Telus Corp., Cogeco Inc. and the attorney general have filed arguments defending the CRTC’s application of its standstill rule in the fight over carriage of TVA Sports. The attorney general, who represents the CRTC in such appeals, said in a French-language filing that the regulator “clearly” has the power through the broadcasting act to regulate certain aspects of economic relationships between companies. The court case follows an emergency hearing in April 2019 the CRTC held after Quebecor pulled the signal for TVA Sports during the opening night of the Stanley Cup...
OTTAWA — Witnesses in the latest round of hearings in the House of Commons’ Canadian Heritage committee’s study of the media and local communities asked parliamentarians to level the playing field when it comes to taxes on digital services. “Currently, foreign suppliers of digital products and services, such as online news and entertainment services, music, movies and software, are not required to collect or remit HST and provincial sales tax as similar Canadian firms are obliged to do,” Bernard Lord, president and CEO of the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications...
When it comes to issues of affordability, the Canadian government should look to an American social assistance program to help low-income residents purchase telecommunications services, Cogeco Inc. told CRTC commissioners Friday morning. The government could provide “telecom stamps” as a...
Cogeco Inc. announced Wednesday it has launched 400 WiFi hotspots across Burlington, Oakville, Milton and Georgetown, all located in the surrounding area of Toronto. It said in a press release that Cogeco has been working...
Cogeco Communications Inc. told a CRTC hearing Wednesday that a plan the commission proposed to create a new fund for local TV news programming, to be funded by existing financial resources within the...
The CRTC has grouped 61 complaints by the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) into four Part 1 proceedings, giving Shaw Communications Inc., Cogeco Cable Inc., Rogers...
Television service providers have another 20 months before they are forced to abide by a new code governing their relationship with customers. The CRTC on Thursday released a finalized version of its television service provider code, which will, among other things, require broadcast distributors to provide easy-to-understand information about what channels a customer is getting, clarity about the duration of promotional offers and time commitments a consumer must undertake, explicit information on charges or taxes that might be applied on top of an advertised price, and provide 30 days notice...
Small Internet service providers (ISPs) are asking the government to reject an appeal, filed by BCE Inc., of a CRTC decision that mandated access by smaller competitors to fibre-to-the-home (FTTH)...
Cogeco Cable Inc.’s Canadian cable division has appointed Daniel Boisvert as vice-president of marketing and innovation, and Antoine Shiu as vice-president of business solutions sales, it said...
Cogeco Cable Inc. will ask shareholders to vote on a name change to Cogeco Communications Inc. at its annual meeting in January. The company said in a press release Wednesday that the “new name better expresses the...
OTTAWA — Canada's major TV service providers argued before the Copyright Board of Canada on Monday that they should pay less for distant-TV signals because these channels are losing value as...
OTTAWA — Rights holders of programming shown over distant TV signals are seeking to at least double the amount of money they receive from TV service providers, on a per subscriber basis, for...
When Channel Zero Inc. announced the launch of its Bloomberg TV Canada channel this week, it listed every TV-service provider that was carrying it and absent from that list was Canada's biggest provider of TV service. Channel...
The CRTC said Wednesday it will, in spring 2016, release a preliminary report on the results of an ongoing study of the broadband performance of various Canadian Internet service providers (ISPs). The regulator said in a press...
Telus Corp. and Cogeco Cable Inc. have filed their opposition to BCE Inc.'s attempt to fight, before the Federal Court of Appeal, the CRTC's wholesale code governing relationships between television stations and TV-service...
Cogeco Cable Inc. has increased the speeds of some of its Internet plans, the company said in a press release Monday. “As of today, the new speeds will automatically and progressively be rolled out to current subscribers, at no additional cost,” it said. Its Turbo 30 residential plan has been boosted by 10 Mbps, while its Ultimate 55 and Ultimate 55 Unlimited residential plans now have speeds of 60 Mbps. In Ontario, Cogeco increased the download speed of its Business Select plan from 40 Mbps to 50 Mbps, and its upload speed from 10 to 15 Mbps, the same increase was applied to...
