OTTAWA – Saying he’s defending consumer choice and competition, Industry Minister Tony Clement announced Tuesday that the Conservative government will appeal a Federal Court of Canada ruling that quashed a cabinet order allowing Egyptian-backed Globalive Wireless (whose retail brand is Wind) to operate in Canada.
The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP), ACTRA, and Friends of Canadian Broadcasting were intervenors in the case.
"Overturning the Cabinet decision is a victory for Canadian ownership rules and a victory for Canadian culture," said Stephen Waddell, ACTRA’s national executive director. "Globalive was potentially the beginning of the end of our…
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NOT LONG AGO I ASKED A CRTC senior policy advisor I know how work was going. It was one of those just-making-conversation questions we all ask, but I was a little surprised at his response:
“Livin’ the dream,” he excitedly told me. Now, I’m not sure my facial expression betrayed my wonder at that statement and I don’t remember what I said next, but he continued to add that he found it exciting, interesting and fun to debate and then help craft what would become the “law of the land.”
Upon reflection, it shouldn’t have come as such a shock –…
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GATINEAU – After a week of vitriol, legitimate consumer anger and utter political silliness, the CRTC today officially opened up a new review into wholesale broadband usage based billing
“The great concern expressed by Canadians over this issue is telling of how much the Internet has become an integral part of their lives,” said Konrad von Finckenstein, chairman of the CRTC, in a press release.
“Our approach is based on two fundamental principles: as a general rule, ordinary consumers served by Small ISPs should not have to fund the bandwidth used by the heaviest residential Internet consumers; and it is in…
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CALGARY – Shaw Communications said today that thanks to the national backlash over the concept of usage-based billing, it is asking customers to participate in consultation sessions to share their thoughts on how the big ISP should handle Internet usage allowances and billing.
That’s despite the fact the whole UBB furor has little to do with Shaw as it has just a single third party ISPs riding on its network and hadn’t yet begun charging retail customers for exceeding the gigabit download thresholds the company had set (“High Speed” has a 60 GB file transfer limit, “Extreme” has a 100…
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HOW DID A CRTC DECISION on usage-based billing that affects so few total Canadians become a national story and potentially an election issue?
It’s your fault, big ISPs.
According to recent research, most customers of the large Canadian ISPs were not even aware their Internet packages were subject to bandwidth caps and extra billing if they went over those limits. They didn’t know they were capped and sure didn’t know how much extra it could cost.
In short, the big ISPs were and are doing a poor job letting their customers know their limits and what they mean. People aren’t…
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GATINEAU – The way the dance works in these CRTC proceedings is the applicant draws a few lines in the sand in its application and presentation, a few in granite, listens to a few days of appearances by intervenors, gauges the reaction of the commissioners to various ideas presented – and then re-draws those sandy lines for their final public follow up appearances.
BCE was no different Friday morning during its appearance on the closing day of the CRTC hearing into its acquisition of CTV.
Right off the bat, its executives told the CRTC it is ready to endorse the Commission’s…
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GATINEAU – If BCE is going to own CTV (and with it, French sports channel RDS) plus the piece of the Montreal Canadiens it currently holds, then there must be special rules put in place governing sports programming exclusives in Quebec, according to Quebecor Media CEO Pierre Karl Péladeau.
Péladeau was speaking in front of the CRTC this morning as the Commission’s hearing into the acquisition of CTV by BCE continued.
While first stating that the valuation BCE put on CTV is too low (the CRTC says it is worth $2.67 billion, BCE says $2.2 bil) and must be re-evaluated by…
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GATINEAU – Seems as though Telus has a thing for former Canadian Cable Television Association presidents…
Former CBC executive vice-president Richard Stursberg made his first official industry appearance since he was let go by the Corp in the summer Wednesday in Gatineau.
He was appearing for Telus as an expert consultant during the big carrier’s appearance in front of the CRTC during day two of its hearing into the acquisition of CTV by BCE.
(Stursberg was president of the now defunct CCTA in the late 1990s and Telus’ SVP regulatory and government affairs, Michael Hennessy was the final CCTA president. The company…
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GATINEAU – Tuesday afternoon, BCE president and CEO George Cope (who looked a little grey as he fought through a bad cold) was unequivocal when it came to MPEG-4 video compression technology: Without benefits money, the company won’t do that upgrade.
Ever.
Bell’s proposed benefits package proposes an MPEG-4 conversion for Bell Satellite TV that would then see it able to carry all local OTA TV stations which are eligible for the local programming improvement fund (LPIF is a fund created by the CRTC in 2009 to assist small local TV broadcasters). Those local ‘casters have long complained that the fact…
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LOS GATOS, CA – Netflix has done so well since its launch in Canada four months ago that it is planning to expand in to a second international market later this year.
In a letter to shareholders earlier this week detailing the company’s Q4 financial results, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings described the company’s Canadian results as “excellent”, and predicted that the service will have between 750,000 and 900,000 Canadian subscribers by the end of March, 2011.
While Netflix declined to specifically break out the current number of Canadian customers, it did report 3.08 million new subscribers overall in its fourth…
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