MONTREAL – Without legacy cost structures and the ability to focus on just one product (wireless handsets), Canada’s new wireless entrants look to upset the mobile market here with ultra-low prices, beginning this year, says a new report from consultants SeaBoard Group.
And despite the tattered economy, it appears that financing for the launch of the new players is well in place.
Two of the new entrants, Public Mobile and Globalive, have already made some announcements on launches and staffing. “Canadian wireless seems exempt from the planetary catharsis. Funds are being raised, suppliers consulted, and staffing-up is underway,”…
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MORE AND MORE, we’re beginning to realize that to provide the quickest, most robust broadband experience, fibre optics must penetrate far more deeply than most CFOs and others in charge of capex at telecom and cable companies are hoping.
Fibre to the neighbourhood, or to the node? That works great now and will continue to be satisfactory for the near and mid-term future. But not so long from now, consumers will be demanding more – far more – especially when they begin to access ever more bandwidth-hungry services like high definition TV over the web.
North American cable and…
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VANCOUVER – Telus is investing $500 million on advanced wireless and wireline broadband infrastructure in British Columbia, the company announced Tuesday.
Construction of its next generation wireless network is underway, and the new network, based on the latest version of High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) technology, will launch by early 2010.
Telus will also build a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) designed Internet data centre that it calls one of the “greenest” in North America, while its broadband wireline investment plan will expand its high-speed Internet and digital TV service in B.C. and Alberta
“Despite the challenging times, we are confident…
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OTTAWA – Add Telus to the list of telco’s appealing to the Federal government over CRTC decisions.
The B.C.-based telco filed a petition to the Governor in Council late last week over Telecom Decision CRTC 2008-117 and calling for the rescission of Telecom Order CRTC 2009-111, expressing many of the same concerns as BCE.
Citing its capital program for 2009 which planned to invest $2.05 billion dollars in its networks, Telus’ petition said that rather than encourage investment risks in the current economy, “the CRTC has declared that we will be required to share this new investment…
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TORONTO – Globalive Wireless Management Corp. has “officially” received its wireless spectrum licenses from Industry Canada.
The wireless newcomer, which offers the Yak long distance product, VOIP and third-party ISP services, purchased its spectrum at last May’s advanced wireless services spectrum auction for $442 million.
But its licenses were awarded on a provisional basis, after wireless incumbents Rogers Communications and Telus complained that the company’s ownership structure violated the Canadian legislation which says telecom companies must be majority-owned by Canadians. (Parent company Globalive Communications is co-owned by Orascom, a global wireless player based in Egypt with over 77…
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OTTAWA – BCE has asked the federal cabinet to overturn a CRTC decision, saying investment in next-generation communications networks should be encouraged “as a matter of policy”.
At issue is the Commission’s Telecom Decision 2008-117 from December 11, 2008, and its companion order, Telecom Order 2009-111 from March 3, 2009, requiring incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) “to provide speeds for wholesale asymmetric digital subscriber line services that match the speeds made available to their retail Internet service customers”, if a competitor requests it.
The CRTC application was filed by Cybersurf Corporation in June 2008, and was…
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GATINEAU – With the CRTC panel sounding increasingly like an ISP levy-for-broadband-Cancon is under serious consideration, leave it to Telus’ Michael Hennessy to bring peals of laughter into the hearing room as the final presenter at the CRTC’s hearing into new media and broadcasting.
The past three weeks have seen interveners and the commissioners themselves asking repeatedly, among many other things, whether or not ISPs are in some way, akin to BDUs. Because if they are, maybe they can be taxed like BDUs and contribute some kind of percentage of revenue towards the production of Canadian-made online content (ACTRA…
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THE ORIGINAL PURPOSE of wireless walled garden (as referenced in Tuesday morning’s story “Closed wireless networks face broadcasters’ wrath”) was to control the experience because a lack of common interfaces made the internet experience a mess.
While carriers looked at content as an opportunity, it generally is more of a headache to try to manage. We are moving rapidly to the same Internet experience on mobile as wireline. That means an open platform.
However we reserve the right to have our own portal, and like the wireline world you can choose your home pages.
Pelmorex suggested that its content could…
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After seeing a fourfold increase in phone and email scams in recent weeks, Telus issued a public service announcement encouraging its customers to “just hang up when scammers call”.
The common thread in each scam, the announcement said, is that fraud artists try to trick customers out of personal information – such as addresses, birthdates, account numbers, passwords and credit card numbers, by posing as a legitimate caller.
Providing that kind of information could lead to identity theft or other fraud, and Telus suggested hanging up when scammers call. Legitimate telemarketers always know your name and always provide a…
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MARKHAM – The 39 member companies of the Canadian Independent Telecommunications Association (those stubborn, often innovative, mostly rural, holdout telcos who never ever sold to Bell or Telus or another bigger outfit) are gathering this week in Markham for their annual general meeting and showcase and seminar program.
Some members have launched IPTV, all offer Internet service, some have wireless, some are big into business services – and all face similar challenges as compared to the big traditional telcos. A number of member companies are city-owned or are co-operatives.
Seminar topics on Monday covered bandwidth requirements, whether fibre to…
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