BCE Inc. will cover about 90 per cent of its wireline footprint with fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) in a little less or a little more than a decade, though the issue of whether smaller Internet service providers will get mandated access...
Third-quarter results indicate the mobile market has adjusted to the higher-priced, two-year contracts that became the norm after the CRTC implemented the wireless code in 2013, says Scotia Capital...
The number of Canadian households abandoning TV-service subscriptions from Canada’s biggest providers during the first nine months of this year was almost seven times higher than during the same period a year earlier, according to data compiled by consulting company Boon Dog Professional Services Inc. Boon Dog said...
Cogeco Cable Inc. reported higher revenue and profit numbers this week, with its U.S. operations bringing in substantially more money as it benefited from a favourable trend in the U.S.-dollar exchange rate. The company said in a...
Cogeco Cable Inc. announced Wednesday that Tony Ciciretto, CEO of its business unit Cogeco Peer 1, will be stepping down and replaced by chief technology and strategy officer Philippe Jette. “It is with regret that we are announcing Tony’s decision to step down to pursue other opportunities,” Cogeco CEO Louis Audet said in a press release. “On behalf of the board of directors and all our employees, particularly those who worked closely with Tony these past six years, I want to sincerely thank him for his dedication, commitment and many contributions to the growth and...
Cogeco Cable Inc. announced Monday that its combined subsidiaries Cogeco Data Services and Peer 1 will be renamed Cogeco Peer 1. It said in the release that combining the two subsidiaries will help grow Cogeco’s enterprise...
Rogers Communications Inc. on Monday announced it is moving forward with two different kinds of technology — 4K video and gigabit-speed Internet — though one commentator says the success of either of these initiatives...
Cogeco Cable Inc. announced Wednesday it is launching a suite of cloud-based applications, called Online Productivity Tools, to help small- and medium-sized business customers in Quebec and Ontario....
Cogeco Cable Inc. announced Monday it has converted 15 local TV stations, part of its TVCogeco division, to high-definition (HD) quality. Cogeco said in a press release that the $5 million investment in upgrading the stations...
Cogeco Cable Inc. said Friday it has officially opened a new 100,000-square-foot data centre in Kirkland, Que., just west of Montreal. The data centre, which the company announced earlier this year, is the first in Canada to bill...
Cogeco Cable Inc. CEO Louis Audet says there is currently "no demand" for Internet services with speeds as quick as one gigabit per second, despite recent forays by BCE Inc. and Quebecor Inc. into this area. "As I'm sure everyone realizes, there is essentially no demand for that," Audet told a Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce...
Cogeco Cable Inc. CEO Louis Audet said Tuesday he believes Canada's telecommunications regulators will come around to mandating access for mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs), notwithstanding the CRTC's decision on...
Cogeco Cable Inc. announced Thursday that new residential and business Internet packages are now available in Lindsay, Ont. Both of the residential plans for Lindsay — a 130-kilometre drive northeast of downtown Toronto...
Cogeco Cable Inc. said Thursday that its Atlantic Broadband subsidiary in the United States has closed its acquisition for the cable assets of MetroCast Communications of Connecticut from Harron Communications LP. The deal was announced in June for a price of $200 million US. Cogeco on Thursday reiterated in a press release that the acquisition gives it infrastructure that passes almost 70,000 homes and businesses, and currently has 23,000 TV customers, 22,000 Internet customers and 8,000 subscribers of phone service. "Nearly three years after our initial entry into the U.S. market, we are pleased to be continuing our geographic expansion into key growth markets," Cogeco CEO Louis Audet said in the release....
A report from Boon Dog Professional Services Inc. released Wednesday said Canada's publicly traded TV-service providers lost six times as many subscribers in the first half of 2015 than in the...
Canadian companies’ recent embrace of gigabit Internet isn’t meeting a need that exists in the market, but it is setting telecoms up for the day customers start demanding such speeds, according to Greg MacDonald,...
