A government committee in Quebec is recommending the province study the idea of applying a tax on residential Internet service for the purpose of supporting cultural industries. It's among 71 recommendations from the Quebec taxation review committee, published Wednesday in the province's budget document for 2015-16. The budget also indicated that the government intends to amend the Consumer Protection Act in order to block Internet access to gaming and gambling sites not approved by government-owned Loto-Québec, "who will become the exclusive operator of the online game...
The CRTC’s proposed new code of conduct for television service providers is at odds with the commission’s stance that it won’t regulate over-the-top (OTT) services, according to broadcast consultant Peter Miller. He said it was “interesting that this regulator still wants to get involved in this level of detail with respect to traditional providers while still saying they’re going to do nothing with over-the-top providers.” The CRTC proposed the consumer code Thursday in its final Let’s Talk TV decision, which it said in a press release would help...
Shaw Communications Inc. has filed a review-and-vary application with the CRTC in an attempt to get higher prices for providing wholesale Internet access to third-party providers. Earlier this month, the CRTC ordered Shaw to...
BCE Inc. is not seeking costs from the Canadian Network Operators Consortium (CNOC) in the early part of the appeals process in relation to a CRTC decision to force it treat data used in its mobile-TV...
The Competition Bureau said Wednesday it will not challenge Postmedia Network Canada Corp.’s purchase of Quebecor Inc.’s English-language Sun Media newspapers. The bureau said in a Wednesday release that the proposed acquisition is unlikely to lessen or prevent competition, citing several reasons including that Postmedia’s broadsheet...
CRTC Chairman Jean-Pierre Blais on Wednesday issued a statement warning about the seriousness of "manipulating news coverage" in the wake of a report that a prominent BCE Inc. executive did...
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,...
Google Inc. said Tuesday it has appointed Ruth Porat, formerly chief financial officer at Morgan Stanley, as its new chief financial officer. Porat joined the bank in 1987, and led its investment in tech companies including...
The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) said Tuesday it has moved into new headquarters, though it has stayed in Montreal. SOCAN said in a press release that after 25 years in a downtown office...
BCE Inc. has asked the CRTC to approve the U.S-based Africa Channel for distribution in Canada. Currently, the channel is distributed in the United States and the Carribean, the channel’s chief financial officer, Fred...
The Federal Court of Appeal has dismissed a motion by BCE Inc. to extend the deadline by which it has to comply with a CRTC ruling on its mobile-TV service. Bell had asked the court for a...
CBC/Radio-Canada’s English-language conventional TV stations reported a loss of $20.9 million in the financial year ended on Aug. 31, 2014 despite an increase in revenue, which amounted to $799.5 million, according to...
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...
Four of Canada's biggest wireless carriers are fighting a recent Federal Court decision that found that although a tariff charged for cellphone ringtone downloads is invalid, the carriers that paid it are not owed their money...
Quebecor Media Inc. said Friday it has upped its stake in TVA Group Inc. to more than 68 per cent from about 51 per cent. Quebecor Media, which is three-quarters owned by Quebecor Inc., said in a press release it bought 17.3...
Streaming accounted for 27 per cent of U.S. music industry revenue last year, up from 21 per cent in 2013, the Record Industry Association of American (RIAA) said in report released Wednesday. The RIAA said permanent downloads accounted for 37 per cent of overall music revenue in the U.S. last year, down from 40 per cent a year earlier. Physical copies of music accounted for 32 per cent of industry revenue, down from 35 per cent one year earlier. The association report showed streaming revenue was up 29 per cent from a year earlier to $1.87 billion US, and its 27 per cent share of the...
GATINEAU, Que. — While the public will generally back the CRTC's decision to require TV service providers to offer pick-and-pay to customers by the end of next year, they don't understand the full consequences for the Canadian TV industry, one media consultant said in the wake of Thursday's announcement....
BCE Inc. announced Wednesday it has extended its deal with the French Tennis Federation to broadcast the French Open through 2024. TSN and RDS will remain the exclusive Canadian home of the tennis Grand Slam tournament, the...
Sony Corp. said Wednesday it has launched a new online video-streaming service in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. PlayStation Vue streams video from the Internet though PS3 or PS4 gaming consoles, Eric Lempel, vice-president...
BCE Inc.’s media division said in a press release Wednesday that its streaming service, CraveTV, is now available to customers of four small TV providers in Ontario. Bell Media said Hay Communications Co-operative Ltd.,...
