A consumer advocacy group is asking the CRTC to turn down the Bell-Astral merger for a second time, saying a bigger Bell won’t be better for competition or choice.
The Public Interest Advocacy Centre says there would be more Bell content and services available to consumers, but at Bell’s price and on Bell’s terms.
The CRTC has already turned down Bell’s purchase of Astral Media once and the group’s legal counsel, Janet Lo, said approval of a revised deal won’t increase consumer confidence when it comes to competition.
The advocacy group says the market already isn’t meeting consumers’ expectations for choice, flexibility and affordability, and approving the deal doesn’t promise to make the situation any better.
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• Buying Astral good for consumers: Bell
The new plan would see Bell sell all of Astral’s English language specialty services and one of its English pay TV services, the Family channel. It would keep eight of Astral’s channels including the Movie Network.
Bell also said it will sell 10 of 84 radio stations owned by Astral and will acquire less than half of Astral’s French language specialty services.
The telecom giant also said it’s making a commitment to keep all local television stations open and plans to increase air play for emerging Canadian artists to at least 25% on relevant radio stations.
