Rogers prepared to fight Canadian 'fee-for-carriage' ruling

Canadian service providers don't need the Hubble telescope to see what's going on in the U.S. with increasingly rancorous, and in the end expensive, retransmission consent disputes between their counterparts of programmers.

Thus, when the Federal Court of Appeals ruled that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) can charge a fee for carriage for broadcasters and cable companies, Rogers Communications (NYSE: RCI) argued no it can't and shouldn't and filed an appeal to make its voice known.

So far, Rogers is going it alone, but company spokesperson Jan Innes said that the MSO expects "there will be others" joining the fight. "If you are looking at the bigger picture, the whole thing is that we want to ensure that consumers don't pay more for services they are already getting," she said.

For those with binoculars, the bigger picture has been unfolding in the U.S. for years.

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