Streaming is often perceived as a competitor to the traditional TV system, but the introduction of a new service in the U.S. raises the possibility that instead of one replacing the other, the two could merge into a new hybrid...
A day after the CRTC said it would mandate wholesale access to fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) networks by small ISPs, financial analysts said the move likely won’t have a significant impact on...
GATINEAU, Que. — Small ISPs and advocacy groups praised a move by the CRTC Wednesday mandating wholesale access to fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) networks and allowing small Internet service providers (ISPs) to build their own “middle mile” connections. “We think it’s great,” Canadian Network Operators Consortium (CNOC) president Bill Sandiford said in an interview following the release of the CRTC’s decision on its wholesale wireline review. “The majority of CNOC members, as this decision gets implemented, will have access to fibre-to-the-home...
The Internet has run out of new IP addresses based on the most commonly-used format, and one Canadian expert says service providers in the country are being too slow in making the switch to the newer protocol. Jacques Latour,...
Cogeco Cable Inc. reported higher third-quarter earnings on Tuesday, attributing gains largely to its U.S. operations, which benefited from favourable terms when translating U.S. dollars to Canadian. The company said in a press...
A movement is underway to make wireless Internet access ubiquitous and free in most urban environments, with people's home routers as the source of these public connections. The people behind...
The CRTC said Wednesday that two separately owned French-language commercial radio stations in Gatineau, Que., will be allowed to combine their sales teams. The stations involved are Cogeco Cable Inc.-owned CKOF-FM, which has a...
Shaw Communications Inc. on Thursday reported a decline in its quarterly income with much of the drop attributed to a $55-million write-down taken on an abandoned IPTV project. Shaw said in a press release that it started work in...
The proportion of Canadians connected to the Internet by fibre is rising and these people are more satisfied with their Internet service than others, according to market research data released...
Canada’s biggest telecom companies are asking the CRTC to dismiss an application by smaller providers that, if granted, would make usage-sensitive rates interim, allowing small Internet service...
Cogeco Cable Inc. announced Monday that its U.S. subsidiary Atlantic Broadband will acquire MetroCast Communications of Connecticut from parent company Harron Communications LP for $200 million US. MetroCast Connecticut has a...
Cogeco Cable Inc. announced Wednesday a series of a new business phone plans for its fibre-services customers. The new service will provide customers with lower costs, better productivity and "scalability" to meet future needs, said the company in a press release. Cogeco listed three different plans — hosted PBX Fibre, SIP trunking and PRI replacement — all of which cost $29.95 per month for each "seat" or "channel." Cogeco Cable marketing vice-president Anne Isabelle Roussy said in the release that the company sees the growth of the Internet and...
In the past three years, five per cent of Canadians have gotten rid of their TV service, Media Technology Monitor (MTM) said in a new report. MTM, a project of CBC/Radio-Canada, reported that 16 per cent of Canadians currently do...
The rates large telecom companies charge small Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to access their wireline networks have reached extreme levels and are eroding competition “with every passing day,” according to a CRTC application filed by the Canadian Networks Operators Consortium (CNOC). “The amount of...
Cogeco Cable Inc. reported late Wednesday a decline in profit for its second fiscal quarter, a gain in revenue and fewer TV subscribers. It said in a press release that its profit was $58.9 million for the three months ended Feb....
Cogeco Cable Inc. said Monday it is now offering its TiVo Inc. service to customers in Quebec. Cogeco Cable Canada CEO Louise St-Pierre said in a Monday news release that the service ensures “there will always be something...
An Ottawa consulting company says IPTV services aren’t absorbing the exodus of cable customers at the same rate as they used to. TV-industry consulting company Boon Dog Professional Services Inc. issued a press release Wednesday that showed Canada’s publicly traded companies lost a record of 64,649 TV customers last year, compared to a few hundred the year before. The Wire Report similarly tabulated the number of public companies’ subscribers, and these results showed 31,663 fewer TV subscribers in their most recently completed fiscal years. The Boon Dog report, however,...
