternoon.
“There are a lot of indications that we’re about to go through a major change,” said David Purdy, senior vice-president of content for Rogers Communications. “Today, we’re in the middle of a revolution, but it’s nascent.”
The panel discussion’s moderator, Peter Miller, chair of Interactive Ontario, quoted some statistics from CBC’s Spring…
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TORONTO – Wind Mobile CEO Tony Lacavera told folks at the Canadian Telecom Summit this week that sure, with the federal government denying the bid from Telus to take over Mobilicity he’d be interested in talking about buying the struggling wireless firm, but there was another thing he said that caught our attention.
Namely, while Lacavera said thank you to the federal government for its announcements on spectrum transfers Tuesday, he also had some advice for the feds as well: Lift all foreign ownership restrictions in telecom, then let Bell and Telus merge and go international.
“We…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC is not satisfied with Telus’ proposals to address violations of undue preference regulations regarding the marketing of OUTtv, and has given the telco until June 20 to come up with a more detailed marketing plan to promote the national gay and lesbian network as part of a lifestyle extra package on its OptikTV service.
In its December 2012 decision, the Commission found that Telus failed to market OUTtv in a manner comparable to other similar services on its Optik TV distribution service and subjected OUTtv Network to an undue disadvantage. The…
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TORONTO – Cell tower sharing remains a white hot topic for wireless competitors and the issue raised its head 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.
Although mandated tower sharing was included in the 2008 AWS spectrum auction rules – as it will be for next year’s 700MHz spectrum auction – the problems for new wireless entrants are the growing costs to share tower space and that access rules are not adhered to by the three incumbents, said Ed Antecol, vice-president of regulatory affairs and…
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OTTAWA – The federal government said Tuesday that Telus can not buy Mobilicity right now and also pushed out the date of the auction of 700 MHz wireless spectrum to January of 2014.
Mobilicity’s network is built with AWS spectrum that was set aside for new competitors in 2008 and part of the rules of that set aside meant the spectrum could not be transferred to an incumbent for five years, a period which does not expire until February 2014. "Our government has been clear that spectrum set aside for new entrants was not intended to…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC’s new Wireless Code issued today allows consumers to cancel their mobile wireless contracts after two years even if they have signed on for a longer term, and also places caps on data overage and roaming charges.
The code, which will apply to new wireless contracts beginning December 2, 2013, requires wireless service providers to cap data overage charges at $50 and national and international roaming charges at $100 within a single monthly billing cycle. Additional charges cannot be added without a consumer’s consent.
The Commission says capping these charges is…
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