Cellphones, online TV and radio big in Canada

One in three Canadians watched television online and more Canadians use wireless phones than traditional landline services last year, according to an annual overview of the communication sector. The report was released Thursday by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), which monitors and regulates the country' s broadcasting and telecom industries. Thirty-three percent of Canadians watched online television and six percent watched programming on a tablet or smartphone, the 2013 edition of the Communications Monitoring Report said. Meanwhile, 20 percent of Canadians listened to FM or AM radio on the web, 14 percent streamed audio on a smartphone, 13 percent received a personalized internet music service, and 8 percent streamed audio on a tablet. More than half the Canadian population owned a smartphone and more than one-fourth owned a tablet, according to last year's figures. "More Canadians than ever are watching or listening to content on their computers, smartphones and tablets, yet the vast majority of programming is still accessed through traditional television and radio services," CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais said in a news release. The report also said almost all (99 percent) Canadian households subscribed to either a wireless or home telephone service. In 2012, there were 27.9 million Canadian wireless subscribers, a 1.8-percent increase year-on-year and part of a trend that has seen new subscribers grow 6 to 9 percent annually over the past four years. Also, fewer Canadians had a traditional telephone in their homes, with the number of residential subscribers dropping 2.1 percent to 11.9 million last year. The CRTC said that, while the telecom industry had lost more than 1 million telephone lines over the past five years, wireless-service subscriptions had soared by 5.8 million. The trend is good news for broadcasters and telecom sectors. Overall revenues in the communication industry in 2012 topped 60 billion Canadian dollars (about 58.19 billion U.S. dollars) for the first time, up 2.3 percent from 2011.