Bell has called on the federal government to support mandated piracy website blacklisting, criminalize copyright violations and overhaul the retransmission system for broadcasters that would keep U.S. channels out of the Canadian market or increase their cost of access while maintaining simultaneous substitution. Bell’s position was asserted at a hearing of the Standing Committee on International Trade on NAFTA. Rogers appeared at the same hearing, but took the view that any changes to domestic copyright laws should be made through the upcoming five-year review of the Copyright Modernization Act, not through NAFTA renegotiations.
TELUS says it’s successfully conducted Canada’s first Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) test on a live commercial network, achieving wireless speeds of nearly 1Gbps. In a press release, the company says tests conducted at its downtown Vancouver 5G Living Lab delivered download speeds of 970 Mbps indoors and 966 Mbps outdoors, using 80MHz of aggregated spectrum in a live, dynamic production network. The technology works by combining licensed wireless spectrum with publicly-accessible unlicensed spectrum.
Rogers has unveiled its new StreamSaver feature, offering Share Everything customers the ability to better control their family data plan and stream up to three times more video on popular apps like YouTube, Twitch, and Rogers NHL Live. With the new feature, the data manager (i.e. mom or dad) can change video streaming settings from high definition to standard definition, allowing a customer to watch up to 18 minutes of SD video compared to 6 minutes in HD, while using the same amount of data. Rogers says giving customers more control of data usage has led to a significant drop in related calls and higher customer satisfaction.
Bell customers with the new Apple Watch Series 3 are being put on notice that their longitude and latitude location may not be supplied to 9-1-1 operators when the device is not paired with their iPhone via Bluetooth. Bell says it’s working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.
Darce Fardy, retired CBC journalist and former Review Officer for Nova Scotia, is the winner of the 2017 Grace-Pépin Access to Information Award. During his 40-year career, Fardy contributed to programs including The Fifth Estate, Marketplace, Venture, The Journal and Man Alive. He then continued his career with the Office of the Information & Privacy Commissioner of Nova Scotia, founding the Nova Scotia Right to Know Coalition.