Financial analysts reacting to the CRTC’s new pick-and-pay rules say they don’t expect the decision to have a major impact on the industry, though the broadcasting side of the business is...
The number of Canadian broadband subscribers among the major publicly traded telecom service providers exceeded television subscribers for the first time in 2014. Data compiled by The Wire Report shows the overall number of TV subscribers at these companies, as recorded at the end of their last fiscal years, fell by almost...
While Shaw Communications Inc. has been trying to raise the rates it charges to smaller ISPs to use its network, Cogeco Cable Inc. has been seeking permission to lower rates and received it on Wednesday. The CRTC said Cogeco has...
Cogeco Cable Inc.'s data services division has cut about 20 jobs in Toronto, the company said Thursday. Cogeco Data Services spokeswoman Shawna Abbott said in an email that the cuts were made Wednesday "to increase...
The CRTC is demanding that four of Canada’s largest cable companies and small ISPs represented by the Canadian Network Operators’ Consortium (CNOC) work out a dispute over customer service...
Cogeco Cable Inc. said Tuesday it expects to open a new 100,000 square foot data centre in Montreal in the spring. The facility is designed to meet Tier 3 standards, the company said in a release, and will serve customers in...
Cogeco Cable Inc. has quietly rolled out home spotting, or the use of multi-signal routers in people's homes to provide both private WiFi signals to residents and separate public signals to...
Cogeco Cable Inc. said Wednesday that Richard Shea and David Isenberg will share the title of president at its U.S. subsidiary Atlantic Broadband, as of Jan. 1. Shea will also be given the title of CEO on that date, and Isenberg...
GATINEAU, Que. — Rogers Communications Inc.'s senior vice-president of regulatory affairs, Ken Engelhart, on Tuesday attacked some of the arguments made on behalf of smaller Internet service providers during CRTC's hearing on wholesale wireline services. For example, VMedia Inc., an Ontario-based provider of Internet protocol-TV (IPTV) services, told the hearing on Friday that usage rates for companies using incumbents' infrastructure were too high and an obstacle to the rollout of data-heavy services like VMedia’s TV offering. On Tuesday, Engelhart said that in order for the CRTC to address VMedia’s assertion with any action, the commission would have to hold...
GATINEAU, Que. — Three consumer groups opened the second week of the CRTC hearing into wholesale wireline connections by telling the regulator to expand its wholesale access regulations to fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP)...
Cogeco Cable Inc. said Monday that it has increased the Internet speeds of its customers in Quebec and Ontario. The company said in a press release that, in Quebec, the changes include increasing the download speed of its Express...
GATINEAU, Que. — Shaw Communications Inc. on Friday took a different tack than other large Internet service providers that have spoken before the CRTC’s wholesale wireline...
GATINEAU, Que. — Two Canadian Internet service providers told the CRTC on Thursday that opening up fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) networks to wholesale access could hurt the “fragile”...
The CRTC said Thursday that Cogeco Cable Inc. must adopt an automated, cross-industry customer-transfer system for its television and Internet operations by the new year. In it decision, the commission noted that in 2010 it directed all large home-phone service providers to adopt a standardized system to facilitate the movement of customer data between different providers, and in 2013 extended the directive to TV- and Internet-service providers. It gave providers until May this year to adopt such measures. In June, BCE Inc. asked the CRTC to direct Cogeco to adopt such a system by Jan. 1,...
Cogeco Cable Inc. said Monday that Patrice Ouimet has been made the company's new chief financial officer, effective immediately. The position became vacant in July after Pierre Gagne left the company for what was described by Cogeco as "personal reasons." Cogeco said in a press release Monday that Ouimet's previous job was as chief...
Executives from two of Canada’s largest telecommunications companies told the crowd at the Scotiabank Telecom & Cable 2015 Conference on Wednesday that the business of selling services to businesses is challenging their...
Industry Canada is being lobbied to open up more unlicensed spectrum for wireless Internet, as the United States did earlier this year. Government briefing notes and emails written in advance of a meeting planned for May 27...
