Former Rogers Communications Inc. CEO Nadir Mohamed will lead a new venture-capital fund created by the Ontario government, the office of Premier Kathleen Wynne said on Monday. Mohamed will lead a council of about 30 business leaders and entrepreneurs tasked with managing Scale Up Ventures, a $50-million fund for startup companies that "have shown initial market success and that demonstrate strong growth potential," the premier's office said in a press release. Mohamed was replaced as Rogers' CEO by Guy Laurence in December 2013. Laurence is also on the council that will...
Saskatchewan Telecommunications Holding Corp. said Tuesday that it has officially launched its fibre-to-the-home Internet service in Swift Current, Sask. SaskTel said in a press release that some customers have already been hooked up to the new network, and that all of its existing high-speed Internet and IPTV customers would be given the option of signing up once their neighbourhoods are converted. It said this is part of its 10-year, $670-million program to connect the nine biggest urban centres in Saskatchewan to its fibre network for its service branded as InfiNet....
BCE Inc. said in a press release Friday that its IPTV customer base has reached one million households. In the release, Bell said IPTV, which it offers through its Fibe TV and FibreOP TV brands, has since its launch in...
The CRTC said Thursday that unless a developer provides BCE Inc. "timely access" to a Toronto condominium building about to accept new occupants, the other service providers that have been...
The Public Interest Advocacy Centre said it will not drop a CRTC complaint against BCE Inc.’s targeted ad program, despite the company’s plans to re-launch the program according to...
Convergence Consulting Group Ltd. says in a new report that Canada lost 95,000 TV subscribers in 2014, the second year of decline, while TV subscriber revenue continued to grow. A summary of the report posted to the Convergence...
BCE Inc. said Thursday that Kevin Crull is out as president of its Bell Media division, and a press release appeared to link Crull's ousting to his recent conflict with news staff over coverage of the CRTC's decision on TV-channel unbundling. Bell CEO George Cope said in the release that "Kevin Crull departs Bell with our thanks for his contributions to our customers and shareholders,” noting achievements such as the integration of Astral Media and the launch of CraveTV. Yet Cope added that “the independence of Bell Media's news operations is of paramount...
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner said it had a meeting with officials from BCE Inc. on Wednesday, and it is keeping its legal options open despite Bell's expressed willingness to follow its direction. Tobi Cohen,...
Faced with a possible legal fight against another agency of the federal government, BCE Inc. on Tuesday backed down after the Office of the Privacy Commissioner said the company refused to require...
While overall complaints about telecommunications services have continued to decline, according the first-ever mid-year report from the Commissioner of Complaints for Telecommunications Services...
Canada’s national news channels face new obligations from the CRTC even as the regulator is taking away their place on basic cable, raising questions about their future finances. Last month, as...
BCE Inc. is facing a patent lawsuit for $350 million plus future royalties and penalties related to technology used for distributing IPTV service, the Financial Post reported. An article published on...
A national emergency alert system became operational on Tuesday, according to officials speaking on behalf of the company that will operate the infrastructure behind it. A spokesperson for public relations company High Road,...
The Canadian Media Fund said Monday it will have $375.2 million to fund television and digital-media productions in the 2015-16 fiscal year. That's up $7.2 million from the $368 million it announced was the budget for the...
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...
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...
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...
The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) released a report on Monday that calls on Canada to legislate the requirement that all Canadians have access to "affordable" telecommunications services. PIAC said in its...
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 CRTC approved a new TV service from Comwave Networks Inc. on Monday. The regulator said in a decision that a licence would be granted as soon as Comwave has indicated it is prepared to start operations, which must happen within the next two years unless a request for an extension is granted. The licence is to expire Aug. 31, 2021. It its application filed last year, Comwave said planned to offer IPTV service as a third party over DSL or cable networks, with "attractive pricing and packages" in relation to other prominent TV-service providers. Comwave intends to provide this service to cities and surrounding areas of Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa, Kitchener, London and Windsor, the CRTC decision said. Comwave is a provider of Internet and phone service, with television commercials featuring former NHL hockey player Tie...
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...
Manitoba Telecom Services Inc. CEO Jay Forbes met with three cabinet ministers and the head of Canada’s telecommunications regulatory body over the last five weeks, according the federal lobbying registry. MTS chief...
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...
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...
On Wednesday Rogers Communications Inc. announced a new brand of broadband Internet, Ignite, that comes bundled with subscriptions to two of Rogers' online video-streaming services. The company...
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...
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...