The Competition Bureau on Wednesday disputed a report that a decision on an investigation it has been conducting into Google Inc.'s search and advertising businesses could be coming later that day. The Globe and Mail had reported that the investigative phase of this proceeding, which started in December 2013, is complete and a decision could be issued as soon as Wednesday. Competition Bureau spokesman Greg Scott said in an email to The Wire Report on Wednesday: "I’m not sure where they got their information, but I can confirm that the bureau has no plans to release any...
The CRTC’s decision last week up to eliminate an agreement governing contracts between independent producers and large broadcasters has angered and surprised the Canadian Media Production...
Nintendo Co. Ltd. said Tuesday that it was launching to joint venture with DeNA Co. Ltd. to produce video games for smartphones and tablets. Nintendo said it would work with DeNA, a company involved in mobile games and Internet...
The CRTC said Tuesday it is reviewing applications for licence renewals from three radio stations that have been cited in the past for not complying with licence terms. The commission said in a...
Jeffrey Orridge, former head of CBC/Radio-Canada’s sports division, has been named the new commissioner of the Canadian Football League. Orridge takes over for Mark Cohon, who served in the position for eight years....
The CRTC said it will be announcing a decision on Thursday afternoon related to its review of the television industry that focuses on "measures to maximize choice for Canadian television viewers." It's expected that the decision will address whether consumers have the right to pick their own channels in TV...
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...
The CRTC has dismissed a complaint by BCE Inc. against Rogers Communications Inc.’s GamePlus service, ruling that Rogers could offer the NHL hockey app exclusively to its own customers because the content wasn’t produced primarily for traditional television. The regulator said in the decision that the CRTC...
The Canadian Network Operators Consortium (CNOC) filed papers with the Federal Court of Appeal Monday asking that BCE Inc.'s appeal of a CRTC decision banning the way it bills for mobile-TV...
Rogers Communications Inc. and the Competition Bureau announced Monday that they had reached an agreement to end legal proceedings against the carrier in relation to so-called premium texting services that customers paid for. The Competition Bureau said in a news release that Rogers would refund about $5.42 million to customers in relation to what it said were "false or misleading representations to customers in advertisements for premium text messages appearing in pop-up ads, apps and social media." The bureau in 2012 launched a $30-million lawsuit against Rogers, BCE Inc., Telus...
OTTAWA — The CRTC introduced a new category for video-on-demand services Thursday that allows them to offer content exclusive to certain TV service providers and operate under the digital-media exemption order, as long as they also offer that content online to all Canadians, though the consequences for Shomi and CraveTV remained unclear. In...
International Data Corp. has lowered its forecast for tablet and 2-in-1 hybrid shipments in 2015 following previous figures that showed the first ever year-on-year decline for this market in the fourth quarter of last year. IDC...
A new report from Ericsson AG suggests Apple Inc.’s upcoming Apple Watch could address a market that's far larger than what current wearable sales would indicate. In a worldwide study of...
Competitors will be harmed if BCE Inc. is not forced to comply with an April deadline in a CRTC directive to stop exempting its mobile-TV app from data caps, according to the Canadian Network...
Patrick Pichette, the Canadian chief financial officer of Google Inc., said in a web post Tuesday he will retire in the coming months to spend more time travelling with his wife Tamar. Pichette, who is from Montreal, according to his Google profile, said in a Google+ posting that after seven years at Google and 25 to 30 years of "nearly non-stop work," he could "not find a good argument to tell Tamar we should wait any longer for us to grab our backpacks and hit the road." He noted that his kids have left home, with two in college and another working with a startup in...
The amount of video watched on smartphones and tablets doubled in 2014, according to a sub-sample used for Ooyala Inc.'s quarterly index. The online-video management company said in a report released Wednesday there had been...
Quebecor Inc. on Wednesday reported a net loss for the fourth quarter resulting largely from non-operational factors, while indicating major gains in its wireless operations' revenue and subscriber base. The company said in a...
Telus Corp. is spending $100 million to provide access to a fibre optic network to 90 per cent of the homes and businesses in the British Columbia communities of Kelowna and West Kelowna, it said Tuesday. It said in a press...
The chief executive of the Royal Bank of Canada says his company is on a “collision course” with technology giants such as Apple Inc. and Google Inc. as the act of making payments with...
The Ontario government spent months preparing its position on regulating streaming services like that offered by Netflix Inc., according to documents cited in a blog by University of Ottawa law...
Apple Inc. unveiled new details about its upcoming Apple Watch on Monday, saying the wearable device will be available on April 24 in Canada and eight other countries. The watch will have 18 hours of...
