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 regulator to move quickly to enforce the lower rates. In a series of letters sent to the CRTC Friday, TekSavvy Solutions Inc., Distributel Communications Ltd., and the industry group the Competitive Network Operators of Canada (CNOC) have all asked to expedite the ongoing review-and-vary application. The application is one of three challenges launched by the incumbents, and is currently the only...
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 between $750,000 and $1.25 million on both companies after finding in August each company had breached the Telecommunications Act during a long-running dispute over calls to the 867 area code. Iristel then filed an application in early September asking the CRTC to overturn that decision, and to refrain from altering Iristel’s long distance termination rate or imposing...
Privacy commissioner Daniel Therrien has urged Federal Court to find the...
The Federal Court of Appeal dismissed Thursday the large telecom...
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 speeds which either match or exceed those advertised, according to a report released Tuesday by the...
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...
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 calls are originating from the U.S., are "false and utterly without foundation," Rogers says. In an Aug. 31 reply to the regulator, Rogers wrote that it "has been involved in no such arrangement. Furthermore, it has not altered the caller ID on a single call destined for Iristel's network, and it has not asked any other carrier to do so." Iristel had alleged in a July 29 Part 1...
Canada’s advertising standards body has found Telus Corp. made misleading...
The controlling shareholder of Cogeco Inc. — the Audet family — has...
Canadian satellite operator Telesat Holdings Inc. has spruiked its proposal...
Rogers Communications Inc. Tuesday announced a flurry of expansions to its 5G network, extending coverage to new cities and towns in British Columbia, Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Quebec. In January, Rogers announced it was...
The use of algorithms and surveillance technologies by police forces in Canada is a threat to fundamental Canadian freedoms, and the country's laws are not strong enough to ensure the technologies are used within constitutional "boundaries," according to a report out Tuesday...
Iristel Inc.'s ongoing fight with the Canada Revenue Agency has become yet more complicated, as the company filed a new application for judicial review Friday, alleging that the CRA improperly...
In a letter to shadow ministers, Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien assures opposition MPs that the...
Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Canada announced the launch of its consultation process on the 3800 MHz spectrum auction. The band is widely seen as being one of the bands crucial for 5G deployment. The launch...
The CRTC has suspended all deadlines relating to its consultation on wireless plans for people with disabilities until further notice while it considers a request for a virtual public hearing to be...
BCE Inc.'s submission to the Federal Court of Appeal -- in which it argued the federal Cabinet's decision that the wholesale internet rates set by the CRTC were low enough to stifle network investment...
TekSavvy Solutions Inc. has asked the Federal Court of Appeal to ignore the language of a recent cabinet decision declaring that the CRTC's wholesale rates were too low to encourage network...
The federal privacy watchdog published its guidance for manufacturers of so-called Internet of Things devices, in an effort to ensure their compliance with the federal privacy law, the Personal Information Protection and...
BCE Inc. and a coalition of cable companies have submitted letters to the...
As its work was being put on hiatus due to prorogation of the House of Commons, the industry committee sent a letter to Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains saying the federal government must act to “prevent any further harm to Canadians.” The committee has been studying the threat of fraud and scam calls since before the COVID-19 pandemic began. In May, it heard from the Canadian Anti Fraud Centre that criminals were cashing in on the pandemic. “Fraud targeting Canadians has...
The Canadian Communication Systems Alliance has filed a formal complaint with the CRTC, alleging that BCE Inc. has conferred an undue preference to its own TV service offerings and "other distribution...
With Tuesday's prorogation of Parliament, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has...
Lawyers representing BCE Inc. have asked a Federal Court of Appeal judge to...
The Liberal government has sided with Canada’s largest telecoms in their...
The Ontario government has launched a public consultation in a bid to improve the province’s privacy protection laws. The consultation will involve an online survey, written submissions and web conference, the Ministry of Government and Consumer services announced on Thursday, and is seeking advice about how to increase transparency for individuals about how their data is being used, enhance consent provisions and introduce a right to erasure and data portability. It’s also seeking feedback on how to increase enforce powers for the provincial information and privacy commissioner,...
The CRTC has proposed enforcing a financial penalty of between $750,000 and...
VMedia Inc. has filed a complaint with the CRTC alleging that it is being unduly disadvantaged by BCE Inc.'s delay in approving the distribution of Bell programming over VMedia's streaming apps. ...
The CRTC largely played a hands-off role during the COVID-19 pandemic in a...
As the CRTC announced the first recipients of its $750-million rural...