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,...
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 Yull said in a letter to PIAC lawyer Geoffrey White dated Friday that in "light of submissions received" since Feb. 11, the "processes are suspended until further notice." She added: "Further direction with regard to the process and timelines will be provided to parties in due course." The CRTC provided no further information beyond the...
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...
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 CRTC has approved VMedia Inc.’s application for a national video-on-demand service, opening the way for the Ontario-based triple-play provider to add a VOD option to its over-the-top television service delivered via...
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...
Telus Corp.’s fourth-quarter profits rose 7.6 per cent from a year earlier as the company reported a double-digit jump in data revenue from its wireless and wireline customers. According to the company’s latest financial report, released Thursday, net income rose to $312 million on revenue of $3.13 billion in the fourth quarter, up from a profit of $290 million on revenue of $2.95 billion of in the same period a year earlier. The company said revenue from its wireless network was up eight per cent from the fourth quarter of 2013, driven by subscriber growth and higher data usage...
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...
BCE Inc.’s net earnings the fourth quarter grew slightly compared to a year earlier, though its wireless revenue gained by a wider margin largely on increased data usage. Bell's reported in a press release that revenue...
Manitoba Telecom Services Inc. on Wednesday reported lower revenue for the fourth quarter of last year, though unlike the year-earlier period, it was profitable. The company said in a press release...
BCE Inc. announced Monday that the latest upgrade to the software for its Fibe TV service adds the ability to rewind and restart programs already in progress. The new Restart feature, which functions even if a user has not...
Distributel Communications Inc. announced on Thursday its new television service, which is available in markets throughout Ontario and Quebec. The independent Internet service provider had already began offering TV service last...
VMedia Inc. said it has secured its first specialty-TV channels for the cloud-based PVR service it makes available to IPTV customers. The company said in a news release Thursday that it has reached a deal to include Blue Ant...
Greater consumer interest in wearable technology, growth in over-the-top (OTT) television subscriptions and greater prominence of the Internet of Things (IoT) are among the top trends in technology expected for next year in...
BCE Inc.’s Bell Aliant division has passed one million homes and businesses with its fibre-to-the-home network, the company said in a press release Friday. “Customers can continue to expect more as Bell is committed...
The launch of new streaming services from Canada’s biggest TV providers adds yet another option for viewers who want to catch up on or try out a new show, raising the question of whether they will complement — or compete with — existing services like video-on-demand (VOD). Rogers Communications Inc. admits the streaming service it recently launched with Shaw Communications Inc. will eat into movie rentals on VOD. David Purdy, Rogers’ senior vice-president of content, said in a phone interview that “there’s no doubt that Shomi will impact the sort of...
Q9 Network Inc., a Toronto-based provider of data centre services, said Tuesday that Bell Aliant CEO Karen Sheriff would become its president and CEO as of Jan. 5. Sheriff has been CEO of Bell Aliant since 2008. She is slated to...
Telus Corp. has made the first moves in what could be a competitive fourth quarter as wireless carriers fight for holiday sales, an analyst said Monday. Phillip Huang, a telecom analyst with Barclays...
Telus Corp. communicated with high-ranking members of the federal government in October, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper about the company’s health-care operations, according to the lobbying registry. The Oct. 2...
Manitoba Telecom Services Inc. said Monday that Jay Forbes will replace Pierre Blouin as chief executive. It said in a press release that Forbes will assume the role on Jan. 1, one day after Blouin retires. Blouin's pending...
Manitoba Telecom Services Inc.'s first generation of IPTV service was already on the way out, pushed aside by a more technologically advanced alternative the carrier started in 2009, but CRTC requirements for participation in a national alert system might bring about the demise of MTS Classic TV sooner than expected. A letter from MTS, published on the CRTC's website earlier this month, asks that its Classic TV service be given a one-year reprieve from the March 31 deadline for most TV service providers, over-the-air TV broadcasters and radio stations to be part of a national...
BCE Inc. is having more problems with a condominium developer operating in Toronto that it has previously filed complaints about. A letter posted on the CRTC's website this week shows Bell felt...
BCE Inc. on Thursday reported higher revenue and profit numbers for the third quarter as it added subscribers to its its wireless, Internet and TV businesses and saw a jump in mobile-data revenue. The company said in a press...
Telus Corp. on Thursday reported quarterly revenue that topped $3 billion for the first time. Growth of 5.4 per cent from a year earlier gave the company revenue of $3.03 billion for the third quarter ending Sept. 30, the company...