A tariff on downloaded ringtones for cellphones has been declared invalid, but the wireless carriers who challenged it were denied the $12 million in paid royalties they were seeking back from the...
BCE Inc.’s appeal of a CRTC decision to ban the use of simultaneous substitution for the Super Bowl in future years could be a sign of more conflict and court challenges to come as the...
OTTAWA — The retransmission of U.S. networks in Canada is the equivalent of Aereo, the service ruled illegal by the U.S. Supreme Court last year, Kevin Crull, president of BCE Inc.'s media division, said Friday. “Canada is the only country in the world that allows American networks to be retransmitted without restriction despite valid and exclusive copyrights held by domestic broadcasters,” he said during a keynote address at the Prime Time in Ottawa event put on by the Canadian Media Production Association (CMPA). “In an industry that’s obsessed with...
OTTAWA — Kevin Crull, president of BCE Inc.'s media division, said Thursday that monetization is currently his organization's biggest challenge, given the usage of over-the-top (OTT)...
New data shows an overall drop in the share of English Canadians subscribing to TV services over the last year. MTM, a project of CBC/Radio-Canada, released a report Thursday that showed the...
BlackBerry Ltd. CEO John Chen said he's open the idea of having the company produce another tablet, according to a report by CNet. "It's not in the works, but it's on my mind,"...
BCE Inc. is asking the CRTC to extend the March 31 deadline for incorporating its Bell Aliant subsidiary’s services into the National Public Alerting System (NPAS). The company said in a Feb. 26 filing posted to the...
BCE Inc. is launching a court challenge of the CRTC’s ban on the use of simultaneous substitution during the Super Bowl. Bell Media spokesman Scott Henderson said in an email Monday that “the CRTC erred in law, exceeded its jurisdiction, and demonstrated a lack of awareness of Canadian attitudes, opinions, and values.” The company filed a motion for leave to appeal with the Federal Court of Appeal on Monday. In January, the CRTC said it would prohibit the use of simultaneous substitution for the Super Bowl and specialty channels, but would otherwise keep the practice,...
A survey done for BCE Inc.'s Bell Media showed most Canadians support broadcasters' rights over the ability to watch U.S. commercials during the Super Bowl. According to polling results released Monday and conducted by Nanos Research for Bell, which holds the Canadian rights to the game, 69 per cent said supporting...
Ottawa-based networking technology company Mitel Networks Corp. said Monday it has reached a deal to purchase Texas-based Mavenir Systems Inc., a provider of software for mobile operators. Mitel and Mavenir said in a joint press...
Google Inc. said Thursday that it will start giving mobile friendliness more weight in terms of how websites are ranked in Google searches. It said on its Webmaster Central Blog on Thursday that the change will take effect April...
Rogers Communications Inc. said Friday that David Purdy, its senior vice-president of content, did not call on government to ban virtual private networks (VPNs) during a media-industry conference in Toronto on Thursday, despite...
One of the executives behind the newly announced Bloomberg TV Canada news channel says that there are no plans to seek a broadcast licence that would compel broadcast distributors to offer the channel to customers. New York-based...
The CRTC on March 12 will announce most decisions related to its Let's Talk TV consultation, but it won't be about whether to force TV-service providers to unbundle channels. The Canadian Club of Ottawa will host a lunchtime presentation by CRTC Chairman Jean-Pierre Blais on that day. CRTC spokeswoman Patricia...
Advocacy group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting say a television ad was turned down by Canada’s largest broadcasters, yet at least one company says it has no record of the denial. In the...
Google Inc. said Wednesday it has a developed a program that will help utilize Android devices for business purposes in a way that ensures security for employers. A blog post from Google said the technology is called Android for...
Users of Apple Inc.'s iPhone 6 Plus are using twice as much data as those with the iPhone 6, according to a report from Citrix Systems Inc. The U.S. provider of workplace mobility technology said in a press release earlier this month that the bigger, 5.5-inch screens of the iPhone 6 Plus — compared to 4.7 inches for the regular iPhone 6 — leads more video viewing. Its report said that data usage on the iPhone 6 Plus is 10 times that of the iPhone 3GS. Citrix said in its report that the usage patterns of the iPhone 6 Plus are similar to that of tablets, and it presents an...
Google Inc.'s Android and Apple Inc.'s iOS operating systems "inched closer to total domination of the worldwide smartphone market" in the fourth quarter of 2014, International Data Corp. said Tuesday. The technology research company said in news release that the two operating systems powered 96.3 per...
