| 03 September, 2010 | Last updated 18 hours 32 minutes ago |
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Having Trouble Logging In?Deferral account rebates going to current customers, at cost of $2.3 million September 2, 2010 - 5:22pm — Jonathan Migneault
Incumbent phone companies Bell Canada, Telus Corp. and MTS Allstream now have six months to rebate $310 million from deferral account funds they collected between 2002 and 2006—but the rebate program will cost $2.3 million and won’t necessarily go to customers who paid into the fund. They will go to existing customers. Chris Peirce, chief corporate officer at MTS Allstream, told The Wire Report that it is impossible to track down individual customers who paid artificially high rates during the price cap years of 2002 to 2006. Quebecor not giving up on application for must-carry Sun TV News September 1, 2010 - 5:43pm — Jonathan Migneault
The CRTC has opened a consultation on a new Quebecor Media Inc. application for a broadcasting licence for an all-news channel called Sun TV News—but the application still contains a request for must-carry status. On Wednesday the CRTC issued a notice of consultation to consider Quebecor’s application, which includes a request for a three-year must-carry guarantee with cable and satellite providers. In correspondence with CRTC staff last month, Quebecor had asked for limited-term, three-year Category 1 status (or Category A)—which guarantees that all cable and satellite distribution systems carry the channel—for a right-leaning news service informally dubbed “Fox News North.” Pelmorex calls for industry-wide regulations on market power of integrated companies September 1, 2010 - 5:12pm — Simon Doyle
The Weather Network owner Pelmorex Communications Inc. is calling on the CRTC to implement a series of new industry-wide policies to “safeguard” against excessive market power from vertically integrated communications companies that have more than a 25 per cent audience share. “Concentration in the industry, and in particular vertical integration, is going to continue, frankly,” Paul Temple, senior vice-president of regulatory and strategic affairs at Pelmorex, said in an interview. Use deferral accounts to deploy wireline DSL, not HSPA, CRTC tells BellThe CRTC denied an application by Bell Canada Tuesday to use its deferral account funds to deploy an HSPA+ broadband Internet service in 112 rural and remote communities in Ontario and Quebec. The commission instead directed Bell to deploy a DSL service comparable to what it offers in urban areas. As of May 31, 2010, incumbent phone companies Bell Canada, Bell Aliant, Telus Corp. and MTS Allstream had collected deferral account funds amounting to roughly $770 million, with interest, originating from a surcharge phone customers paid in urban areas during an inflated price cap period from 2002 to 2006. Fibre rollout in population densities of 6,000? Try 50 August 30, 2010 - 7:04pm — Stefan Dubowski
A new German report on fibre rollout in Europe and Australia focuses on population densities of a minimum 6,000 people per square kilometre, highlighting the challenges Canada faces as it rolls out broadband in suburban and urban areas with densities as low as 50 people per square kilometre. Produced by Dr. Karl-Heinz Neumann, director and general manager of the WIK Scientific Institute for Infrastructure and Communication Services in Germany, the paper investigates the economic viability of fibre-based network rollouts in Europe and Australia (where the federal government recently released plans to invest $43 billion AU in fibre-optic infrastructure). Titled “Structural models for NBN deployment,” the paper compares network build scenarios, considering questions such as whether the network builder is the first to market, the network’s reach (fibre-to-the-home versus fibre-to-the-node), and the kind of technology behind the service. Small ISPs happy with new speed matching decision August 30, 2010 - 6:41pm — Jonathan Migneault
GATINEAU, Que.—The CRTC decided Monday to reinstate speed-matching rules for incumbent phone companies at a 10 per cent markup cost to small Internet service providers that access the higher speeds. Last year, telcos Bell Canada, Bell Aliant and Telus Corp. successfully appealed a CRTC decision to the federal cabinet when the government, on Dec. 10, 2009, ordered the CRTC to revisit the issue of speed matching. The telcos had appealed a CRTC decision issued the previous March that required them to offer wholesale Internet service to third-party competitors at speeds matching the incumbents’ retail Internet services. CRTC upholds 'paternalistic' approach to community TV, CACTUS says August 27, 2010 - 3:58pm — Jonathan Migneault
The CRTC upheld a “paternalistic” stance toward the community television sector in its new regulatory policy released Thursday, Catherine Edwards, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS), said in an interview. “They [the commission] completely ignored the request by just about every community intervener at the hearing that these channels should finally be in community hands,” Edwards told The Wire Report. During a CRTC hearing to develop a new community television policy last April, CACTUS proposed to establish 250 community-run production facilities across Canada, which would draw on a cable company levy to produce community television and multimedia programming. Google, Yahoo, concerned about Bill-C-32 'enabler' provision August 27, 2010 - 3:39pm — Simon Doyle
