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 said last month that it intends to expand to most countries it is not currently in over the next two years....
U.S. Federal Communications Commissioner (FCC) chairman Tom Wheeler said on Wednesday that he will propose new rules this week to enshrine net neutrality in law and ban paid prioritization and throttling of “lawful content and services” on both wireline and, for the first time, wireless connections. In a post on the website of Wired, Wheeler said the regulations would redefine ISPs and mobile providers as common carriers using the FCC’s so-called Title II authority. “Using this authority, I am submitting to my colleagues the strongest open internet protections ever...
MONTREAL — Quebecor Inc.’s Videotron hopes that producing original content exclusively for its Club Illico streaming service will help the company attract and keep subscribers, said...
Montreal-based social-TV audience measurement company Seevibes is opening an office in Toronto, the company said in a press release Wednesday. The expansion comes a year after the company opened an office in France. Seevibes also said it named Franz Fontaine as vice-president of strategic...
BlackBerry Ltd. CEO John Chen said the battle for net neutrality in the United States should not only focus on service providers' traffic management practices, but should also include companies,...
Canadian video streaming service Shomi said Thursday it has secured the Canadian rights to original content made for Amazon.com Inc.'s Prime streaming service in the U.S. Shomi, a joint venture of Rogers Communications Inc....
Netflix Inc. can expand to pretty well everywhere in the world while staying profitable over the next two years, the company said in a letter to shareholders Tuesday. “Acceleration to 200 countries is largely made possible by the tremendous growth of the Internet in general, including on phones, tablets and smart TVs,” it said, noting its streaming service is already available in “about 50” countries. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) recognizes a total of 195 countries in the world, according to its online World Factbook. Netflix said becoming global will...
TiVo Inc. said Wednesday it is widening availability in the United States of a PVR for capturing over-the-air programing, a product it released on a limited basis in the fall. The TiVo Roamio OTA is meant for people who do not...
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission will vote on a net-neutrality proposal in February, the Washington Post and other news outlets reported late last week. The Post said FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler told other commissioners...
It seems all eyes are on the two newest services in the Canadian TV industry. This fall, the country’s biggest telecom and media companies launched streaming services meant to compete with...
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...
Some TV-industry analysts who are among the early adopters of Rogers Communications Inc.'s and Shaw Communications Inc.’s Shomi are detailing problems they've experienced with the streaming service in...
The latest report on Internet usage from Sandvine Inc. shows average monthly data downloaded on fixed-line Internet accounts in North America was up about 30 per cent in the second half of 2014 compared to a year earlier. The...
The CRTC is concerned with “much bigger issues with greater ramifications down the road” than the question of whether it will regulate over-the-top (OTT) services like Netflix, CRTC...
Five times as many Canadians now own the four principle media for accessing the Internet — computers, smartphones, tablets and Internet-connected televisions — than was the case in 2012, according to the latest Media...
Netflix isn’t the only game in town anymore. In recent weeks, Canadian and American TV giants have made a number of announcements about new over-the-top (OTT) video services — HBO and CBS revealing new streaming products in the United States, Rogers Communications Inc. and Shaw Communications Inc. launching Shomi, and BCE Inc. announcing “Project Latte.” Whichever service consumers across North America choose, the signals will travel over much of the same Internet network, and how well that network is prepared for the increased demand is a complicated question,...
Shomi, the online-streaming partnership of Rogers Communications Inc. and Shaw Communications Inc., said in a press release Friday that it has reached a deal with Warner Bros. that gives it the rights to a number of Warner Bros....
While the announcement that Rogers Communications Inc. and Netflix Inc. are working together on an original TV series marked an unprecedented collaboration between the two rivals, it’s a logical...
Netflix Inc. said Wednesday that subscriber growth in both the United States and internationally was less than it expected in the third quarter. "We added about a million new members in the U.S., ending Q3 with 37.22 million...
When CRTC Chairman Jean-Pierre Blais faced off against Netflix Inc. in September, his ordering of the U.S.-based streaming service to give the CRTC information it had previously refused to provide...
