The CRTC issued Thursday a new approach to how the rates small companies pay large telecoms for wholesale Internet services are set, stating that “current wholesale [high-speed access] service rates are likely not just and reasonable.” It directed large telecoms to file new cost studies relating to the rates they charge for wholesale high-speed Internet access. The new prices that come out of that costing process will apply to all wholesale high-speed access (HAS) rates, which the CRTC made interim “as of the date of this decision.” That means any changes to the rates...
The CRTC’s basic telecom services hearing will take place between April 11 and April 28, lasting almost three weeks. The regulator said in an undated agenda posted to its website, which it linked to in a post on Twitter Wednesday morning, that the hearing will take place at the CRTC headquarters in Gatineau, Que. The hearing will look at what basic telecom services should be available to all Canadians. Scheduled to appear, among others, are TekSavvy Solutions Inc., Telus Corp., BCE Inc., Cocego Inc., Rogers Communications Inc. and The Canadian Media Producers Association...
TekSavvy Solutions Inc. is asking its customers to push both regulators and lawmakers to give incumbents greater incentive to collaborate with independent telecommunications companies when problems...
Too much reliance on landline-phone-service revenue, combined with a heavy debt load, has resulted in Primus Telecommunications Canada Inc. being placed in creditor protection and awaiting court...
The CRTC has denied TekSavvy Solutions Inc.'s request for interim relief in a situation where Rogers Communications Inc. is slated to replace some legacy cable in a Toronto neighbourhood with...
The Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS) will kick off next week’s CRTC hearing on the structure and mandate of this office, while an appearance by BCE Inc. will...
Industry Canada announced this week in three press releases it is providing $3.15 million as part of a process to expand and improve Internet service to 11,000 homes in Southwestern Ontario, and a total of $12.05 million to do the same for 42,700 homes in Saskatchewan. It said Friday that the government is providing Saskatchewan Telecommunications Holding Corp. with a “total of $7.42 million to connect nearly 2,700 homes in northern Saskatchewan to faster Internet services,” in a project that will provide Internet speeds of at least 5Mbps, scheduled to be completed...
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...
TekSavvy Solutions Inc. is appealing a cost award in a dispute over filesharing with Voltage Pictures LLC. TekSavvy initially said it would appeal the order in March, following a court decision that set the price Voltage must pay...
Industry Canada’s new guidelines for transparency reports released by telecom companies put unnecessary limits on how information should be reported, according to two academics with expertise in...
Canadian TV providers are worried the wording the CRTC proposed to prohibit policies requiring 30-day notice to cancel TV services could be interpreted to apply to the cancellation of individual...
The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) told the CRTC that evidence presented by other parties supports its case that Rogers Communications Inc. and Shaw Communications Inc.'s Shomi has not been distributed in line with...
Some companies have disputed the notion put forward by Rogers Communications Inc. and Shaw Communications Inc. that their video-streaming service Shomi has been made available to other service providers. In filings to the CRTC...
TORONTO — With a key decision from the CRTC on smaller service providers’ access to wireline telecommunications networks expected soon, three incumbents’ regulatory bosses took on...
A number of Canadian broadcast distributors have taken issue with aspects of the CRTC’s proposed code governing the relationship between TV providers and their customers, including the requirement that distributors must...
Copyright-enforcement company CEG TEK International said recently that it’s seen a significant fall in the piracy of its clients’ content in Canada over the past few months, which it attributes to the inclusion of settlement demands in its copyright infringement notices. CEG TEK was cited in a press release from a group called the Internet Security Task Force last week as saying peer-to-peer piracy of content owned by its 125 clients dropped among the five largest Internet service providers (ISPs) in Canada over the past 13 weeks. The most dramatic decline was on BCE Inc.’s...
TekSavvy Solutions Inc. said Friday it will appeal a recent cost award in a dispute with Voltage Pictures LLC over filesharing. The March 17 decision set the price the film production company must pay to access personal...
TekSavvy Solutions Inc. said Thursday it is “disappointed” by Tuesday’s Federal Court decision setting a final price for the handover of information on some of its broadband subscribers to Voltage Pictures LLC in a dispute over illegal filesharing. The ISP said in a news release that the decision, under...
On Tuesday a Federal Court judge set the cost for TekSavvy Solutions Inc. to hand over subscriber information to Voltage Pictures LLC at $21,557.50, the last major point of contention in a dispute over illegal filesharing. The...
A new report from two university professors who research digital privacy says major Canadian ISPs score an average of just two out of 10 when it comes to transparency and protecting consumers’...
