MONTREAL – As if remembering to turn the clock back an hour isn’t enough, many Quebecers also have to remember to dial all 10 digits come Saturday.
This marks the end of the four-month transition period implemented to get users out of the habit of dialing only seven digits (Ed note: We even remember the good ol’ days of only having to dial five). The intercept message and automatic call rerouting will be eliminated as well. The Telecommunications Alliance (www.dial10.ca) is issuing its final notice to anyone who has still not started using 10 digits to dial local…
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IN THE FIRST PART OF Cartt.ca’s exclusive, wide-ranging interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation CEO, Robert Rabinovitch talked about stable funding, the TV Policy Review, The One, CBC radio and SRC, among other topics.
Click here to read Part I of the story from last week.
In the second part of our chat, Rabinovitch goes over on demand strategies, HD, CBC Sports (the interview was prior to Nancy Lee’s departure), local news and the residual effects of the 2005 lockout. What follows is an edited transcript.
Greg O’Brien: Let’s switch back to English TV – but actually this question…
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TORONTO – G4techTV Canada announced Monday that digital cable and satellite subscribers will get to see its high-tech and gaming programming through the month of November at no charge.
As well, the Rogers-controlled digital specialty service is offering viewers a chance to win a five day trip for four to Honolulu, Hawaii and tickets to the NFL Pro Bowl football game in February 2007.
The winner will also receive four passes to the Madden Championship online football gaming tournament being held in Hawaii.
Participating BDUs include: Bell ExpressVu, Rogers, Cogeco, Videotron, Persona, Access, Telus, MTS, Mountain Cable, Source, and…
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TORONTO – The spiffy new Treo 700wx from Palm was launched in Canada with Bell Mobility today.
It has a big (for a handheld), bright touch-screen. It’s a smart phone with numerous bells and whistles with push e-mail and a camera, 64MB of RAM and integrated Bluetooth. It runs Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0, meaning web access is simple, quick and easy (when on the right network).
So, with the explosion of video (of the free variety) available on the web that is easily viewable on such a device, who needs DVB-H, the nascent standard which stands for digital video broadcast…
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WHEN NBTEL FIRST CAME to market in 1998 with a digital TV product serving customers in Moncton and Saint John, N.B., the cable industry laughed.
Sure, it was all-digital television, but each TV needed its own set top box, channel-changing latency was a problem and due to the limitations of the early ADSL technology it used, all the TVs in the house had to be tuned to the same channel. Fine for homes without a second TV, but not so much for most folks.
At the time, NBTel (which is now Aliant) was the North American leader on the…
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SAN FRANCISCO – Just four percent of Canadian mobile phone subscribers and three percent of American cell customers use their handsets to shoot video, says research firm Telephia.
To some, that might say folks aren’t really all that keen on using their mobile phones to record video, since camera phones have been around for some time now. However, says Telephia, it just means we’re only at the beginning of an emerging market.
The mobile industry is buzzing these days about services that share user content, like YouTube, MySpace and Facebook because mobile phones are the camera of choice for…
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TORONTO – By the end of this year, cablecos are expected to have 12% of residential telephone subscribers in Canada, while telcos will have 2% of TV subs, a report by The Convergence Consulting Group predicts.
Showing how the competitors are going after their untraditional business, the report forecasts that cablecos will have 1.56 million phone subscribers at year end 2006, up from 835,000 subs at the end of 2005. By 2009, they’ll have a healthy 27% of the residential market, or 3.3 million subscribers, the consultants predict.
The telephone companies will make inroads in television distribution, ending with…
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TORONTO – After bobbing and weaving through a very successful first year, Canada’s The Fight Network looks to be a budding media empire.
The company – which launched a year ago last week – started as a category two digital channel but thanks to its original content, has branched out into mobile, on demand, radio, the web, events, clothing, energy drinks and other platforms – in Canada and the U.S.
“We’ve achieved some significant milestones in our first year of operations,” said Mike Garrow, president and CSO of the channel. “From day one our goal has been to build…
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OTTAWA – Speakers have been announced and sessions outlined for the 2006 Canadian Association of Broadcasters convention, set for Vancouver November 5-7.
The early registration deadline (where attendees get a rate break) ends on Friday.
The theme for this year’s CAB Convention – New Realities. New Rules. – "reflects the tremendous rate of change that Canada’s private broadcasters are experiencing," says the association.
"From the explosive growth of new digital technologies to an unprecedented level of regulatory review, 2006 is shaping up to be a watershed year for Canada’s private broadcasters," adds a release.
In keeping with well-established tradition,…
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WINNIPEG IS ONE OF THE HOTTER bundling battlegrounds in Canada.
While Shaw is the incumbent video provider and a nascent voice company in the Manitoba capital, MTS Allstream, the provincial telco (which is also a national wholesale and enterprise player) has claimed about 55,000 video customers with MTS TV in Winnipeg – the only city in the province in which it has a cable license.
Customers like the simple bill, the fact they can re-jig their channel lineups on screen or even see e-mails and caller ID on their TVs. Finally, last month, MTS TV added a key piece…
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