Canada’s Competition Bureau has announced that, following a review by its Mergers Branch, Bragg Communications – which trades as Eastlink – and Bruce Telecom have terminated their previously announced merger agreement. Both companies are facilities-based providers of telecoms services, including wireline telephone, broadband internet and television, within Bruce County, Ontario. The Bureau’s review concluded that, had Eastlink’s acquisition of Bruce Telecom proceeded as proposed, it would have l...

Telus Corp, one of Canada’s largest telecommunications companies, reported a 33 per cent jump in second-quarter profit on Thursday, helped by the combination of growth in its wireless and fixed-line businesses. Telus said it signed up 78,000 net contract wireless subscribers, who typically pay more to use high-end smartphones. By comparison, BCE Inc’s Bell and Rogers Communications Inc signed up 66,186 and 38,000 customers, respectively, in the same period. Vancouver-based Telus competes against...

Canadian cableco Shaw Communications yesterday agreed to purchase US-based data centre provider ViaWest for USD830 million plus USD370 million debt from private equity firm Oak Hill Capital Partners, the Wall Street Journal reports. Shaw’s CEO Brad Shaw, explaining the motivation for the cross-border purchase, said: ‘Demand [for data centres] continues to outstrip supply,’ and he added that Shaw sees opportunities to connect its existing data centres in Alberta with ViaWest sites to cross-sell s...

US-based private equity firm Providence is said to be considering acquiring a stake in Canadian cellco Globalive Wireless (Wind Mobile), Bloomberg reports, quoting sources with knowledge of the matter, who requested anonymity due to the information being private. Wind – which is Canada’s fourth largest mobile operator by customers yet has less than a 3% share of the market – is looking to attract a new owner or merger partner, as its main backer, Russian-controlled Vimpelcom, has drastically sca...

Canadian telecoms group Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE) announced yesterday that it has decided to buy out public minority shareholders in its associated subsidiary telco Bell Aliant for a total consideration of approximately CAD3.95 billion (USD3.68 billion); the minority shareholders will receive cash and BCE common equity for a combined value of CAD31 per share in a transaction which the company said was ‘unanimously recommended by independent Bell Aliant directors’. Following the deal, BCE say...

Canada’s government yesterday (22 July 2014) invited rural and remote communities that lack high speed internet access to submit claims for a portion of the CAD305 million (USD284 million) broadband access rollout funding it has set aside over the next three years under the ‘Connecting Canadians’ programme. The government is aiming to extend internet access at connection speeds of at least 5Mbps – via fixed or wireless networks – to 280,000 households that it calculates currently lack access to ...

Bell Aliant has reported that it is investing around CAD70 million (USD65 million) to expand its ‘FibreOP’ fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network to 125,000 additional premises in seven Quebec communities, offering very high speed internet and high definition IPTV alongside home phone service initially in Alma, Saguenay (including Chicoutimi, Jonquiere and La Baie), Saint-Felicien, Thetford Mines and Victoriaville, with additional communities including Riviere-du-Loup and Roberval to be added by year-...

Canadian and US cable group Cogeco’s fiscal third-quarter consolidated revenue increased by 6.9% year-on-year to CAD496.4 million (USD465.2 million), driven by growth of 3.5% in the Canadian cable segment (Cogeco Cable), improvement of 12.2% in the American cable market (Atlantic Broadband) and a 15.3% increase in the enterprise services segment (Cogeco Data Services). For the nine-month period ended 31 May 2014, revenue reached close to CAD1.5 billion, an increase of CAD235.4 million, or 19.3% ...

Following on from its nationwide 700MHz 4G licence auction completed in February, Industry Canada yesterday (7 July 2014) announced that it will launch an auction of ‘AWS-3’ mobile spectrum (1700MHz/2100MHz paired frequencies in bands adjacent to the existing AWS licensed 3G/4G spectrum) early next year – before the 2500MHz licence auction scheduled for April 2015. An announcement from the ministry said that AWS-3 spectrum is ‘ideal for delivering fast, reliable service [including 4G LTE] to Can...

Consolidated revenue at Canadian pay-TV, broadband and telephony operator Shaw Communications climbed 1% year-on-year to CAD1.34 billion (USD1.25 billion) in the three months ended 31 May 2014 – the company’s fiscal third quarter. Total operating income before restructuring costs and amortisation of CAD601 million improved 3% over the year-ago quarter, while Shaw posted consolidated quarterly net profit of CAD228 million for the three-month period, compared to CAD250 million a year earlier. Shaw...

