BCE Inc. has filed an application for leave to appeal a $17.9-million penalty imposed by the CRTC last month for violations of its broadcasting license, arguing that the CRTC failed to give the broadcaster adequate notice that it was misallocating its community programming funding towards its own local news programming. In an Oct. 22 decision, the CRTC required Bell to pay $17,924,607 to the Canada Media Fund, "an amount that corresponds to the excess portion of its misallocated contributions to local expression," the CRTC wrote. The regulator further said in the decision that Bell had...
OneWeb Ltd. is still planning to offer broadband internet service in Canada, following its recent exit from bankruptcy protection. The company intends to use a low earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation to offer broadband service in Canada’s North next year. “While we did pause operations this last year due to Chapter 11, we are ramping back again and getting on track to deliver commercial services to areas of Canada as early as late 2021,” a OneWeb spokesperson wrote in an email to The Wire Report. OneWeb had originally planned to offer “fiber-like connectivity” on a...
A trio of Quebec internet service providers released a statement Wednesday claiming that BCE Inc. continues to impede their access to its poles. Quebecor Inc., Cogeco Inc., and non-profit...
As Canadian emergency management authorities hold their regular test of the...
A corporate restructuring that will see Telesat Holdings Inc. go public and...
Between Nov. 1, 2018 and Dec. 31, 2019, participating telecom service providers "improperly" objected to 542 customer complaints, and failed to provide complete responses to 931 cases marked as...
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) has responded to the Liberal government’s proposed new privacy legislation for the private sector — while the office “welcomes” Bill C-11, it questioned the government’s decision to not use a “rights-based approach” for the new privacy rules. In a statement published Thursday, the OPC expressed concern that the proposed legislation, which would replace the current Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents...
Government officials have indicated that the newly-launched Universal Broadband Fund will seek to allow for affordable internet pricing across Canada, although it will not impose many firm or fixed affordability requirements on...
The federal government has launched a consultation on a proposal to open up the 6 GHz spectrum band for...
On the heels of the incumbent appeal of a Federal Court of Appeal decision...
Telesat Holdings Inc. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) both said Tuesday they plan to provide broadband connectivity to remote and rural areas of Canada seven years ahead of the...
The CRTC will release a report detailing the impact of online services on the state of video and television and video distribution in Canada and some nine other countries before the end of the year,...
The federal government introduced sweeping private-sector privacy law...
The federal government today announced that it is launching a public consultation on reviewing the Privacy Act, Canada's public sector privacy law. In a Monday evening release, the Department of Justice said that members of...
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) has issued its...
In a years-long dispute over traffic stimulation to the 867 area code, Telus Corp. is asking the CRTC to review its assessment that measures taken by the company to "protect itself" against an "unlawful arbitrage scheme" by Iristel Inc. amounted to "unjust discrimination" against Iristel, and the customers of both companies. The measures -- which Telus says were taken to stop itself from making "sizable overpayments" to Iristel while the regulator assessed a Part 1 complaint on the topic --...
The $2 billion Canadian Infrastructure Bank rural broadband fund will seek...
Both BCE Inc. and large cable companies have turned to the Supreme Court...
Telus Corp. announced Thursday the launch of a new business focused on agricultural tech, after the company’s acquisition of eight companies in that sector. Telus Agriculture will bring together those companies’ various...
Paul Beaudry is to become the new vice-president for regulatory affairs at Cogeco Inc., taking over from Nathalie Dorval. Beaudry announced the news on Twitter Thursday morning. “It’s an exciting time to be in the...
In response to a CRTC call for comments, Canadian telecommunications providers have indicated that they generally agree with new deadlines for the rollout of next-generation 911 networks across Canada. In April, the CRTC pushed back a number of deadlines for the rollout of NG911 services, and for the decommissioning of the existing 911 system, due to the impacts of COVID-19. The CRTC delayed several key deadlines by nine months — under the new plan, providers are to have their...
A number of Canadian wireless providers have objected to a proposal that...