Iristel Inc.'s application for judicial review of the conduct of the Canadian Revenue Authority (CRA) during an audit of the telecom company's finances is an "attack" on the outcome of a tax assessment and circumvents the "comprehensive system of objections and appeals" that already exist within the...
An updated version of a class action lawsuit against BCE Inc. and the...
Innovation, Science, and Economic Development says it is moving toward establishing a hybrid work-from-home model that will see increasing numbers of employees return to office work in a series of...
The Competition Bureau has reached a consent agreement with electronics distribution and services company WESCO International Inc., which will see the company divest its utility and datacom businesses...
A Federal Court of Appeal judge has ruled that Quebecor Inc. must turn over documents to the Competition Bureau, which the bureau argues it needs access to to determine if Videotron has violated elements of the Competition Act. The Competition Bureau has said it believes Quebecor may be engaged in an "astroturfing" scheme, where company employees leave “comments, rankings, stars or mentions in mobile applications, as well as likes on social media, and did not disclose that they were employees of the companies,” according to a statement emailed to The Wire Report last month. In...
The CRTC has sent a letter to BCE Inc. informing the company that its...
BCE Inc. has asked the CRTC to strike a Competition Bureau report...
A network outage left wireless, internet and TV customers in Ontario and Quebec without service for about 45 minutes on Thursday. Consumers, mostly with BCE Inc., began reporting the outage on social media soon after 12 p.m. A...
Quebecor Inc. posted second quarter returns Thursday that beat analyst expectations, primarily on the back of strong wireless and home internet additions, despite the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic across the sector.
In...
BCE Inc.’s second quarter profit dropped to $294 million, a 64 per cent decrease on a year before, with the company attributing the drop to higher expenses, including $452 million of impairment charges related to some of Bell’s TV and radio properties.
The...
Canadians are complaining less about their wireless service and fewer consumers are receiving unexpected charges in their monthly wireless bill, according to wireless code...
Iristel Inc. has asked the CRTC to issue an order explicitly prohibiting...
Innovation, Science and Economic Development on Tuesday announced that it would be funding two separate projects in rural Quebec under its $585 million Connect to Innovate program. In a release, ISED said it was giving just...
In a much-watched appeal of Canada's first-ever site-blocking court order, three separate opponents of the order have filed two interventions asking the Federal Court of Appeal to strike down the order. In the first of the...
Telus Corp. posted a 39.4 per cent drop in profit in the second quarter of the year, the first quarter to...
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner has cleared up uncertainty about...
Shaw Communications Inc.’s new wireless brand is likely to initially...
Shaw Communications Inc.’s first Shaw-branded wireless service has...
Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada allowed companies to defer about $263 million in spectrum and radio licence fees and made other changes to its spectrum...
Following on the Liberal election campaign promise to lower wireless prices by 25 per cent, the federal government released on Tuesday the first of its quarterly check-ins on wireless prices across the country. The data --...
Telus Corp. has gained CRTC approval to launch a national on-demand service, granting it a licence for the next two years. In a Tuesday decision, the regulator granted Telus its second broadcast licence for an on-demand...
At a discussion about Ottawa’s now-delayed Universal Broadband Fund with...
Federal Court has said that both the CBC/Radio-Canada and the...
Quebecor Inc. has promoted Peggy Tabet, previously vice-president of broadcasting regulatory affairs, to the job of vice-president of regulatory and public affairs. In the new position, Tabet will oversee regulatory matters for both broadcasting and telecom, Quebecor said in a French-language press release Thursday. Tabet has been with the company for 22 years, the release said. ...
Small telecommunications providers, the Canadian Communications Systems...
BCE Inc. announced today that it is increasing the speed of its fixed wireless home internet service for some 300,000 rural homes, and will expand the service into parts of Atlantic Canada. Fixed...
The federal government has responded to a petition calling for Canada to restrict the installation of cellphone towers and antennas around schools and playgrounds, saying such measures are...
Rogers Communications Inc. posted a 17 per cent fall in revenue and a 53...
An open letter to online video teleconferencing (VTC) platforms signed by...
All three Maritime provinces experienced 911 outages on Wednesday morning, with an as-yet-unknown technical issue disrupting the emergency phone line. The RCMP in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island all...
Ontario-based home phone and internet provider Fibernetics Corp. is calling on the CRTC to compel BCE Inc. to allow it to lease facilities so it can expand its landline phone service to eight new areas. In a Part 1 application...
The Competition Bureau is asking Federal Court to compel Quebecor Inc.'s...
