HALIFAX – Aliant today launched its high-speed wireless service in Halifax. The new service will provide Aliant’s wireless customers access to wireless data speeds of up to 2.4 Mbps – and new and enhanced applications on their wireless devices.
Customers in the Halifax area will be the first to experience new wireless data speeds – five times faster than what is currently available. Customers will be able to access information on their wireless device – notebook computer, PDA, or cell phone – "at speeds close to those of their home broadband connection," claims the release.
Streaming video and TV…
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OTTAWA – Once upon a time, the boys and girls in the content production and delivery business gathered for many huddles. They were figuring out how to pass film and video content to the receiver, the Internet, and score a business model for web content. The play action took the form of rights management issues, and the strategy was nearly intercepted by haggling over the ownership and dollar value of rights.
Today, as the Internet joins video MP3 players, cellphones, games and podcasting among the receivers of digital content, the players are huddling once again and again, the quarterbacks…
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VANCOUVER – Record wireless customer additions made up for the impact of the strike in 2005 for Telus, the company reported this morning.
Fourth quarter revenue was $2.1 billion, a 6% increase compared to Q4 2004 "due to continued strong wireless performance, including record wireless net additions," says this morning’s press release. Operating earnings (EBITDA) were down 4% due to higher temporary expenses associated with the extended labour disruption in Western Canada that ended in late November.
Reported earnings per share (EPS) for the fourth quarter were 22 cents, compared to 38 cents for the same period a year…
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WHEN PEOPLE FIND OUT I AM the president of Babytel, an independent provider of high-speed Internet phone service, the first question I get is about our name, (most love it), followed closely by “how in the world can you compete against the big guys?”
How we compete is quite simple: we are finding unique opportunities, such as being the VOIP backbone for partners like independent cable companies and ISPs, and we are selling to niche markets like Asian and African communities in Canada.
(I will refer the genesis of our name to later.)
There is incredible opportunity. VOIP opens…
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OTTAWA – If rollouts go according to plan, Canada’s telcos will collectively have over a million terrestrial video customers by the end of 2008, says a recent report by Yankee Group.
The report looked at the existing terrestrial video delivery systems from Manitoba Telecom Services and Sasktel and notes that when compared to each company’s high speed Internet customers, MTS and Sasktel boast TV penetration rates of 39% and 44%, respectively, of DSL high speed Internet customers.
The report goes on to predict that as long as Bell Canada and Telus go ahead with their full launches of Internet…
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DESPITE THE IMMINENT SHUTDOWN of the Canadian Cable Telecommunications Association, a move which will cost 26 jobs, Canada’s smaller independent operators have already decided they must have a continuing presence in Ottawa.
As reported first by www.cartt.ca early Friday afternoon, Rogers Cable, the largest remaining member of the CCTA, decided to rescind its support of the association, effectively killing it – even though no other member wanted to pull the plug. Even Rogers didn’t really want to do it.
However, no CCTA member is blaming Rogers for the demise of the 50-plus year-old association. Indeed, the CCTA’s board of…
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BARCELONA – Tests of its next-generation voice and data network will wrap up early, as in next month, Rogers Wireless said today, so that it can do a commercial launch this fall.
At the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, Rogers said its High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) will make Rogers the fastest mobile wireless data network in Canada. It will also be among the first wireless carriers in the world to deploy this latest generation of GSM technology, the dominant world-wide standard for mobile wireless communications.
About 80% of the world’s wireless operators use GSM while the rest,…
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TORONTO – CRTC chairman Charles Dalfen will deliver the closing keynote address at the 2006 Canadian Telecom Summit.
Canada’s leading event for the telecommunications industry, the summit attracts more than 500 from the telecom industry.
Other speakers are: Mitel chairman Terry Matthews, Telus CEO Darren Entwistle, Vonage founder Jeffrey Citron, Avaya Chair and CEO Donald Peterson; IBM Canada president Dan Fortin; Alcatel North America CEO Hubert de Pesquidoux; Allstream president John MacDonald; Mark Henderson, president of Ericsson Canada; Michael Moskowitz, president of Palm Canada; Chris Rooney from the new AT&T; Nortel North America president Dion Joannou, Siemens Group executive…
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It has now been a year since Videotron launched its cable telephone service, offering consumers an affordable alternative to the residential phone service provided by the major telephone companies such as Bell and Telus. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has allowed competition in local telephone markets since 1997 but this is the first real breach in the big phone companies’ age-old monopoly.
Jumping into a market in which giants such as AT&T and Sprint have foundered meant a massive investment in infrastructure and technology for Videotron, and of course a big risk.
The response from the marketplace…
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TORONTO – Saying (many, many, times) that the company is “rebuilding Bell” or moving towards “the new Bell”, Bell Canada Enterprises senior management made a number of announcements this morning that will be hard on workers and customers.
CEO Michael Sabia told those in attendance at this morning’s company “Business Review” 2006 investors day that the company intends to cut between 3,000 and 4,000 people from its work force “primarily through attrition,” he said. This will lead to savings of around $2 billion between now and the end of 2007\ he said.
Newly minted Bell COO George Cope (who…
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