TORONTO – Unable to come to a new wholesale carriage agreement, Rogers Cable dropped Speed from its channel lineup March 1st.
The channel originally came to Canada in 1997 as Speedvision as a part of the third tier of analog specialty channels launched that fall and has been a cars-and-motorsports channel ever since – a place where gearheads and race junkies could watch shows on how to fix cars and race cars – as well as to see a huge number of live car, truck and motorbike races. It was acquired by Fox in 2001 and renamed Speed Channel, and…
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TORONTO – Calling 2013 “a pretty good year”, SaskTel president and CEO Ron Styles said this week that the provincial Crown corporation will come close to its financial targets ($1.2 billion in revenue, $93 million in net income) when it announces its annual results in April.
Styles was in Toronto on Monday and sat down with Cartt.ca to discuss the year past, the year ahead and some of the challenges posed by current regulatory uncertainty in Canada’s telecom industry.
The past year saw SaskTel continually add capacity to its wired and wireless network, continue to grow its fibre to the premises…
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WASHINGTON, D.C. – According to Kathleen Ham, vice-president of federal regulatory affairs for number four U.S. wireless provider T-Mobile, the Federal Communications Commission should look to the results of Canada’s 700 MHz wireless auction for instruction.
In a blog-post on February 28, Ham noted that “adopting reasonable spectrum aggregation limits is the best possible approach to maintaining a healthy, competitive wireless industry.” As readers and other industry watchers here will recall, Industry Canada placed limits on the amount of spectrum our established big three, Rogers, Telus and Bell could acquire in the auction which just wrapped…
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TORONTO – CBC/Radio-Canada is readying more than 90 hours of fully accessible TV broadcasts and more than 250 hours of online coverage of the Sochi 2014 Paralympic Winter Games.
Coverage begins Friday, March 7 at 2:00 PM ET/11:00 AM PT with the opening ceremony, and continues with daily coverage through to the closing ceremony on Sunday, March 16. Other members of the Canadian Paralympic Committee’s (CPC) broadcast and digital media consortium include Sportsnet, Accessible Media Inc. (AMI), Yahoo Sports Canada and SendtoNews.
CBC/Radio-Canada will lead the creation of broadcast content for the consortium which will air on Sportsnet and AMI, while Yahoo…
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TORONTO – With the inaugural CommTech East Show just weeks away, organizers have confirmed an engaging lineup of speakers and diverse sessions.
Scheduled for April 15 and 16, 2014 at the Mississauga Convention Centre, the more than 25 sessions will include topics such as:
– If FTTH is the Future, What Happens Before Then?;
– LTE Interference on Broadband Cable TV Services;
– Damage Prevention by the Ontario Regional Common Ground Alliance;
– Why Batteries Fail – Backup Battery System Testing and Maintenance; and
– Wireless Interference 101.
The exhibitor forum will showcase over 2,000 products and services from more than 80 North American manufacturers and…
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OTTAWA – Industry Canada has blocked a request by NextWave to transfer 83 spectrum licences to Rogers and Bell-owned Inukshuk, citing competitive concerns.
Industry Minister James Moore issued the decision Thursday, saying that after considering this request under the new spectrum licence transfer framework, Industry Canada determined that this licence transfer would “lead to unacceptable levels of concentration of spectrum in the hands of incumbent carriers that negatively affects competition in our wireless sector”.
“We will not approve any spectrum transfer request that results in excessive spectrum concentration for Canada's largest wireless companies, which negatively affects competition in the telecommunications sector”,…
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TORONTO – Shaw Media launched the new History Go app Thursday, just in time for season two of the hit series Vikings which airs Thursdays at 10:00 PM ET/PT, beginning February 27.
Available on iOS, Android, and history.ca, History Go offers History subscribers almost 300 hours of programming, including season one of Vikings, and popular series Yukon Gold, Ice Pilots NWT and Pawn Stars. The app is available now with Shaw, Shaw Direct, Rogers and several CCSA distributors, and will be available to Telus Optik TV and Cogeco Cable Canada subscribers next month.
“History Go is a strong addition to Shaw’s…
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OTTAWA – Let’s get this out of the way right now… Most of us were wrong. Many had assumed we would have a nice orderly, low-priced auction once there were no wild cards left in the bidding.
Analysts and other observers (us, too) made the mistake in thinking that these ultra-competitive companies would somehow quietly and quickly divvy up spectrum which boasts such excellent distance and barrier-penetrating properties as yet unseen in wireless telephony in Canada, spending only perhaps half of what was spent in the last auction – the $4.2 billion for AWS spectrum in 2008.
Not. Even. Close. Rogers…
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OTTAWA – Bell Media has announced the recipients of its first Bell Media Producer Accelerator Lab, a two-part program designed to assist the career advancement of mid-level Canadian producers.
Eight participants will begin on March 10 with a six week broadcaster internship at Bell Media headquarters in Toronto. They will also attend an industry event or conference, as well as participate in case studies and coaching sessions. After the internship, two producers will be selected for a production apprenticeship with a top independent Canadian production company or Bell Media In-House Productions, in order for them to become more familiar with executive producer roles…
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OTTAWA – Quebecor doesn't mince words in its complaint against the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund: "The decisions made by the board of directors of the Bell Fund in regard to three projects submitted in 2013 and set to be broadcast on TVA channels were not made in an objective manner and were discriminatory against TVA."
In a letter to the CRTC dated February 5 and made public on Monday, Quebecor's regulatory affairs director Peggy Tabet argues that the fund's decisions to refuse the three projects were made for "non-justified reasons" and concludes that they were made in a…
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