Cogeco Cable Inc. CEO Louis Audet said Monday that providing TiVo service in Canada will help reduce the ongoing reduction in cable subscribers, or possibly even lead to growth. On Thursday, Cogeco said its TiVo service, which can bring customers Netflix service through their set-top boxes, would launch for Ontario...
Several new options for online television are about to become available in Canada. On Thursday BCE Inc. announced a new streaming service it's currently code-naming "Project Latte." The service, operated by the Bell Media division, will be available to TV service providers across the country, pending...
GATINEAU, Que. — Legislation introduced earlier this year that caps wholesale wireless roaming rates to what host carriers charge their own retail customers doesn't create the conditions necessary for smaller operators to compete, representatives from Wind Mobile and Mobilicity told the CRTC on Monday. It was the...
Cogeco Cable Inc. said Monday that it has appointed Diane Nyisztor as vice-president of corporate human resources. Nysiztor was previously partner of international executive services at tax and consulting services company KPMG Canada, Cogeco said in a press release. “Following our recent...
Documents from the CRTC indicate its officials felt that if conventional television broadcasters from the United States had the right to negotiate their carriage by Canadian service providers, they would have "little bargaining power" due to their "marginal viewership" in Canada. "Since Canadian...
Cogeco Cable Inc. wants the CRTC to set up regulated access to established wireless carriers’ networks, president and CEO Louis Audet said during a conference call with media Thursday. “The conditions for the creation of MVNOs [mobile virtual network operators] in Canada do not exist today in any form,” he said. “So we are making a number of suggestions to the commission that would create the regulatory environment where this new form of mobile network operator could appear and help increase the competitive nature of the wireless market in Canada.” The comments...
Cogeco Cable Inc. said Tuesday it will hold a conference call with journalists on Thursday to discuss "the future of mobile services in Canada." Cogeco has indicated an interest in launching wireless service, and it is...
Rogers Communications Inc. CEO Guy Laurence told a CIBC investor conference in Montreal on Wednesday that his company's upcoming over-the-top (OTT) programming service, Shomi, isn't meant to be the ultimate solution for streaming users. "We're not trying to kill Netflix here," he said. "This is a...
GATINEAU, Que. — You can’t assume that young people who have never had subscription-TV service will eventually get it, Ken Engelhart, Rogers Communications Inc.’s vice-president of...
The latest numbers from the CRTC show Canadians are watching more television on more devices, though fewer people are subscribing to TV services and young adults are tuning out. The broadcasting portion of the CRTC's annual...
Hours after a meeting between telecommunications companies and CRTC officials regarding paper-billing charges that failed to end in a result satisfactory to policy-makers, Industry Minister James Moore said via social media he'll solve the issue with legislation. “Our Government will introduce legislation to end pay-to-pay billing practices for telecom industry #ConsumersFirst,” Moore said on Twitter late Thursday evening. That followed an announcement from the CRTC Thursday that after closed-door meetings with several telecoms that companies agreed to exempt certain...
Shaw Communications Inc. is stepping up its lobbying ahead of the CRTC’s Let’s Talk TV hearing in September, meeting with various MPs in their ridings as well senior public servants in...
BCE Inc.'s TSN said Monday that it will debut its expanded format of five national broadcast feeds on Aug. 25. The sports specialty channel announced in May that its national broadcast channels would expand from two to five,...
Cogeco Cable Inc. announced Monday that Pierre Gagne has stepped down as the company's chief financial officer. The company said in a press release that he left because of "personal reasons." No replacement was named, nor was a timeline or process for finding a new chief financial officer immediately specified. Canaccord Genuity analyst...
Telecommunications providers are discovering an untapped resource in their quest to provide customers with more opportunities to get online, and that resource is other people's homes. Service providers in the United States...
Cogeco Cable Inc.’s data services subsidiary will manage Laurentian Bank’s “corporate telecommunications program,” the company said in a press release Tuesday. Michel Racine, vice-president of real estate...