Newly released results from a Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) survey show the availability of online video content is a factor for four in 10 Canadian Internet users who do not subscribe to cable TV. The data,...
Telus Corp. announced Tuesday it is partnering with Internet of Things (IoT) platform provider Jasper Inc. for its own IoT platform, the Telus Control Centre. The new platform “simplifies the deployment and management of...
BCE Inc. is seeking to recover legal costs from a range of parties — including an advocacy group representing senior citizens, private individuals and companies in the telecommunications sector...
Apple Inc. said Monday it will spend 1.7 billion euros ($2.4 billion Cdn) on two data centres in Europe that are expected to be operational in 2017. The company said in a press release the facilities will each be 166,000 square metres (1.8 million square feet), with one going in Athenry, Ireland, and the other in Viborg, Denmark. Apple said the data centres will be used to power its online services such as iTunes purchase, the App Store, iMessage, Maps and Siri for customers across Europe. It said each of the data centres will run on 100 per cent renewable energy....
The CRTC has suspended the proceeding initiated the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) and Consumers' Association of Canada (CAC) against video-streaming services CraveTV and Shomi. CRTC dispute resolution manager Tandy...
Snapchat Inc., the maker of mobile apps for picture and video sharing, is being valued at as much as $19 billion US in current talks to secure a new round of funding, Bloomberg reported this week. An article Tuesday said the...
CBC/Radio-Canada is considering selling its headquarters in Toronto, according to a report in the National Post. An article published Thursday said a consultant has been hired to determine whether it should sell the...
The next generation of health technology is slowly rolling out in Canada, but experts say more government leadership is needed to bring innovations such as remote health monitoring and personalized...
BCE Inc. on Thursday reiterated its position that a complaint from the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) and the Consumers' Association of Canada (CAC) about its CraveTV streaming service is...
A new study from the C.D. Howe Institute says the "competitive value" of music in Canada is two and a half times what is actually paid through copyright tariffs. The report, authored by economist Marcel Boyer, came to this conclusion based on an analysis of conventional radio, for which he said established...
A coalition called Canada's Premium Audience Exchange (CPAX) said Thursday that four new companies have joined the exchange, which allows website operators to sell digital advertising in real time. CPAX said in a press...
BCE Inc.'s online TV-everywhere service, CTV Go, is now available to customers of Rogers Communications Inc. and four other TV service providers, CTV said Thursday. The network said in a press release that other broadcast...
The Copyright Board of Canada has produced a report outlining a number of changes it is considering in order to make its processes "more efficient and more productive." Recommendations included in a working document posted on its website include: improving the way it communicates proposed tariffs; requiring collectives that represent rights holders and those affected by proposed tariffs to provide better explanations of their positions earlier in the process; and streamlining the activity surrounding questioning, or "interrogatories," between the various parties that takes place in advance of hearings. A separate letter from board CEO Claude Majeau to various...
BlackBerry Ltd. is seeking an injunction against the latest version of a keyboard add-on made by Ryan Seacrest's Typo Products LLC for Apple Inc.'s iPhones, Reuters reported Tuesday. The article said BlackBerry claimed in...
Mobile shopping in Canada is growing at a pace that more than doubles the growth of overall online purchasing, PayPal said Wednesday. The digital-payment processing company said in a press release...
BCE Inc. will be among an international coalition of six telecommunications service providers demonstrating what it called a "revolutionary" new integrated platform for machine-to-machine (M2M) communications at next...
Blue Ant Media Inc. said Wednesday it has appointed Kate Blank as director of international sales for the Asia-Pacific Region, German-speaking countries, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. In a news release, the company said...
OTTAWA — CBC/Radio-Canada will emphasize "content over all other expenditures going forward," Heather Conway, the public broadcaster’s executive vice-president of English services, told the Senate's transport and communications standing committee Tuesday. “So that means when we have the choice of spending money on infrastructure or real estate or content, we will privilege the spending on content,” she said. Conway said the last five years have been difficult for the CBC, and that “when you’re faced with having to execute cuts, a lot of those...
Rogers Communications Inc. said Tuesday it has brought its Smart Home Monitoring service to Vancouver and other parts of British Columbia's Lower Mainland. Rogers said in a press release there are multiple packages available,...
About one in three Canadian customers of Netflix Inc. have used a U.S. IP address to access the company's American service because it offers more content than the Canadian version, Media...
The Quebecor Fund, the organization established to distribute project contributions on behalf of Quebecor Inc.'s broadcast distribution operations, on Tuesday announced $635,000 in funding under its event and film...