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 and network reliability at the negotiating table within the next three months. The regulator issued a decision on Thursday on a CNOC complaint from September 2013 in which the small ISPs claimed network providers Rogers Communications Inc., Cogeco Cable Inc., Shaw Communications Inc. and Quebecor...
In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter published Jan. 15, Voltage Pictures LLC president Nicolas Chartier detailed the motivations behind his company’s ongoing efforts to sue those involved in file sharing. According...
After "significant" investments in time and money to prepare for the notice-and-notice regime that went into effect this month, independent Internet service providers Teksavvy Solutions Inc....
Small Internet service providers looking to provide TV service should hold off on investment because of the uncertain future of the broadcast television market, according to 3Macs analyst Troy Crandall. At the recent CRTC...
On Wednesday, the Australian government said it would allow the blocking of foreign websites that offer illegal downloading and streaming, the same day that the file-sharing website Pirate Bay was...
OTTAWA — Lawyers for Hollywood production company Voltage Pictures LLC told a Federal Court judge in Ottawa on Monday that Teksavvy Solutions Inc. is using a previous judgment to “claw...
GATINEAU, Que. — Representatives from Canada’s small Internet service providers on Tuesday asked the CRTC to open up more of the incumbents’ broadband networks, mandating wholesale...
The CRTC faces another major policy hearing next month, and this one has the potential to affect independent Internet service providers that depend on major telecom companies to connect them to customers. In September, the...
TekSavvy Solutions Inc. said Monday it has purchased an Ottawa-area software company called Openjive Inc. Independent ISP TekSavvy said in a press release that Openjive's programs, including Lingo, integrate platforms from...
In the past, an aspiring broadcast distributor had no choice but to go to the CRTC and get a licence before they launched their cable or satellite business. Now, in theory at least, they can bypass the entire process by launching an over-the-top (OTT) TV service. While they would have more flexibility and freedom from regulation, such as Canadian content contributions and quotas, they also wouldn’t benefit from the rules that benefit licensed service providers, such as guaranteed access to content. And a recent CRTC ruling on an OTT broadcast distributor called Leiacomm could make...
As the CRTC prepares for a week of hearings beginning Monday on the future of wholesale wireless in Canada, the rules regarding wholesale Internet access may be a predictor of how the regulator will...
GATINEAU, Que. — Independent ISP TekSavvySolutions Inc. told the CRTC Tuesday it is considering becoming a TV distributor, on the same day that it announced a “partnership” with Hastings Cable Vision Ltd., an...
A “notice-and-notice” copyright regime — under which Internet service providers (ISPs) will be legally required to notify customers about copyright infringement complaints brought to...
Friday’s Supreme Court decision requiring law enforcement to get a warrant in order to obtain customers’ personal information from Internet service providers muddies the water around...
The Federal Court case Voltage Pictures LLC filed over illegal filesharing of some of its films was decided in February, but the courtroom back-and-forth is still ongoing. Voltage is trying to get Internet provider Teksavvy Solutions Inc. to turn over the names and addresses of around 2,000 subscribers that are alleged to have infringed on its copyright, as ordered by the court. The two companies dispute the amount of money Teksavvy should be able to charge for turning over the information, and a hearing on the issue is set for Nov. 13, according to court documents made available on Friday....
Rogers Communications Inc. said Thursday it received 174,917 requests for information on subscribers from government agencies last year, though it did not say with how many it complied. The company...
The Digital Privacy Act, the government’s most recent attempt to update the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), has experts disagreeing about the effect it...
Communications lawyer Bram Abramson has joined Teksavvy Solutions Inc. as chief legal and regulatory officer. Abramson left McCarthy Tétrault, a Toronto-based business law firm, where he specialized in telecommunications and regulation. Abramson received his law degree from McGill University in 2007, according to his LinkedIn page....
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....
A Canadian Internet service provider is being required by court order to give information on its subscribers linked with illegal filesharing to a Hollywood production company, and advocates on both...
Price is a common reason for Canadians to leave one Internet service provider (ISPs) for another, according to survey results released Wednesday. A poll commissioned by small Internet and phone-service provider TekSavvy Solutions...
Canada’s small Internet service providers (ISPs) are asking the telecom regulator to impose extra costs on incumbent cablecos that offer wholesale Internet, said Ken Engelhart, senior vice-president of regulatory affairs at Rogers Communications Inc. “They want to load a lot of extra costs onto us, but do...