The federal government announced the launch of its long-awaited Universal Broadband Fund Monday morning,...
The $1.2-billion acquisition of Lionbridge AI by Telus Corp. will "help accelerate the digital transformation and strategic growth journey of Telus International," CEO Darren Entwistle said on a...
BCE Inc. CEO Mirko Bibic praised the updates to the Broadcasting Act...
Quebecor Inc. posted its third-quarter earnings on Thursday morning, with revenues slightly up, boosted...
A day after CRTC chairman Ian Scott addressed the Competitive Network Operators of Canada's ISP Summit and gave no more details about when the regulator would give some finality to the issue of...
Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault isn’t concerned about potential...
The Liberal government’s proposed updates to the Broadcasting Act have...
The CRTC has rejected a complaint from Rogers Communications Inc. about an extension the regulator granted BCE Inc. to install trunk connections to carry toll-free traffic between their networks. In April, the regulator extended the deadline for Bell to install the connections by a further 90 days on top of the 150 days the company was given from the date of a December 2019 decision requiring Bell to install the connections. In May, Rogers objected to the extension, and said that it...
The Liberal government’s long-awaited update to the Broadcasting Act...
The CRTC Monday announced a consultation on the state of telecommunications in the North, and is in particular seeking input on the service offered by BCE Inc. subsidiary Northwestel. The...
The lack of pricing "discipline" in the wireless market could have negative...
The CRTC has launched a consultation on improving access to poles owned by Canadian telecom companies. It said it heard during its proceeding on barriers to rural broadband rollouts that “untimely and costly access to poles...
The federal government released its second quarterly check-in on wireless prices across Canada Thursday morning, as a follow up to the Liberal government’s plan to lower wireless prices 25 per cent by early 2022. Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) and consulting firm Wall Communications tracked the prices of wireless plans across the flanker brands of the big three telecoms — Rogers Communications Inc.’s Fido, Telus Corp.’s Koodo and BCE Inc.’s Virgin,...
Six months after the CRTC declined its request to hold an inquiry into contact tracing technologies and...
An investigation into the use of facial recognition technology to analyze age and gender of customers in shopping malls owned by Cadillac Fairview concluded that it violated Canadian privacy law, the...
TekSavvy Solutions Inc. is asking the Federal Court of Appeal to review the CRTC's Sept. 28 decision to grant a request from incumbents for a fresh stay on the implementation of the lower wholesale...
The federal privacy watchdog has joined its counterparts from 12 other countries in calling for "stronger privacy protections and greater accountability" when it comes to the development and use of...
Cogeco Inc. announced its fourth quarter earnings on Wednesday, increasing...
More than a 100 Canadian tech CEOs have signed an open letter calling on the Liberal government to prioritize digital innovation as a key part of Canada’s recovery from COVID-19. Published by the Canadian Council of Innovators, the letter’s signatories come from a wide-ranging set of start-ups and established...
Facebook Inc. is asking a judge to throw out significant chunks of an...
Incumbent telecoms are asking the CRTC to deny a request from the Competitive Network Operators of Canada to require the large telecoms to release more detailed information about the structures of...
Rogers Communications Inc. showed a rebound in its third-quarter earnings report Thursday, with media and wireless revenue roughly back to the levels they were at in 2019 following a second quarter that its CFO described as the "most volatile" the business had seen. ...
Cogeco Inc. is buying Quebec cableco DERYtelecom for $405 million, the company announced Wednesday. The acquisition will see Cogeco add around 100,000 customers in various regions of the province, including Estrie,...
Speaking Tuesday morning at an online event, Bell assistant general counsel...
President of BCE Inc.'s Bell Media Randy Lennox will step down on Jan. 4,...
Rogers Communications Inc. and Altice USA Inc. upped their offer in a joint takeover bid of Cogeco Inc. from $10.3 billion to $11 billion over weekend, a bid that was rejected by the controlling shareholder of the company, the...