Manitoba Telecom Services Inc. on Wednesday reported lower third-quarter earnings and revenue, despite adding subscribers to its main retail categories. The company said in a press release that its revenue in the quarter was down...
BCE Inc.'s Bell Media said Monday that Mary Ann Turcke was appointed group president of its media sales division for local TV and radio. Bell Media said, effective immediately, Turcke fills the role that was held by Luc...
BCE Inc. said Monday that its acquisition of Bell Aliant Inc. is complete. It said that on Friday, it gained control through compulsory acquisition of the last 12 million shares of Bell Aliant that had not been tendered. Before...
Canadian telecom service providers got more money from their customers last year largely as a result of increased wireless data usage and demand for faster Internet, the CRTC said Thursday. Overall...
Manitoba Telecom Services Inc. has opened a new Winnipeg facility for monitoring and managing its network infrastructure, the company said in a press release Thursday. The Manitoba Network Operations Centre will also “act...
The Television Bureau of Canada has released what it says are the first statistics on viewership of broadcast distributors’ video-on-demand (VOD) platforms, which show an additional four to nine per cent of viewers use VOD to watch TV series. TVB said an additional nine per cent of the sitcoms’ live TV audience watched the shows on VOD, while prime-time dramas had an additional audience of six per cent and daytime programs had an additional four per cent. Of those additional VOD viewers, 65 to 70 per cent hadn’t watched the program’s original broadcast on live TV, it...
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...
Odyssey Television Network Inc., which operates channels in Canada with Greek-oriented programming, is sponsoring a sports channel from Greece to be authorized for distribution in Canada. OTN's application was posted to the...
The CRTC on Thursday awarded Quebecor Inc.'s Sun News Network a victory in one of two arbitration cases involving its carriage with broadcaster distributors, though it sided with the service provider in another. In a dispute...
Saskatchewan Telecommunications Holding Corp. on Wednesday joined other telecom providers in releasing a transparency report, which showed that it received 11,857 requests for information last year from government agencies and...
Manitoba Telecom Services Inc. said Wednesday it has reached an agreement with its unions and retirees regarding a pension plan that was in dispute following its 1997 privatization and was subject to a Supreme Court decision early this year. A court decision issued in January ordered MTS to put $43 million plus interest into the pension plans, with MTS estimating at the time that the interest could add up to as much as $147 million. The principal, $43 million, was the amount of surplus the pension had when MTS was privatized in 1997, court documents said, adding that instead of going toward...
Bell Aliant Inc. said Monday that fibre-to-the-home connections are now available in Quebec, with three communities on its FibreOP network immediately and four more to be connected before the end of the year. Bell Aliant said in...
Gold Line Telemanagement Inc. has been granted licences to operate broadcast distribution services for markets in Ontario and British Columbia, the CRTC said Thursday. Postings on commission's website said the company was...
GATINEAU, Que. — BCE Inc. executives asked the CRTC Wednesday to put in place a “local specialty” model for local television stations, which it said are no longer financially sustainable. “The economics of...
A Toronto-based provider of Internet and phone service is looking to enter Ontario's television-distribution market, according documents on the CRTC's website. Comwave Networks Inc. has applied for a broadcast...
The CRTC is giving the public another chance to make its views known in the review of the national television industry through an online forum, and it has also narrowed down its priorities for discussion to four general areas....
Manitoba Telecom Services Inc. said on Tuesday its chief executive officer, Pierre Blouin, will retire this year. The company said in a press release that its board of directors has started looking for a new CEO, and a new...
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,...
Manitoba Telecom Services Inc. on Thursday posted slightly lower profits in the second quarter of 2014 from the same period last year, with growth in broadband Internet and Internet protocol TV (IPTV) revenues offset by declines...
Canada’s biggest television providers are divided over the future of audience measurement via the next generation of set-top boxes. As part of their submissions in the CRTC’s ongoing Let’s Talk TV consultation, BCE Inc., Rogers Communications Inc., Telus Corp., Quebecor Inc. and Shaw Communications Inc. all weighed in on the creation of a new audience measurement system based on set-top box (STB) data. Shaw and Bell, the No. 1 and 2 providers of TV service in Canada according to the most recent year-end filings, were broadly in favour of investing in audience measurement...
Saskatchewan Telecommunications Holding Corp. was granted a renewal of its licence to operate a national pay-per-view service, the CRTC said Friday, though it was denied a request to eliminate the...