For the second year in a row, PCMag.com has named Rogers Communications Inc. the fastest Internet service provider in Canada. The online technology publication gave Rogers a score of 30.3, which is based on a compilation of download and upload speeds in megabits per second, with the download portion representing 80 per cent of the score and the upload portion representing 20 per cent. PCMag.com said testing for these rankings occurred between Oct. 1 last year and Aug. 13 this year, and each ISP ranked had its service tested from at least 50 different IP addresses. Rogers' score improved...
OTTAWA — NDP Leader Tom Mulcair on Wednesday denounced Heritage Minister Shelly Glover's statements that ruled out regulation for online video services such as Netflix and YouTube, which...
A coalition of some of the biggest Internet companies in the United States criticized Canada in a report released Tuesday for being a laggard in the usage and development of Internet technology to grow the economy. The Internet...
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...
Netflix Inc. said Thursday it has reached a deal to premiere four movies that will star and be produced by comedic actor Adam Sandler. The announcement comes just days after Netflix revealed plans to release its first original...
Cineplex Inc. says it will not show movies at the same time they are made available by Netflix Inc. This comes after Netflix said it is releasing its first original movie, Crouching Tiger, Hidden...
Netflix Inc. has gained more than 100,000 subscribers in France two weeks after launching in the country, according to a newspaper report on Tuesday. French newspaper Le Figaro attributed the figure to anonymous sources and drew...
Netflix Inc. said Tuesday it would have its first original movie next summer. It said in a press release that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Green Legend will premiere on Netflix simultaneously with showings in Imax theatres...
The CRTC said Monday it will remove all evidence presented by Netflix Inc. and Google Inc., including oral and written presentations, from the Let’s Talk TV process, following the...
Anglophone parents whose children still live at home watch less television but spend more time on the Internet, according to a new report from Media Technology Monitor. Households with children are slightly more likely than the overall angolophone audience to have access to television, with 74 per cent having some sort of digital TV access compared with 71 per cent of the general English-speaking population, according to the report by MTM, a project of CBC/Radio-Canada. Despite having more access, English-speaking parents with children under 18 watch around 11 hours of television per week,...
The C.D. Howe Institute released a report on Thursday that said the CRTC's proposal to mandate pick-and-pay television is "deeply misguided" and would be "irrelevant at best" and "harmful at...
Experts say that while CRTC must somehow respond to the refusal of Netflix Inc. to give the commission information it had been ordered to provide by CRTC Chairman Jean-Pierre Blais during a hearing...
Netflix Inc. will not produce some of the information CRTC Chairman Jean-Pierre Blais ordered from it last week. “While Netflix has responded to a number of the CRTC's requests, we are not in a position to produce...
GATINEAU, Que. — During the sometimes-contentious appearance by Netflix Inc. on the last day the CRTC’s two-week hearings on the future of television, CRTC Chairman Jean-Pierre Blais repeatedly ordered the U.S....
Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Monday his government is determined not to tax Internet services such as Netflix and YouTube In a wide-ranging speech in Ottawa to kick off the new parliamentary session, he also mentioned the government's support of a pick-and-pay TV system and a planned ban on extra fees for paper billing. Harper said his government is "helping families and all consumers with ... common-sense measures, like banning the practice of charging people who want to receive their bills in the mail, like letting Canadians choose to pay for the TV channels they actually...
GATINEAU, Que. — Telus Corp. says it is “very concerned” Rogers Communications Inc. and Shaw Communications Inc. are using the beta-test phase of their recently launched over-the-top...
Heritage Minister Shelly Glover says the government will not allow new taxes or regulations on Internet-based television services. Glover, the federal minister responsible for the CRTC, said so in a statement sent Monday night...
Netflix Inc. on Tuesday announced a new recommendation feature that works through Facebook Inc.'s social network. The provider of online TV services said in a blog that, after viewing a program, users will be asked it they...
In a little more than a week, the people who make and produce, broadcast and distribute, analyze and report on the Canadian television industry will gather in Gatineau, Que., to spend two weeks talking about its future. The...