The Competitive Network Operators of Canada industry group has told the CRTC that it needs more information about how incumbents have structured their disaggregated network architecture in order to properly participate in regulator's ongoing consultation on how to reconfigure the disaggregated regime. In an Oct. 13 letter to the commission, CNOC wrote that the amount of information the incumbents designated as confidential was "overbroad" and that other parties could not adequately participate in the consultation with the amount of information on offer. Earlier this month, the CRTC...
The federal government was told telecom companies...
Testing of the National Public Alerting System (NPAS) across mobile devices produced by five major manufacturers showed devices play alerts at variable volumes, while putting a phone in "do not...
The Liberals' election commitment to drop wireless prices 25 per cent will...
The federal privacy watchdog has launched a pair of investigations into a series of cyberattacks on the Canada Revenue Agency and the GCKey credential used by federal agencies. In a Tuesday...
In order to make its disaggregated wholesale regime work, the CRTC should...
The CRTC is allowing the trial of BCE Inc.’s artificial intelligence-based spam and fraudulent call blocking system to continue until it decides on a request by Bell to make the project permanent....
The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened privacy concerns around activities...
Telecom industry group Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA) released a report Wednesday outlining how deployment of 5G will help Canada meet its climate goals, linking the issue...
Rogers Communications Inc. and Shaw Communications Inc. have asked the CRTC to require British Columbia's Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure to either pay half of...
Canada’s largest broadcasters have committed to making the use of a Black, Indigenous, and people of colour (BIPOC) hiring database a prerequisite to giving original productions the green light. The broadcasters are...
The Canadian Communication Systems Alliance has endorsed a complaint from Quebecor Inc.'s Videotron to the Competition Bureau over delays to accessing BCE Inc. infrastructure in Quebec, writing in a...
In an ongoing dispute between Rogers Communications Inc. and some of its third party internet access (TPIA) wholesale customers over COVID-19-related internet traffic management practices (ITMPs),...
BCE Inc. has officially asked the CRTC to make its artificial intelligence-based call blocking system permanent, weeks after asking for an interim extension of the originally temporary scheme....
The Liberal government is doubling the Canada Infrastructure Bank’s funding for broadband projects to $2 billion, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Thursday, though he offered no updates on the delayed Universal Broadband Fund.
The infrastructure bank money is...
An announcement Thursday from Alphabet Inc.'s Google that it would put...
An ongoing dispute between BCE Inc. and Quebecor Inc. has escalated as the...
One in five potential customers for telecommunications services "perceived...
Quebecor Inc.’s Videotron told the CRTC that a proposal by BCE Inc. subsidiary Cablevision du Nord in response to Videotron’s request to increase the wholesale capacity it buys from Cablevision is...
The CRTC said Monday it has approved a stay request from incumbent telecoms asking the regulator not to enforce the wholesale rates it lowered in August 2019. That means the lower rates won’t be...
In response to a complaint to the CRTC from Quebecor Inc.'s Videotron that BCE Inc. was unduly delaying Videotron's arrival in the Abitibi region, Bell subsidiary Cablevision du Nord says the delay is Videotron's fault. In a...
The Canada Revenue Agency has argued that Iristel Inc.'s second request for the Federal Court to make the CRA release tax returns Iristel says it is owed should be struck, either because the request...
VMedia Inc. co-founder George Burger says his company has been able to launch apps for its new IPTV service on several new devices after a dispute with BCE Inc. was resolved. VMedia last month lodged a Part 1 application...
Quebecor Inc. has launched a wristband that lights up and vibrates when individuals come too close to each other, marketing it as a solution for businesses operating during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Videotron Business on Thursday announced it had launched the Radius...
Telus Corp. has told the CRTC that it doesn't think Iristel Inc. deserves a stay on implementing new tariff rates while the CRTC assesses Iristel's argument that the regulator wrongly determined it...
In Wednesday’s throne speech kicking off Parliament’s return, the...
Given the precarious situation around the now-escalating COVID-19 pandemic, what will actually be...
BCE Inc. is not unduly preferring its own TV service and is simply...
