Archive for August, 2011

Industry Minister Paradis Holds Closed Door Meetings With Telcos on Spectrum, Foreign Ownership

Bloomberg and the Wire Report are both reporting that Industry Minister Christian Paradis held meetings over the past two weeks with 13 of Canada’s largest telcos, including Bell, Telus, Rogers, Shaw, and others.  The full list of meetings supplied by Paradis’ office to the Wire Report: Aug. 16 Cogeco Cable […]

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August 30, 2011 12 comments News

Questions Remain as Digital TV Transition Deadline Arrives This Week

digitaltv Appeared in the Toronto Star on August 28, 2011 as Uncertainty Abounds as Digital TV Transition Arrives Canada was scheduled to complete the digital television transition this week, with stations switching their over-the-air broadcast signals from analog to digital. The transition represented a tremendous opportunity to advance the Canadian […]

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August 30, 2011 Comments are Disabled Columns Archive

Gamers Launch Complaint About Online Traffic Throttling

The Canadian Gamers Organization has filed a complaint with the CRTC over Rogers throttling practices. Rogers has responded by arguing it is compliant with the law.

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August 24, 2011 2 comments News

CRTC Settles Do-Not-Call Complaint With GoodLife Fitness

GoodLife Fitness has agreed to pay $300,000 to settle a CRTC investigation into its use of robocalls for telemarking purposes.

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August 24, 2011 1 comment News

RIM’s Woes Partly Based on Canadian Telecom Policy

The past year has not been kind to Research in Motion Ltd., Canada’s leading technology company. The Waterloo-based maker of the BlackBerry smartphone has seen its share price nosedive in the wake of less than stellar launches of new products such as the Playbook, disappointing earnings guidance, and plans to cut its global workforce.

The company is still profitable – it earned $695 million on revenue of $4.9 billion in its last quarter – yet some have begun to speculate on whether the Canadian government should step in to “save” RIM from the fate that befell Nortel Networks Corp., the last great Canadian technology company which filed for bankruptcy two years ago.

Given that RIM remains profitable, it seems premature to suggest that the government can or should do much of anything to assist it. The company faces mounting criticism over its product lines and its failure to address the competitive threats from Apple Inc. and Google Inc., business issues that lie beyond the expertise or mandate of government policy makers.

While RIM’s current problems can’t be solved by government policy, my weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) some of its shortcomings may be a product of Canadian policy [note not all – there is lots of blame to go around]. Indeed, RIM is the quintessential Canadian technology company, reflecting the market’s strengths and weaknesses [note that I recognize that Canadian revenues are a small part of the RIM’s overall revenues. However, the majority of its executives and workforce are Canadian. It is a company born out of a Canadian culture and market environment].

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August 23, 2011 39 comments Columns