In its first quarterly report to include the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cogeco Inc.’s radio revenues fell by one-third, though its overall revenue beat analyst expectations. In the results released Thursday, revenues were up to $626 million, a 1.4 per cent increase on the same quarter a year before. RBC analyst Drew McReynolds and Canaccord Genuity analyst Aravinda Galappatthige both said the revenue figure beat expectations, with Galappatthige noting the quarter’s results were “particularly impressive given the uncertainties around COVID-19.” The quarter, which ended May 31,...
A wireless industry-commissioned report is arguing mandating network access by mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) could bring Canadian wireless average revenue per user down 30 to 35 per cent by...
The CRTC has denied BCE Inc.’s application for a decision requiring it to install trunk connections to carry toll-free traffic between its network and that of Rogers Communications Inc. to be rescinded. In its review and vary...
In its long-awaited privacy review of ABTraceTogether, Alberta's COVID-19...
The U.K. government has ordered all Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. equipment be removed from the country’s 5G networks by 2027, after initially allowing the Chinese technology giant a limited role in...
An Ontario-based ethnic broadcaster lobbying the government for funding to create a multilingual news channel to help Canadians access health information says it’s too early...
Shaw Communications Inc. president Paul McAleese said that while there has...
In a tax case worth tens of millions that Iristel Inc. said its survival hinged on, the Federal Court of Appeal has agreed with the company that the Federal Court has jurisdiction to review the...
The CRTC has denied a CloudWifi Inc. request for an interim scheme to allow small internet service...
BCE Inc. has asked Federal Court to order a small Ontario telecom to stop using the name “WiFIBE” for its wireless fibre internet service. Bell argued in a claim filed Monday that SkyChoice...
Just over four months after the Office of the Privacy Commissioner...
Telecoms and broadcasters have overwhelmingly urged the CRTC not to intervene in billing practices, arguing billing formats act as “competitive differentiators,” while the majority of public submissions call for the CRTC to...
A reported bid by Ottawa-headquartered satellite service provider Telesat Holdings Inc. to acquire competitor OneWeb has been unsuccessful, with a consortium including the U.K. government and Indian...
Telus Corp. has hired Jacob Glick to be its vice-president of public policy. Glick was most recently the general counsel for North, a wearable technology eyewear company based in Kitchener-Waterloo. That company was acquired by...
Major Canadian telecoms have ended one of their major relief measures for Canadians who suddenly shifted to working from home due to COVID-19, with the usage of home internet customers on capped data plans again being tracked as of July 1.
Rogers Communications Inc., BCE...
COVID-19 has made privacy rights even more important, the federal privacy commissioner’s office told Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault in May. A presentation prepared by the Office of the...
In order to continue paying dividends to the company's shareholders —...
The federal Office of the Privacy Commissioner, as well as the provincial commissioners in Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta, are looking into the collection of geo-location data by a coffee chain app. They said in a press...
Experts are unanimous in saying Canada’s 5G networks will eventually...
BCE Inc.'s argument that retroactive payments mandated by the CRTC in its August wholesale rate decision are an unconstitutional tax is a "disguised attack" on the "entire rate setting regime" laid out in the Telecommunications Act, according to lawyers representing TekSavvy Solutions Inc. Under section 27 of the Telecommunications Act, "every rate charged by a Canadian carrier for a telecommunications service shall be just and reasonable," and is the basis upon which the CRTC regulates...
The CRTC's wholesale rates ruling from last August ignored the intentions of a 2006 Maxime Bernier-era policy directive, and the decision to slash wholesale rates for third-party internet service...
New Brunswick lawyer Ellen Desmond and former journalist Nirmala Naidoo are joining the CRTC for five-year commissioner terms, the federal government announced Thursday. Desmond, who will serve as the regional member for...
In a closely-watched appeal of Canada's first-ever site-blocking court...
Contact tracing apps aimed at assisting public health authorities in...
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has again refused to put a timeframe on when...
The CRTC is asking Telus Corp. to publicly release a resolution from the...
Quebecor Inc. has filed a Part 1 application with the CRTC over access to BCE Inc. support structures. The June 16 French-language application, which is not yet available on the CRTC website, says...
Both Telus Corp. and BCE Inc. still won’t rule out partnering with Huawei...
Rogers Communications Inc. has signed a five year agreement with the University of Calgary to further Internet of Things research, the company announced in a Thursday media release. Steven Liang, an associate professor in the Department of Geomatics Engineering at the university's Schulich School of Engineering, has been named to lead the newly established Rogers Internet of Things Chair, which intends to drive innovative business services. In a phone interview, Liang said the newly...
