GATINEAU – The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) questioned the appropriateness of the proposed OMNI Regional service in its appearance on Tuesday. Fairchild Television Ltd. noted that it believes a licence renewal hearing isn’t the appropriate forum to consider a new OMNI.
PIAC said the new OMNI doesn’t meets the high bar required for 9(1)(h) carriage. The association said Rogers’ failed to offer a long-term vision for the station indicating how it “would make an exceptional contribution to Canadian expression. Instead, many of its commitments already reflect existing or past conditions of licence and programming.”
That Rogers is attempting to get…
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OTTAWA – The Wireless Code plus customer service improvements by the country’s wireless and Internet providers helped to cut telecom service complaints for a third straight year, the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS) said Thursday in its annual report.
The report, Guidance In A Sea Of Change, showed that the CCTS received 8,197 customer complaints in 2015-16, down 18% from 9,988 in 2014-15, and that it increased its resolution rate two points to 89%. Wireless services complaints once again topped the list with 50.3% of all complaints, followed by 26.5% for Internet, 19.6% for local telephone service and 3.6%…
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Also offers up new best practices: PIAC says not far enough
GATINEAU – While noting Canadian subscription TV carriers are operating within the rules, the CRTC made the unprecedented decision to renew the large carriers' broadcast distribution undertaking licenses for just a single year, as opposed to the usual seven-year term.
To the CRTC, this continues its efforts to put consumers at the centre of the Canadian broadcasting system. In the November 21 decision, the Regulator offered what it sees as the best practices that broadcast distributors should undertake to ensure that Canadians are aware of small basic packages, their limits and offers related to them.
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Minister Bains wouldn’t say, except perhaps between the lines
OTTAWA – It’s been nearly seven months since Bell Canada announced an agreement to buy Manitoba Telecom Services for $3.9 billion and still there has been no official word from the federal government on what it thinks of the deal.
The Competition Bureau is the primary regulator Bell has to satisfy with this purchase, but since the Bureau doesn’t do public hearings the way the CRTC does, we really don’t know what it is telling BCE officials about the deal, or the questions it has, but the six-plus…
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TORONTO – With more than 350 delegates, a strong group of sponsors and vendors and 21 educational sessions, the 2016 Canadian ISP Summit was the biggest edition yet.
Focused on independent ISPs like Teksavvy, Distributel, Sogetel and Execulink, the annual gathering is a place to hear war stories, get the latest and greatest in tech developments, hear marketing successes and, of course, regulatory wins and losses.
2016 has featured a few wins for the independent ISPs on the wholesale wireline front, especially (even though that still isn’t over, yet).
The final session…
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OTTAWA – Canadians continued to cut the TV cord in record (if still pretty small) numbers since launch of a CRTC-mandated skinny basic TV package on March 1st.
In the two fiscal quarters since phase one of the Commission’s new consumer choice policy came into effect (which mandated a $25 skinny basic package of over-the-air stations and must-carry channels and the launch of smaller, theme packs of channels), Canada’s publicly traded TV service providers combined lost approximately 98,500 TV subscribers, according to new research and analysis from Ottawa-based research and consulting firm Boon Dog Professional Services.
That’s a loss of 11,500…
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TORONTO – Food lovers may gorge on Bell Media’s Gusto over the holiday season thanks to a national free preview of the food and lifestyle channel.
The exclusive home to all-new Jamie Oliver programming in Canada, programming also features cooking series from lifestyle guru Martha Stewart, including the new Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party where she cooks and entertains alongside her unlikely friend and King of Kush, Snoop Dogg. Gusto’s lineup also includes superstar British chef Lorraine Pascale in her new series Lorraine’s Fast, Fresh And Easy Food, the perfectly paired exclusive series The Wine Show, plus hours of original Canadian programming,…
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GATINEAU – Differential pricing can benefit a broad range of players in the communications market, Telus told the CRTC on the fourth day of its DPP hearing, but just don’t let the vertically integrated (VI) entities use their “unnatural incentives” to give themselves an advantage.
“Since differential pricing practices increase the size of the market, they allow both carriers and content providers to spread these fixed costs over a larger number of consumers. This process has produced, and should continue to produce, newer and better services at stable or falling prices throughout the Internet ecosystem,” said Dr. Jeffrey Eisenach, managing…
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GATINEAU – Smaller broadcasters warned the CRTC on Wednesday that it must guard against differential pricing practices because they could have a significant negative impact on their content.
The Independent Broadcast Group told the Commission Wednesday morning it has to consider potential abuses from media companies which own both content and ISPs.
Brad Danks, CEO at OUTtv, noted in his opening remarks to the IBG’s appearance in the DPP hearing that it’s pretty clear that vertically integrated (VI) media companies are able to prefer their own content in ISP distribution. In addition, once the VI’s affiliated broadcast distribution arm gets ISP…
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TORONTO – The incoming CEO of Rogers Communications, a former Rogers CEO, and the founder of Wind Mobile in Canada are all now investors in a wireless company looking for growth in Bolivia and New Zealand.
In a press release today, Alignvest Acquisition Corporation (AQX) and Trilogy International Partners LLC have announced a proposed acquisition where the two combine.
Trilogy, based in Bellevue, Washington, was formed in 2005 as a privately held wireless telecommunications operator and provides communications services through its operating subsidiaries, 2degrees and NuevaTel (which operates under the brand Viva), in New Zealand and Bolivia, respectively.
2degrees and NuevaTel provide…
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