A deal between Netflix Inc. and Walt Disney Co. that will see Walt Disney Studios’ movies appear on Netflix’s Canadian streaming service as soon as eight months after they hit...
The CRTC has approved a licence application by Telus Corp. to operate a pay-per-view service, the commission said Monday. A letter from Telus to the CRTC to support the application in October last year said the pay-per-view...
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...
The biggest challenge standing in the way of a pick-and-pay TV system is the current penetration-based rate card regime, Scotia Capital telecom analyst Jeff Fan said in a research note. Penetration-based rate cards (PBRCs), which allow distributors to package specialty channels as they see fit and require them to pay more for a channel if its subscriber penetration rate falls, were instituted in 2012. BCE Inc. suggested the system during a carriage dispute between its Bell Media subsidiary and...
Sierra Wireless Inc. chief financial officer David McLennan has been named to the board of the Canadian Media Fund (CMF), a public-private parternship that provides money for Canadian media producers, the group said in a press...
BCE Inc. wants to see over-the-air (OTA) transmitters shut down and local stations move to a model it called “local specialty,” under which they would negotiate wholesale fees with cable, IPTV and satellite-TV...
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...
In interventions submitted as part of the CRTC’s review of the future of the television, both BCE Inc. and Rogers Communications Inc. said they supported a pick-and-pay television system, though...
Telus Corp. has ended an 18-year relationship with Taxi, the advertising agency that created marketing campaigns featuring a variety of cute animals including monkeys to hippopotamuses, the Globe and Mail reported on Friday. The...
Data transmitted over Internet protocol networks with devices in Canada will be about 2.4 times more in 2018 than what it was last year, according to a new report from Cisco Systems Inc. Highlights...
Manitoba Telecom Services Inc. said Tuesday that its first-quarter earnings were up as expenses declined in the face of lower revenue. The company’s financial statements indicated it had net income of $41.9 million in the...
BCE Inc. improved its bottom line in this year’s first quarter as wireless data revenue surged and last year’s purchase of Astral Media contributed to its overall revenue. Revenue was up...
Bell Aliant Inc. on Tuesday reported declines in both first-quarter revenue and profit. The company’s financial records indicated that revenue came in at $675.7 million, down 1.2 per cent from the previous year. Net earnings for the quarter were $76.7 million, down from $89.3 million in the first quarter of 2013. Bell Aliant’s figures showed it had a 3.9-per cent increase in revenue from its Internet business, a 43.5-per cent gain from its television service and a 4.9-per cent gain from other data revenue. That was more than offset by declines such as a 5.4-per cent drop in...
Quebecor Inc.’s Sun News Network said Tuesday it has reached agreements for carriage on BCE Inc.’s Bell Fibe and satellite TV service, along with Bell Aliant Inc.’s FibreOP TV. The terms of the agreements...
Time Warner Inc.'s HBO pay-TV service has signed a multi-year licensing deal with online retailer Amazon.com Inc. to bring its back catalog of shows, including critically acclaimed hits such as...
Manitoba Telecom Services Inc. said Thursday it will expand its fibre-to-the-home network to Oakbank, Man., about 30 kilometres east of downtown Winnipeg, later this year. Expanding its MTS FiON network will give residents of...
The number of Canadian TV subscribers will fall 0.31 per cent this year, and then begin increasing in 2015 at an average rate of 0.25 per cent annually until 2019, according to a new study by research company Strategy Analytics....
Telus Corp. said on Twitter Tuesday it is hiring for 360 jobs. The company included a link to its website where it listed the jobs available. There are open positions in regions across the country. Many of jobs are in sales. Among the many other positions sought, Telus is looking some senior legal staff in Ottawa, a service technician in Edmonton, a business solutions analyst in Calgary, an engineer in Vancouver and a market-intelligence manager in Toronto who would focus on customer retention....
George Burger wants to give Canadians a more streamlined television experience, yet analysts say the high-tech Internet-protocol TV offerings from his VMedia Inc. might have limited appeal. The IPTV service from VMedia now...
The man who led Telus Corp.’s evolution from a Western Canada-focused home-phone services provider to what one analyst called “arguably the most successful wireless carrier in North America” is stepping down as...
Bell Aliant Inc.’s fourth-quarter earnings report on Tuesday showed it was doing about 50 per cent more business in the area of Internet-protocol television than a year earlier. Revenue from its IPTV services was up 50.2...
Millions of Canadians still receive their television service from signals beamed to space and back, even as the country’s dominant provider of satellite TV has given many of them a reason to...