PALM BEACH, Fla. – Unless the federal government deploys some "artificial measures" there appears to be little opportunity for a fourth national wireless carrier to spring forth when Industry Canada performs its next spectrum auction, expected sometime in the first half of 2008, said Rogers Communications president and COO Nadir Mohamed on Tuesday.
Responding to a question posed during his appearance at the Bear Stearns 20th annual media conference (which was webcast) about the spectrum auction and the potential for another wireless company to start-up and compete with Rogers Wireless, Bell Mobility and Telus, Mohamed dug into the recent…
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ENTITLED "BDU CONTENT Strategies: Can Cable and Phone Companies Do Their Own Thing?", the session on what TV distributors think of content and its changing place in their business plans was a popular session at the Canadian Film and TV Producers Association annual Prime Time conference in Ottawa two weeks ago.
The elephant not in the room, however? A cable company. But one former cable guy spoke for the industry anyway. Moderated by Peter Lyman, senior partner, Nordicity Group, the panelists included Chris Frank, vice-president, programming and pay-per-view, Bell ExpressVu, Michael Hennessy, vice-president, broadband and video policy, Telus; Tom…
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OTTAWA – Canadian Women in Communications held its annual awards gala evening on Tuesday in Ottawa.
The CWC Annual Awards recognizes the accomplishments of four outstanding women in the communications industry and one communications organization that has nurtured the aspirations of its female employees.
The event is attended by over 600 VIPs to publicly recognize the achievements of communications industry role models. The following CWC Annual Award Winners were honoured at this year’s event (pictures are below):
* Karen Radford, executive vice-president and president, Telus Quebec and partner solutions, Telus – CWC Woman of the Year Award Recipient
* CanWest MediaWorks Inc….
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CANADA’S ILEC’s SURE hope so. They need it to be.
Every quarter, when telco CEOs face industry analysts, one or more of them invariably ask whether the telcos’ rebuild strategy of only bringing fibre to a neighbourhood node, within a kilometre or so of a group of homes, will provide enough bandwidth to make them competitive in the broadband video world.
They also invariably point to U.S. telco Verizon, which is building fibre to the home (or curb or the premises, whatever you’d like to call it) so that it can deliver on its aggressive rollout plans for its…
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OTTAWA – That’s the question the legal eagles at Telus are wrestling with this week.
Last week’s mobile TV exemption order made it clear that wireless carriers are not to offer any TV channels – including conventional broadcasters – on its mobile television lineups, without the broadcasters’ prior permission.
This worries Telus vice-president, wireless, broadband and content policy, Michael Hennessy.
"They’ve essentially given a retransmission consent right to over-the-air broadcasters, which lies at the heart of the over-the-air hearing" held last November, he told Cartt.ca this week.
Retransmission consent has been consistently fought by distributors such as cable, satellite…
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GATINEAU – As long as it’s a point-to-point transmission and the wireless carriers first have permission from TV companies to carry their signal(s), mobile TV will not be regulated like cable television.
A new exemption order issued Wednesday by the CRTC, which was kicked off by a public notice in April of 2006, allows services like MobiTV continue (even if those types of services, carried by Bell Mobility, Telus and Rogers Wireless, haven’t seen much traction yet).
Click here for the full Commission order.
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TORONTO – Canadian Women in Communications have announced the winners of its CWC Annual Awards for 2006.
Four Canadian women and one communications-industry employer are recognized annually for their contributions to the Canadian communications industry.
“Celebrating the achievements of women is one of CWC’s most important and rewarding tasks,” said Stephanie MacKendrick, CWC president, in the press release. CWC holds an Annual Awards Gala in Ottawa that celebrates the achievements of women, and those who support their advancement in the Canadian communications industry.
Participants in the awards presentation program will include: Minister of Industry, the Hon. Maxime Bernier, Minister…
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TORONTO – The 2007 Canadian Digital Broadcasting Summit will be held January 29th and 30th at the Toronto Marriott Downtown Eaton Centre.
On the agenda are topics such as IP delivery of broadcasting, HD studio conversion, how the last mile (consumer premises) affects HD rollout, broadcast delivery capacity, IT infrastructure, subscriber rates and the recent trend towards the consumer as broadcaster.
Canadian comic Ron James will entertain at dinner on day one of the conference, which is organized every year by the Canadian Satellite Users Association. Cartt.ca is a media sponsor of the event.
Other speakers include: Paul Bush, Telesat;…
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THE SMALL AND MEDIUM-sized business market has become a crowded place.
All of the big companies have said in the past months they see this market as a place to find big growth. Rogers, Bell, Shaw, Cogeco, Telus et al – all have talked about how well they hope to do in the SME space.
So is there room for small startups like Syntagma Network Services? CEO Theresa Carbonneau thinks so. The company’s small business plan offers a full suite of voice over IP-delivered services including broadband connectivity, voice services, e-mail and web hosting, exchange server hosting, virus scanning…
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DEREGULATING LOCAL PHONE in major urban centres in 2007 seems to me to be the right thing to do.
"The idea that somehow the cable guys are at a disadvantage to the telcos has not been proven so far in the entry of the cable industry in local voice," Lawson Hunter, Bell’s chief corporate officer said to me Wednesday. I agree with him. To a point.
Setting aside the unprecedented use of the provision in the Telecom Act that let’s the government issue policy directives to the CRTC (until 2006, it just hadn’t been done), it’s time to…
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