Pierre Dion, CEO of Quebecor, the parent group of Quebec-based cable and cellular network operator Videotron, this week gave a clear message that his company intends to utilise its recently-won 700MHz spectrum to roll out a 4G network in provinces across Canada whilst aiming for consolidation with rival operators to create the fourth national rival to Rogers, Bell and Telus. CBC News quotes Dion’s speech at the Canadian Telecom Summit, in which he declared: ‘Our vision is to provide Canadians wi...

Wind Mobile’s CEO Anthony Lacavera gave a speech yesterday at the Canadian Telecom Summit in Toronto laying out his company’s current position, in which he stressed that the crucial factor in enabling the mid-sized Canadian cellco to grow will be access to more mobile spectrum for rolling out 4G LTE services – potentially by acquiring frequencies owned by rivals. As reported by Bloomberg, Lacavera said that a merger with financially stricken Mobilicity or another spectrum holder remains desirabl...

Rogers Communications has announced a planned investment of over CAD450 million (USD414 million) in the province of British Columbia (BC) over the next three years to expand its wireless network in over 70 communities in the northeast, Interior, Lower Mainland, and Vancouver Island regions. As part of this investment, Rogers will also enhance existing LTE coverage with 700MHz spectrum, reaching more rural and urban customers and strengthening the LTE signal including deep coverage in buildings, ...

UK-based Vodafone Group and Canada’s Rogers Communications have jointly announced a new ‘Partner Market’ agreement, under which Rogers becomes Vodafone’s exclusive partner in Canada and the two companies will explore new business opportunities as well as offer customers a range of products and services, including 4G roaming services. A press release says that multinational customers of Vodafone Global Enterprise will benefit from the addition of Canada to their existing contracts for internation...

Canadian provincial operator SaskTel has announced it will switch off its 3G CDMA2000 1xEV-DO mobile data network at the end of September this year, although it will continue to offer 2.5G 1x-based CDMA voice and data services for remaining compatible device users. SaskTel explained in a statement that it is repurposing 850MHz band spectrum from the EV-DO data network to add capacity to its 4G LTE network across its home province of Saskatchewan. Thanks to TeleGeography for the article.  &n...

Canada’s Telus has dropped its latest bid to acquire financially-stricken smaller cellular rival Mobilicity, the Globe & Mail reports. The newspaper writes that Telus informed Mobilicity this week that it was withdrawing its latest takeover offer because ‘conditions of the deal had not been met’. One condition was that the federal government approve the transfer of spectrum between Mobilicity and Telus – a move which Ottawa opposed in two previous attempts by Telus to buy the smaller company...

An effective quality program provides a mechanism for recognizing excellence and sustaining continuous improvement. A leading quality program also motivates employees and improves customer satisfaction Come and meet your community of Ottawa’s quality champions to learn about emerging practices from each other, collect ideas on how to effectively address your organization’s opportunities and explore innovative quality approaches together. The Quality Forum will begin with an introduction and cali...

Xplornet Communications, the Canadian rural broadband specialist, has committed to a lifetime lease for all of the Canadian satellite broadband capacity on Hughes Network Systems’ Echostar XIX, a next-generation high throughput satellite due for launch in mid-2016. In addition to satellite capacity, Xplornet will take delivery of satellite gateways, operational and support services and consumer user terminals in a programme that is expected to be worth around USD200 million. Built by Space Syste...

Canada’s Globalive Wireless (Wind Mobile) acquired over 100,000 net new mobile users in the twelve months to the end of March 2014, including 26,000 added in January-March, to end Q1 with a total of 702,000 customers, of which more than 55% were post-paid. The performance compares well with Canada’s three large national mobile operators, Rogers (which lost a net 71,000 wireless users in the first three months of 2014, while gaining 56,000 year-on-year), Bell (minus 16,000 quarter-on-quarter, up ...

Canadian quadruple-play operator Telus reported a 4% year-on-year rise in net profit to CAD377 million (USD347 million) in Q1 2014, on consolidated quarterly revenues which increased by 5% to CAD2.9 billion. Telus also reported that it added a net 48,000 post-paid mobile subscribers in the three months ended 31 March 2014, which was lower than the 59,000 post-paid users added in 1Q13, but was a higher rate of customer acquisition than both of its nationwide cellular rivals Ro...