| 06 September, 2010 | Last updated 2 days 14 hours 47 minutes ago |
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Having Trouble Logging In?Network LetterArpin wanted to stay, 'but the wise men decided differently,' he saysTwo days after leaving his position as vice-chair of broadcasting at the CRTC, Michel Arpin sat down with me for an exclusive interview in his new office at Université de Montréal, where this week he officially took on a position as visiting professor in the communications studies department. For more than two hours, we discussed his departure from the CRTC, Quebecor Inc.’s Sun TV News application, and the transition to digital over-the-air broadcasting. The following excerpt has been edited for length and style. 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. 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 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. 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.” 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. Investment industry planning to challenge new do-not-call list ruling August 23, 2010 - 5:42pm — Jonathan Migneault
The financial industry says it plans to lobby against a recent CRTC decision that brings financial planners under the rules of the national do-not-call list, Ian Russell, president and CEO of the Investment Industry Association of Canada (IIAC), said in an interview. “This [decision] has happened without any notice and any opportunity to adjust to the new reality,” Russell told The Wire Report. “What’s important is to mount a lobbying effort with the CRTC to get this changed.” |
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