In 1985, a Los Angeles Times article explained that U.S. TV providers were planning to compete with “the burgeoning home-video business” that had “savaged” them by launching...
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,...
Users of Netflix Inc.’s Canadian feed who feel like watching a few episodes of 30 Rock, Louie or Les Revenants will find themselves out of luck. But in a world where Canadians know these shows...
Google Inc., Facebook Inc. and Netflix Inc. must pay Canadian songwriters and publishers for music videos viewed on their services, the Copyright Board of Canada ruled on Friday. The board certified two tariffs from the Society...
Netflix Inc.'s quarterly results, released Monday, showed the lowest level of global subscriber growth in a year. The online video-streaming service said in a letter to shareholders there were 50.05 million subscribers at the end of the second quarter. That was up 1.69 million over three months, Netflix said. That compared to gains of four million in this year's first quarter, 4.07 million in last year's fourth quarter, 2.73 million in last year's third quarter and 1.24 million in the second quarter of 2013. Netflix forecast that net additions would pick up to 3.69 million in the current third quarter. Most of the new subscribers in the last quarter came from outside of the United States. Netflix said it had 1.12 million net additions from its international operations, for a total of 13.8 million total members outside 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...
Penetration of Netflix Inc.’s streaming service among anglophones in Canada is now at 32 per cent, with 28 per cent watching in a typical week, according new report. CBC/Radio-Canada's Media Technology Monitor said in a...
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...
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...
Amid the many challenges television service providers were already facing, along came an Ottawa company making devices with digital recording capabilities and electronic-guide functionality for those who rely on over-the-air signals for their TV. Nuvyyo Inc. is the maker of a device known as the Tablo. Made available in Canada and the United States in May, the Tablo is the hardware behind a personal video recorder (PVR) system. It connects to an antenna, which the user must provide separately. The user also needs to provide a USB hard drive for storing content that's recorded, as well as...
BlackBerry users will gain access to several applications this fall, including Netflix, as a result of making Amazon.com Inc.'s Appstore part of the BlackBerry 10.3 operating system that becomes available this fall, BlackBerry...
Tom Wheeler, chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, said Friday that his organization is looking into whether Internet service providers are purposely diminishing, for their own benefit, the flow of content from...
MONTREAL —Videotron’s new iPad application, which allows users to access live TV, free and paid video-on-demand (VOD) content and programming stored on a personal video recorder (PVR), in...
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) moved forward Thursday with plans to explicitly allow Internet service providers give select content providers so-called “fast lanes” to end...
North American cord-cutters are dominating Internet network usage market by consuming more than seven times the typical subscriber, according to a report Wednesday from Sandvine Inc. On average, cord-cutters consume 212 GB over...
OpenMedia said Tuesday it is actively fighting a proposal in the United States that would allow content companies to pay service providers for faster access to end users on the Internet, arguing that such a policy would affect the...
Netflix Inc. is raising its monthly subscription rates for new customers to a basic cost of $8.99 from $7.99 per month, though existing customers are getting a two-year reprieve from the higher price. Emails went out to...
Almost 150 U.S. technology companies, such as Google Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp., have written a letter to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission calling its proposed net-neutrality rules a...
Another U.S. cable company said it will provide the services of Netflix Inc. to its customers through set-top boxes made by TiVo Inc. Suddenlink Communications announced the arrangement in a press release on Tuesday, saying it’s the largest U.S. cable operator to date, with 1.2 million TV-service subscribers, “to provide its customers seamless access to Netflix through the same set-top box they already use to watch television.” Suddenlink said the arrangement with Netflix will take effect in the summer. "This agreement is a great example of how the cable industry can...
Television providers earned less from their video-on-demand services last year, according to CRTC data released Wednesday, despite investing in increasing the availability of content. The CRTC said in the statistical and...
Netflix Inc.’s video streaming service is poised to be a feature of some providers of television service in the United States, as opposed to just competing with them. RCN Telecom Services LLC, Grande Communications LLC and...