OTTAWA—A so-called “enabler provision” in the Conservative government’s copyright reform bill is drawing concern from major companies Google and Yahoo, industry sources say. Sources close to the legislation say the companies are having internal discussions about the provision, which is intended to provide a legal remedy to catch copyright infringement “facilitators”—like BitTorrent trackers—that point to infringing content on the web. Yahoo wouldn’t comment for this story, and Google is revealing little, but industry sources say Google and Yahoo are working on the provision behind the scenes. CRTC telecom decisions coming on wholesale access, deferral accounts August 27, 2010 - 1:17pm — Jonathan Migneault
The CRTC will hold lockups for the news media and industry next Monday and Tuesday for the release decisions on wholesale Internet access and on what should be done with the funds remaining in Bell Canada’s deferral accounts. Both lockups will start at 2 p.m. and end at 4 p.m., when the decisions are publicly released. Both decisions—the wholesale access decision on Monday and the deferral accounts decision on Tuesday—will be released at the same time that trading markets close for the day in Toronto and New York. Nunavut broadband access limited by scarce satellite capacity, says NBDCA lack of satellite capacity on the C-band will limit Nunavut’s ability to expand broadband Internet access in the territory, Oana Spinu, acting executive director of the Nunavut Broadband Development Corporation (NBDC), said in an interview. “There are several satellites that footprint the North and right now all the telecommunications services for the territory are using one of those satellites [the Anik F2], and its pretty much at capacity,” Spinu, head of the NBDC, a non-profit organization that helps provide broadband access to Nunavut residents, told The Wire Report. But Telesat, an Ottawa company that operates satellites serving the North, says there is still capacity to go around. Former political staffer, entrepreneur, gets bright idea for mobile campaign app August 25, 2010 - 5:11pm — Jonathan Migneault
Julian Haigh left a four-year career as a Parliament Hill staffer, working for Conservative MPs such as Joe Preston, Garth Turner and Peter Goldring, to launch a wireless startup in Vancouver for the politically minded. His new company is called D2D Campaign Solutions, and Haigh said his experience working on political campaigns gave him an idea to simplify the door-knocking process with a mobile application for the iPhone and BlackBerry. The app, which is still in development, will give campaigners and their political parties real-time information as they canvass constituents. Provinces criticized for reporting 100 per cent broadband accessCanadian provinces are taking criticism for reporting that they have 100 per cent broadband access. “This is outrageous, that public officials are going around saying that any area has 100 per cent or 95 per cent access,” David Ellis, a digital strategy consultant and course director at York University’s communications studies department, told The Wire Report. “I have a Cartier boutique right in my building, but that doesn’t mean I buy my watches there. Their watches start at $10,000 a piece. I can’t afford their watches.” CMPA raises diversity of voices question on Shaw-Canwest deal August 24, 2010 - 6:49pm — Simon Doyle
The Canadian Media Production Association (CMPA) is calling on the CRTC to consider diversity of voices policy as it evaluates Shaw Communications Inc.’s application to purchase the broadcasting assets of Canwest Global Communications. The CMPA (formerly the Canadian Film and Television Production Association) wrote in a comment filed with the CRTC Monday that Shaw’s acquisition of the Canwest assets, when combined with the Shaw-controlled broadcasting services of Corus Entertainment, will put the company “very close” the CRTC’s diversity of voices threshold of 35 per cent audience share nationally. “The Commission should carefully examine the transaction with its Diversity of Voices policy in mind, based on the fact that Shaw’s control of audience share would be very close to the 35% level nationally,” the CMPA wrote in a comment filed for the CRTC proceeding. Canwest, Quebecor urge commission for all-or-none regulatory relief August 24, 2010 - 6:39pm — Jonathan Migneault
Canwest Global Communications and Quebecor Media Inc. are arguing that the CRTC should make the same exception for all private broadcasters if it chooses to grant an immediate reduction of the Canadian content requirements for CTVGlobemedia’s conventional stations. Canwest and Quebecor say the commission should grant them the same regulatory flexibility for their conventional television channels—or reject CTV’s application for early regulatory relief. The commission is preparing to implement a new broadcasting framework by the end of August of next year, and broadcasters are expected to submit applications for licence renewals in November or December. A hearing is expected in the spring of 2011. Wireless operators oppose government's licence fee proposal for backhaul spectrumWireless operators are taking issue with Industry Canada’s proposal to charge licence fees on a per-MHz-per person basis for fixed services operating in the 25.25 to 28.35 MHz spectrum band. “It means you pay more money to do the same job just because [the antenna] goes near a larger group of people. But you aren’t serving a larger group of people,” Telus Communications Company spokesman Jim Johannsson told The Wire Report. In May 2010, Industry Canada launched a consultation on the use of the 25.25 to 28.35 MHz band, a large portion of which was previously unassigned. |
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