Iristel Inc. is sticking to its guns in its claim that the CRTC should look into the problem of caller ID manipulation, and in a reply to a response from Rogers Communications Inc. rejected Rogers’ assertion that the problem is an isolated one and that Iristel's complaint to the commission is frivolous. "Regardless of the extent to which Rogers may have acted deliberately or benefited economically, or not," Iristel wrote in a Sep. 11 reply to the regulator posted on CRTC website Thursday,...
The federal privacy watchdog Tuesday published its guidance for private businesses to abide by mandatory reporting of data breaches in order to stay compliant under the federal privacy law, the...
In a Wednesday afternoon press release, the board of directors for Cogeco Inc. accused the CEOs of both...
As Cogeco Inc.’s CFO speculated Tuesday that a bid for his company’s...
The CRTC has extended its deadline for telecom providers to implement an anti-call-spoofing protocol known as STIR/SHAKEN by nine months, until June 30, 2021. Telecoms had initially been required to launch the protocol by the...
In an increasingly bitter dispute with the nation's tax collector, Iristel Inc. has accused a Canada...
After the Federal Court of Appeal dismissed the incumbent telecom companies’ challenge of the CRTC's wholesale internet rates Thursday, independent internet service providers are now asking the...
The CRTC is putting on hold its proceeding on whether it should fine Iristel Inc. and Telus Corp. up to $1.25 million over a fight involving traffic stimulation. The regulator had proposed enforcing a financial penalty of...
Privacy commissioner Daniel Therrien has urged Federal Court to find the...
The Federal Court of Appeal dismissed Thursday the large telecom companies’ appeal of the CRTC’s Aug. 2019 decision lowering wholesale rates.
The appeal is part of a long-running dispute between incumbent telecoms including BCE Inc., Rogers Communications Inc., Shaw...
A small Ontario telecommunications provider has told Federal Court it should be able to continue to market its wireless home internet service as “WiFibe,” urging it to deny a trademark injunction...
The CRTC has asked telecoms to indefinitely refrain from starting or relaunching any measures to block unauthorized SIM swapping or porting, after Quebecor Inc. and Shaw Communications Inc. reported...
In almost all cases, Canadian internet consumers are receiving service at...
Iristel Inc. says the CRTC wrongly determined it was stimulating traffic to...
New Conservative leader Erin O’Toole shuffled his shadow cabinet Tuesday, with new faces appointed to both the innovation and heritage files.
Edmonton MP James Cumming takes over innovation, science and industry from Michelle Rempel Garner, while Quebec MP Alain Rayes...
Louis Audet, former CEO of Cogeco Inc. and current executive chairman of...
BCE Inc. has asked a Federal Court of Appeal judge to throw out an appeal of Canada's first ever site-blocking court order, saying that TekSavvy Solutions Inc.'s appeal of the order is grounded in...
The CRTC is seeking public comment on a series of suggested deadlines around the rollout of next-generation 911 (NG911) services, and the decommissioning of existing 911 networks. In a notice of consultation posted Friday, the...
Rogers Communications Inc. says if its proposed acquisition of Cogeco Inc.’s Canadian division went through, it wouldn’t move the headquarters, management team or operations of Cogeco’s media...
BCE Inc. has applied to the CRTC for an interim extension of its “very...
Quebecor Inc.’s Videotron has filed another complaint with the CRTC over wholesale access in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Que., this time accusing BCE Inc. subsidiary Cablevision du Nord de Québec of...
Iristel Inc.'s complaint to the CRTC that it thought Rogers Communications Inc. might have been involved in a scheme where some Canadian customers have had their caller ID tweaked to make it seem like...
Canada’s advertising standards body has found Telus Corp. made misleading...
The controlling shareholder of Cogeco Inc. — the Audet family — has said no to an acquisition bid from a U.S. company that would have seen Rogers Communications Inc. take over Cogeco’s Canadian assets for $4.9 billion.
The deal is part of an offer, announced...