Netflix Inc. will put in place “a one- or two-dollar increase” for new members later this quarter, the company said in a letter to shareholders Monday. It said that existing members would keep their current pricing...
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...
Netflix Inc. CEO Reed Hastings said in a blog post on the company’s website Thursday that a stronger sense of net neutrality is needed to prevent situations like the one that has his company paying Comcast Corp. to ensure customers get a more reliable connection to Netflix content. In the blog, Hastings acknowledged the deal reached with the U.S. Internet service provider “a few weeks ago,” adding that “Comcast has been an industry leader in supporting weak net neutrality, and we hope they’ll support strong net neutrality as well.” Hastings said: “If...
Netflix Inc. will pay Comcast Corp. for access to its network in order to be able to provide its streaming video customers with faster speeds and improved reliability, Bloomberg reported Monday, quoting anonymous sources. Based...
In response to a question on Twitter about whether the CRTC will regulate Canadian content on all screens, CRTC Chair Jean-Pierre Blais said that “it’s important for Canadian content to be on all screens.” Blais...
The CRTC is asking Canadians for feedback about Canadian content in online television services and their adherence to programming standards in an online questionnaire released Tuesday as part of Phase 2 of its review of television...
Three million Canadian households have access to Netflix Inc.’s over-the-top streaming service, according to consulting firm Solutions Research Group. In a release Thursday, SRG said that number includes paid subscribers,...
Netflix Inc. and CBC/Radio Canada have expanded their licensing agreement, adding CBC’s Murdoch Mysteries, as well as new seasons of series like Republic of Doyle and Heartland, to Netflix’s streaming service....
A new report shows that Netflix Inc. and Google Inc.’s YouTube are the source of more than half the traffic being accessed by Internet users on fixed networks in North America. Waterloo,...
Five years after the 2008 global financial crisis caused a 10 per cent decline in Canada's TV advertising revenues, private conventional broadcasters are still feeling the pain. “If you...
If viewers of Netflix Inc.’s Canadian streaming service are in the mood for a Canadian show, they might find their selections pretty limited. Not counting children’s content, viewers can...
The number of Canadian subscribers to Netflix Inc.'s online streaming service has almost doubled year-over-year, reaching 21 per cent of Canadian adults this spring, according to polling data by Media Technology Monitor. MTM, a joint research project between CBC/Radio-Canada and BBM Analytics, said that 21 per cent of Canadian adults say they subscribe to Netflix. The national results, provided to The Wire Report, came from a poll conducted in the spring, for which the survey asked 4,000 Canadian adults: “Do you currently have a paid subscription to Netflix?” Twenty one per...
Television providers have had a few years now to get used to online competition from over-the-top streaming services, though they should brace for more. As early as this year, they will be facing a new generation of online...
The American television industry's annual revenues of $150 billion US would be cut nearly in half if broadcast distributors moved to an a la carte model, said a report by research firm Needham...
Netflix Inc. signed its biggest-ever deal for original content, inking a multi-year contract with DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc., Netflix said Monday. The new TV shows will be “inspired by characters” from...
The future of television in the next 10 to 20 years will be application-based as Netflix Inc. pushes traditional TV providers to innovate with online, on-demand models, Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings said. In a speech at...
Netflix Inc. has more than 2.18 million Canadian subscribers and has become a “significant competitor” in the Canadian media environment, Tom Berry, the president of independent production company Première Bobine, told a panel of CRTC commissioners. Berry, who appeared Thursday at CRTC hearings into BCE Inc.’s proposed $3.38-billion acquisition of Astral Media Inc., said Netflix is increasingly competing with Canadian broadcasters for the rights to popular content,...
About 1,700 classic titles removed from Netflix Inc.’s online library this week will affect U.S. subscribers only and have no impact on Canadian users, Netflix said. Online news service Mashable reported Wednesday that...
Netflix Inc.’s revenues continued to outpace content acquisition costs in Canada during the third quarter of 2012, the company said in a financial statement released Tuesday. “We expanded our profitability in Canada...