Cogeco Cable Inc. has abandoned a multi-year project to establish an Internet protocol-based TV platform in Canada and will instead launch a service in partnership with TiVo Inc. that its CEO says gives it "all of what we...
BCE Inc. and Rogers Communications Inc. are shutting down their jointly-owned pay-per-view service, Viewer’s Choice Canada. Bell Media spokeswoman Amy Doary said in an email Monday that the service would cease operations by...
BCE Inc. has asked the CRTC to force Cogeco Cable Inc. to implement an automated system for facilitating the transfer of customers between different telecommunications companies by the start of next...
Internet- and television-service provider Cogeco Cable Inc. is looking to enter the wireless market if the CRTC paves the way with new rules as part of its ongoing review of the wholesale wireless sector, the company’s director of regulatory affairs said in a phone interview this week. Michel Messier said Tuesday that Montreal-based Cogeco will not build its own wireless infrastructure but is interested in becoming a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), buying services from Canada’s incumbent carriers and re-selling them to its customers. “We want to enter in the...
BCE Inc.'s Bell Media division on Tuesday launched what it said is the first French-language product among its growing selection of "Go" products for viewing television content over the Internet or by mobile device....
Broadcast distributors across the country are likely to pay for a big chunk of the billions of dollars for which Rogers Communications Inc. is on the hook as a result of the deal it struck for 12...
Two Canadian cities have been granted free WiFi in separate arrangements involving Shaw Communications Inc. and Cogeco Cable Inc. Shaw said in a press release Wednesday that under a five-year agreement with the City of Penticton...
One of television’s strengths as a vehicle for advertising has always been its ability to reach a lot of people with the same message at the same time. The industry has the technological capability to move in a different...
OTTAWA — The CRTC would be unlikely to intervene if a move to pick-and-pay television caused price increases, said Reynolds Martin, chief negotiator and chief legal officer at the Canadian Media Production Association. “I wonder what remedies would be available to the commission, because my supposition is that it’s going to be extremely reluctant to engage in any kind of rate regulation exercise over and above what’s been contemplated [and] done in the past,” he...
Television providers earned less from their video-on-demand services last year, according to CRTC data released Wednesday, despite investing in increasing the availability of content. The CRTC said in the statistical and...
Netflix Inc.’s video streaming service is poised to be a feature of some providers of television service in the United States, as opposed to just competing with them. RCN Telecom Services LLC, Grande Communications LLC and...
Mobilicity announced late Thursday night that it has reached a deal to be purchased by Telus Corp. for $350 million. Mobilicity, which has been under bankruptcy protection since September last year, said in a press release the transaction would need the approval of the Ontario Superior Court, the federal Competition Bureau, Industry Canada and...
Cogeco Cable Inc. on Wednesday said it was boosting speeds on certain residential Internet packages in both Ontario and Quebec. It said in a press release the upload speed for its Express 10 package will increase to as much as 2...
Cogeco Cable Inc. on Wednesday reported higher second-quarter numbers for both profit and revenue, helped along by an acquisition that took effect about a year earlier. The company said in a press release that revenue for the...
Shaw Communications Inc. said Thursday it has launched a mobile app and upgraded the website for its History channel to allow its subscribers on-demand viewing of almost 300 hours of programming. Shaw said in a press release the...
A lack of competition is behind slow upload speeds for Canadian broadband Internet customers, according to analyst Alan Breznick, and only the entry of a disruptive force like Google Inc. will bring the country up to speed....
OTTAWA — Industry executives disagreed about the best way to give consumers more choice as they discussed the CRTC’s ongoing review of the television system during a panel discussion at...
Cogeco Cable Inc. said Wednesday that it has launched home-phone service in three Quebec communities. It said the service is now available in St-Simon-les-Mines, Roxton Falls and Notre-Dame-des-Pins. The company announced introductory packages costing $4.99 a month for a basic line and $16.99 for a “Freedom Package” that includes, among other features, unlimited long-distance calling to locations in Canada and the United States. These discounted prices expire after 12 months, Cogeco said in a release, and are only available to customers already subscribing to at least two of...