TORONTO – New players in the Canadian wireless space say they’re happy with how things are going so far, but they admit it’s still very early days yet.
Two of the newest entrants spoke during a panel discussion at the Canadian Telecom Summit here on Wednesday afternoon. Both Wind Mobile Canada CEO Ken Campbell and Mobilicity president and CEO Dave Dobbin said their wireless service launches have been going as planned. Wind Mobile recently announced service availability in its fifth urban market – Vancouver – while Mobilicity launched service in its very first market – Toronto – only three weeks ago….
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VANCOUVER – Optik is the new brand name of Telus’ suite of advanced TV and high speed internet services, the company announced today.
“Our Telus team has tapped the latest fibre optic and IP technologies to bring our customers a compelling set of home entertainment and communications services that can be tailored to their lifestyles,” said Joe Natale, Telus’ chief commercial officer in the press release.
Optik brings together Optik TV, which is powered by Microsoft Mediaroom, and Optik High Speed, offering Internet access speeds of up to 25 Mbps that can be accessed anywhere in your home with home Wi-Fi.
“Optik…
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EVEN THE NON-SPORTS fan will know there’s a bit of a soccer tournament about to begin in South Africa this weekend. And yesterday was press release day on the TV front.
In Canada, the CBC is leading the coverage of the 2010 FIFA World Cup with broadcast across multiple platforms, a World Cup CBC mobile app – and the third place and final games are to be available in 3D for the dozens (?) of fans who have new 3DTVs.
After CBC sent out it’s announcement, so did Shaw Cable, Telus, Shaw Direct, Cogeco, Rogers…
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VANCOUVER – Telus customers are the targets of a new phone scam that tries to trick them in to revealing personal information.
In a statement late Wednesday, Telus said that it has received “a significant number of customer calls” in the past 24 hours complaining about the scam. Customers all report picking up a phone call from a 905-395-XXXX number to hear a recorded message that says: “Hello, because you are a valued Telus customer you will receive 3,000 travel dollars. To accept press 1”. Customers who press 1 are then connected to a person misrepresenting themselves as working for…
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TORONTO – In light of Industry Minister Clement’s comments on foreign investment on Monday, it wasn’t long before the topic du jour came up again at Tuesday’s ‘Regulatory Blockbuster’ panel, an annual highlight of the Canadian Telecom Summit.
And while all six of the panelists supported the idea in theory, sparks flew, albeit in a good natured way (well, most of the time), on how best to loosen Canada’s foreign ownership restrictions.
Mirko Bibic, Bell’s senior vice-president of regulatory and government affairs, said his company favours the approach put forth by CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein to boost foreign ownership…
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TORONTO – With Canadian consumer adoption of smart phones still relatively low, meaning tremendous market opportunity right now, one device maker says he’s concerned about a shift in focus toward consumer-oriented mobile applications at the expense of the kinds of productivity apps that drive enterprise business growth.
Jeff McDowell, senior vice-president of business marketing and alliances for Waterloo, Ont.-based Research In Motion, said individual employees within organizations are increasingly influencing corporate policies regarding smart phone adoption and usage. Instead of simply accepting a new mobile device their employer wants them to use, many employees are expecting their companies to…
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TORONTO and OTTAWA – Reaction to this week’s new draft copyright legislation was swift and predictably varied.
A coalition of Canada’s telecommunications, retail, Internet and technology companies and organizations, known as the Business Coalition for Balanced Copyright, largely supported the bill. But some parts of the legislation unfairly restrict consumer freedom and need to be revised before being passed by Parliament, such as the inability to circumvent digital locks for private use, the organization said in a statement.
The group includes the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association, Bell Canada, Cogeco Cable, Rogers, Telus, Google, the CCSA and the Canadian Association of Internet Providers, among others.
The…
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GATINEAU – CRTC commissioners were given a lesson in basic cable architecture on Wednesday as Rogers, Shaw, Cogeco, Videotron and EastLink faced the panel considering CRTC 2009-261, the wholesale high-speed access services proceeding.
The overall message appeared to be a detailed reminder to the Regulator from cable that “we’re different. Cable is a shared network that can’t be unbundled.”
Some have asked, for example, that a single 6 MHz channel (the space in which one analog TV channel is transmitted but which can be crammed full of digital and IP data and is by MSOs) be set aside for wholesale access by…
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TORONTO – Nokia’s Ovi Store is open for business in Canada.
Touting itself as the easiest way to find content for Nokia’s devices, the Ovi Store allows Canadians to download and personalize their Nokia mobile device with a range of free and paid apps, games, themes and ringtones with content that supports more than 30 languages.
Thanks to integrated billing with Bell, Rogers and Telus, the cost of purchased apps will appear on a customers’ wireless provider bill.
“We are proud to be one of the first manufacturers and Nokia offices in the world to offer integrated billing with all major carriers,”…
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OTTAWA – Telus executives told the CRTC today that it might resort to becoming a reseller of DOCSIS 3.0 high-speed cable services if the Commission changes the value proposition of the company’s network investments by giving competitors access to its high-speed next-generation services.
“If you make those margins large enough, I will look at opportunities to use cable DOCSIS versus build options, and then choose the most economical path, if that serves the economic interests of our shareholders,” Eros Spadotto, executive vice-president of technology strategy at Telus told commissioners on day two of the hearing looking at mandating certain…
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