CRTC combines mobile-TV complaints

The CRTC is combining three complaints about wireless providers’ mobile-TV services and will consider all three complaints under a single proceeding, the commission said. In a complaint filed in November, University of Manitoba master’s student Ben Klass said BCE Inc.’s Bell Mobility subsidiary gives its Bell Mobile TV service an “undue preference” over other online video services by allowing BCE’s mobile subscribers to watch videos on the service without it counting against their monthly data cap. In two additional complaints filed this month, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) said mobile-TV services offered by Rogers Communications Inc. and Quebecor Inc.’s Videtron Lte. subsidiary have similar pricing structures. In a letter sent out Friday, the CRTC said it will combine all three complaints into a single regulatory process. “Commission staff is of the view that because of the similarity of the issues raised in all three applications, it would be more appropriate to consider the three applications within a single proceeding,” the commission’s director of telecommunications dispute resolution, Mario Bertrand, said in the letter. BCE said in documents filed with the commission this month that its Bell Mobile TV service should be treated in the same way as household TV services offered by telecommunications providers that also offer Internet services. The data used by those TV services, the company noted, does not count against consumers’ monthly Internet caps. The CRTC, which declined in December to expand Klass’ application to consider the Rogers and Videotron services, said in the letter that the new process will be “conducted pursuant to both the Telecommunications Act and the Broadcasting Act." The deadline for interventions is March 5 and the commission said it “intends to issue requests for information in the form of interrogatories” by April 4.

CRTC combines mobile-TV complaints

Brief | January 31, 2014

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CRTC combines mobile-TV complaints

Brief | January 31, 2014

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