Quebecor Inc. said it took Sun News Network off the air early Friday morning due to “a series of barriers to carriage,” while some experts said the long-struggling channel’s...
BCE Inc. is asking the CRTC to dismiss a “frivolous and vexatious” Feb. 6 complaint from the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) against the company’s CraveTV service, arguing that the case has no chance of...
The CRTC has approved an application from Radio Acadie ltée for a new French-language FM commercial radio station in Caraquet, N.B. to replace the company’s AM station. A local French-language community station run...
BCE Inc.’s Bell Media division said Thursday it has reached a 12-year agreement with FIFA for soccer tournaments including the men’s and women’s World Cups. “With this extension, Bell Media’s CTV,...
OpenText Corp. chairman Tom Jenkins was announced by Industry Canada Thursday as the new chairman of the National Research Council of Canada (NRC). It said in a press release that the appointment took effect Feb. 5. Jenkins was...
Amazon.com Inc. said Thursday its Canadian division, Amazon.ca, is making Kindle Unlimited available in Canada. The company said in a press release that Canadians will have unlimited access to more than 750,000 e-books for $9.99 a month with their Kindle e-readers and the free Kindle apps available for personal computers, Apple Inc.'s iPhones and iPads, devices powered by Google Inc.'s Android system, and smartphones equipped with Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Phone software. The service, launched in the United States in July, costs $9.99 US a month....
BCE Inc.'s CTV network announced Thursday that its TV everywhere service, CTV Go, has become the first of its kind in Canada to work with Google Inc.'s Chromecast streaming device. Chromecast is a thumb-sized device that...
Q9 Networks Inc. said Thursday it is launching a new support option for its data centre customers that includes hardware installation and management for the full life cycle of customers’ servers...
Employees of Quebecor Inc.'s Sun News Network expect the channel to shut down operations Friday due to a failure to strike a deal to sell the service to Moses Znaimer's ZoomerMedia Ltd., according to a report Thursday on...
Shaw Communications Inc. said Wednesday it is shutting down call-centre operations in Edmonton, Calgary and Kelowna, B.C., with about 1,600 workers at these locations having a choice of whether to move, assume a different position...
Telus Corp. said Wednesday it will be making services from Netflix Inc. available through its Optik TV set-top boxes in the coming weeks. Telus said in a press release that almost half of its Optik TV customers are Netflix subscribers, and this development removes "the inconvenience of having to switch hardware and source inputs or fumble with additional remotes" when watching Netflix on a television. Customers of Optik, an IPTV service available in British Columbia, Alberta and parts of Quebec where Telus is the incumbent telephone company, already have access to BCE Inc.'s...
Industry Canada’s announcement last week that it is opening up TV white space for the use of "super WiFi" technology could improve broadband availability in rural areas and has the...
International Datacasting Corp., an Ottawa-based provider of technology for the broadcasting industry, said Tuesday it is in talks with an undisclosed party about the sale of the company. International Datacasting said in a press...
The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) said Tuesday that collected a record amount of royalties last year, based on preliminary results. The collective representing songwriters, composers and...
David Kleidermacher has been appointed chief security officer of BlackBerry Ltd., the company announced Tuesday. Kleidermacher was previously chief technology officer at Green Hills Software, a maker of embedded operating...
The Canadian government asked Twitter Inc. for users’ personal information 32 times in the last six months of 2014, the social network said on Monday in its latest transparency report. The requests covered 37 different...
Netflix Inc. said Monday it is now offering service in Cuba. "Bienvenida Cuba! Netflix is now available," Netflix said in a Twitter post. The move follows the December announcement that the U.S. government is restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba after more than five decades. Netflix...
There's been a jump over the last year in Canadian marketers using "advanced ad targeting" methods to reach their audiences, which include using information about their purchasing or online behaviour, video advertising platform provider Videology Inc. said in a press release Monday. Videology said 92 per cent...
The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) on Friday asked the CRTC to prohibit Rogers Communications Inc., Shaw Communications Inc. and BCE Inc. from restricting the availability of their streaming...
Ethnic Channels Group Ltd. has filed an application to the CRTC to have a Nigerian TV channel called 1Music approved for distribution in Canada. The company said in a letter posted on the CRTC’s website Friday that the English-language channel shows music and music-related programming aimed at African youth or those with an interest in African programming. A letter from the channel’s owner, One Music Ltd., confirms Canada’s Ethnic Channels Group as its sponsor and promises to “not hold, obtain or exercise exclusive or preferential programming rights in...
