Tech + Science

More good news for Telus: profits were up 10 per cent in Q1

By Ricardo Khayatte /

Raysonho

THE#BCBIZDAILY
Plus, Post Office facelift possibilities and Omni’s multicultural stations go bust

The quarter was friendly
Telus share prices are up after the Vancouver-based telecom posted its latest quarterly results Thursday morning. With more than 81,000 new postpaid wireless subscribers added in the first fourth of 2015 and a 10 per cent rise in quarterly profits, Telus has good reason to pop some bubbly. Compare that to Rogers, which lost approximately 26,000 subscribers, and BCE, which added 35,000. The good news for Telus follows a recent spectrum auction in which Telus was the biggest winner.

New condos go postal
Condos and mixed-use office space towering over Vancouver’s central Post Office might just give the West Georgia Street corridor the new facelift that many, including Bentall Kennedy’s real-estate and commercial development arm, have been hoping for. While significant additions to the site, which could include a hotel, restaurant and blend of rental housing units, would transform this downtown space tremendously, the goal, according to a city report, is to maintain the building’s significant structural heritage. 

Omni runs out of air
Job cuts continue to permeate the news industry on the West Coast with approximately 100 layoffs at Rogers Media and the purging of all newscasts for Omni’s multicultural stations. Just one year after Rogers’s media arm filed losses of over $85-million in its TV operations, its Omni stations, which include multilingual newscasts in Cantonese, Mandarin, Punjabi and Italian, showed plummeting ad revenues and no signs of possible resuscitation according to reports in the Globe and Mail.   

A Leap of faith
In yet another attempt to revitalize what has become a deeply challenging proposition for consumers, BlackBerry has released a new handheld device—this one without the iconic keyboard. The new BlackBerry Leap is priced competitively, far less than a new iPhone, at $340 with no contract. The Leap was brought forth as a follow-up to its predecessor, the Z30, which was originally the first all-touchscreen phone for BlackBerry, yet little has been upgraded when it comes to processor power.