TORONTO – Leave it to Ted Rogers to take a shot at his competition while complaining about regulation – in the same sentence.
During Friday’s conference call with financial analysts, the Rogers Communications founder bemoaned the new rules announced in November by Industry Minister Jim Prentice surrounding the wireless spectrum auction coming in May, but especially took shots at the conditions placed on him when it comes to mandated network roaming for newcomers.
While spectrum has been set aside for new wireless companies, the ministry also said that the incumbents must allow customers of these newbies to roam on…
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GATINEAU – Reply comments filed with the CRTC on Friday on its broadcasting distribution undertakings and specialty services policy review don’t show anyone has changed their minds. They’ve mostly dug right in, as expected.
(And, we’ll set aside the fee for carriage debate right away for this particular piece. Over-the-air broadcasters and producers who look to see more funds flow their way want consumers to pay a fee for conventional TV stations. Cable and satellite companies do not. We’ll dive deeper into the issue in a later story.)
This story, however, is a tale of two extremes. We looked…
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VANCOUVER – Telus came to the rescue of several people awaiting organ transplants this weekend in British Columbia.
According to a story in The Globe and Mail, what with the Oscars going on, Hollywood types had claimed many of the corporate jets often hired to shuttle harvested organs to their needy recipients.
Click here to read the story of how Telus rode to the rescue.
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GATINEAU – Internet protocol television (IPTV) is officially on ice for 2008 at Bell Canada.
During Monday morning’s hearing into the acquisition of Bell by a group led by the Ontario Teachers pension plan, CEO George Cope confirmed what was already an open secret, that it has no plans to deliver digital television terrestrially over the Internet backbone until 2009 at the earliest.
CRTC vice-chair telecom Len Katz was inquiring about including the value of Bell’s terrestrial cable license (to be served using IPTV) in the calculation of transaction benefits. Cope confirmed that Bell, with a digital TV service already…
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OTTAWA – Minister of Industry Jim Prentice has been “about to” introduce new copyright legislation for about three months now at least, according to Ottawa sources.
Perhaps March will be the month it happens…
In the meantime, the Business Coalition for Balanced Copyright has submitted a position paper to the minister “urging the government to strike a balance in copyright reform that reflects the needs of users and creators,” says its letter.
Besides the members in the headline, the BCBC also includes smaller stakeholders like EastLink, Cogeco Cable, SaskTel, the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association and the Retail Council of…
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VANCOUVER – Fourth quarter 2007 revenue at Telus came in at $2.33 billion, an increase of 3.4% from a year ago, the western telco announced this morning.
“The performance was driven by 9% growth in wireless revenue and 7% growth in wireline data revenue, partially offset by declines in local and long distance wireline revenues. Consolidated earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) increased 8% to $953 million due to a 14% increase in the wireless segment and 2% increase in the wireline segment,” reads the release
Net income in the quarter ended December 31, 2007, was $400…
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HAMILTON – Fibre to the home is certainly possible – and from a pure bandwidth point of view, certainly desirable. From an economic point of view, though? Not so much.
And is such a conversion going to happen any time soon here in Canada? Not likely. At least that was the consensus around the lunch table I sat at Tuesday at Carmen’s Banquet Hall in Hamilton during the SCTE Ontario Chapter Winter Technical Conference.
Well over 200 from the technical and engineering side of the cable industry descended on Hamilton to hear 10 speakers wax eloquently about the advantages…
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TORONTO – A new Telus and Angus Reid survey released today shows Canadian women are increasingly relying on their e-mail and Facebook for planning social activities and managing their busy households.
Like the little black dress, e-communication is a must have basic that won’t likely be going out of style any time soon.
According to the January, 2008 survey, 43% of Canadians polled said that they organize their evening social plans by e-mail. Furthermore, women are more likely than men to take advantage of e-mail to organize their social plans (46%), tell their loved ones that they are thinking…
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CALGARY – It’s not as large of a contract as the Telus-Montreal one announced Friday, but Bell Canada sent out a release Monday to let folks know it’s throwing its weight around in Telus’ home territory, too, just like the western telco is pushing into its traditional regions.
Bell Canada said today the City of Calgary has picked it to implement an organization-wide, multi-layered security solution that will enable the city to defend against online threats such as spyware, keyloggers, viruses and hackers.
The URL monitoring and blocking solution will proactively block a wide array of potential threats, including…
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MONTREAL – It’s not a big deal in terms of its dollar value, but this one has to sting a bit at Bell.
Telus announced today it was selected as Ville de Montréal’s primary telecommunications partner in 10-year deal estimated at $87 million. Of course, Bell Canada’s national headquarters is in Montreal.
Under the deal, Telus will provide and manage Internet Protocol (IP) based voice and data services for the city’s more than 300 administrative offices across the island.
“Today, Ville de Montréal has placed their trust in Telus to upgrade their communications services to our state-of-the-art IP technology,”…
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