Cogeco Inc. is a Canadian

telecommunication Telecommunication, often used in its plural form or abbreviated as telecom, is the transmission of information over a distance using electronic means, typically through cables, radio waves, or other communication technologies. These means of ...

s and

media Media may refer to: Communication * Means of communication, tools and channels used to deliver information or data ** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising ** Interactive media, media that is inter ...

company. Its corporate offices are located at 1 Place Ville-Marie in

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

, Quebec. The company is structured into three

strategic business unit A strategic business unit (SBU) in business strategic management, is a profit center which focuses on product offering and market segment. SBUs typically have a discrete marketing plan, analysis of competition, and marketing campaign, even though ...

s (SBU); Cogeco Connexion, Breezeline (previously known as Atlantic Broadband), and Cogeco Media. The company provides a range of telecommunication products and services including cable television, radio and television broadcasting, telephony, and Internet services in

Ontario Ontario is the southernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the Population of Canada by province and territory, country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it ...

and

Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...

in Canada, and in thirteen states along the east coast of the United States. Cogeco Inc. is a publicly traded company () and is controlled through multiple voting shares (accounting for 71.29% of votes) by the Audet family's

holding company A holding company is a company whose primary business is holding a controlling interest in the Security (finance), securities of other companies. A holding company usually does not produce goods or services itself. Its purpose is to own Share ...

Gestion Audem Inc. In turn, Cogeco Inc. fully owns Cogeco Media, and owns 82.96% of the voting rights in Cogeco Communications Inc., a separate publicly traded company () which owns the Canadian and U.S. cable and telecom operations. The name Cogeco is an

acronym An acronym is a type of abbreviation consisting of a phrase whose only pronounced elements are the initial letters or initial sounds of words inside that phrase. Acronyms are often spelled with the initial Letter (alphabet), letter of each wor ...

for Compagnie Générale de Communication ("General Communications Company").

History

In June 1957, Henri Audet (1918-2012) left the

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (), branded as CBC/Radio-Canada, is the Canadian Public broadcasting, public broadcaster for both radio and television. It is a Crown corporation that serves as the national public broadcaster, with its E ...

(CBC), became president and managing director of Télévision St. Maurice Inc., and was awarded a broadcasting license by the

Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission The Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (CRBC/CCR; ), also referred to as the Canadian Radio Commission (CRC), was Canada's first public broadcaster and the immediate precursor to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Origins The CRBC was est ...

(CRBC) to operate a television station in

Trois-Rivières Trois-Rivières (, ; ) is a city in the Mauricie administrative region of Quebec, Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Saint-Maurice River, Saint-Maurice and Saint Lawrence River, Saint Lawrence rivers, on the north shore of the Sain ...

, Quebec. The

call sign In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally as ...

would be CKTM-TV, and it would become an affiliate of the CBC's French-language network. Télévision St. Maurice Inc''.'' was later renamed Cogéco Radio-Télévision Inc''.'', a

subsidiary A subsidiary, subsidiary company, or daughter company is a company (law), company completely or partially owned or controlled by another company, called the parent company or holding company, which has legal and financial control over the subsidia ...

of Cogeco Inc. He would also become chairman and president of La Belle Vision Inc''.'', which was in 1972, Cogeco's first acquisition. Henri Audet was chairman and CEO of Cogeco Inc. between 1976 and 1993, and later in 1996, was named President

Emeritus ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". In some c ...

of Cogeco Inc. and Cogeco Cable Inc. Over time, the company divested itself of all its on-air broadcast television assets. In 1989, the company obtained its initial presence in Ontario by acquiring

cable systems Cable television is a system of delivering television broadcast programming, programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This ...

in Burlington and Oakville and in 1996 expanded further in Ontario by acquiring an additional 25 cable systems (303,000 customers for CA$350 million) from

Rogers Communications Rogers Communications Inc. is a Canadian communications and media company operating primarily in the fields of wireless communications, cable television, telephony and Internet, with significant additional telecommunications and mass media ass ...

. Between 1998 and 2001, Cogeco increased its footprint in both Quebec and Ontario with the acquisition of an additional 19 cable systems. In a turn of events, in 2009, and again in 2010, Rogers invested substantially in both Cogeco Inc. and Cogeco Cable Inc., resulting in some speculation surrounding the two rivals. In 2011, the company increased its radio station assets by acquiring Corus Québec, a subsidiary of

Corus Entertainment Corus Entertainment Inc. (often simply known as Corus) is a Canadian mass media and television production company. The company was founded in 1987 as Shaw Radio Ltd. as a subsidiary of Shaw Communications and was spun-off from Shaw in 1999. It h ...

, and in 2018 acquired additional radio stations from RNC Média, giving it a total of twenty-two radio stations in Quebec and one in Ontario. Also that year, the company purchased Métromédia for CA$41 million to later sell it in 2018 to

Bell Media Bell Media Inc. (Canadian French, French: ) is a Canadian media conglomerate that is the mass media subsidiary of BCE Inc. (also known as Bell Canada Enterprises, the owner of telecommunications company Bell Canada). Its operations include nati ...

for an undisclosed amount. In February 2012, the company also sold its cable system Cabovisão in Portugal to the European media group Altice. In July 2012, the company expanded into the U.S. market by acquiring the cable system operator

Atlantic Broadband Breezeline (previously Atlantic Broadband) is the trade name for the United States operations of Cogeco Communications, constituting the 8th largest cable operator in the United States, based on the number of television service customers served. ...

. In December that same year, it acquired Peer 1 Hosting, an internet infrastructure provider, and later in October 2015, merged it with its Cogeco Data Services, forming a new subsidiary called Cogeco Peer 1. In January 2018, Cogeco Communications Inc. announced that its US subsidiary Atlantic Broadband had completed the acquisition of the cable systems owned by Harron Communications which were operating under the brand name MetroCast for US$1.4 billion, making the company the eight largest hybrid fibre coaxial cable operator in North America. In February 2019, the company announced it sold Cogeco Peer 1 to private equity firm Digital Colony for CA$720 million. Cogeco Peer 1 later changed its name to Aptum Technologies. On 2 September 2020,

Altice USA Altice USA, Inc., commonly known as Altice, is an American telecommunications provider with headquarters in New York City, owned by the Franco-Israeli businessman Patrick Drahi. The company delivers pay television, Internet access, telephone se ...

announced an unsolicited offer to purchase both Cogeco and Cogeco Communications. Altice announced it would immediately resell Cogeco's Canadian assets to Rogers, which retains large minority interests in both Cogeco companies, while Altice would keep Cogeco's U.S. assets including Atlantic Broadband. Cogeco's controlling shareholders, the Audet family, indicated shortly thereafter that they would not support the offer. It was also rejected by the companies'

boards of directors A board of directors is a governing body that supervises the activities of a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government agency. The powers, duties, and responsibilities of a board of directors are determined by government regulations ...

, and

Quebec Premier The premier of Quebec ( (masculine) or eminine is the head of government of the Canadian province of Quebec. The current premier of Quebec is François Legault of the Coalition Avenir Québec, sworn in on October 18, 2018, following that ...

François Legault François Legault (; born May 26, 1957) is a Canadian politician serving as the 32nd premier of Quebec since 2018. A founding member of the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), he has led the party since it began in 2011. Legault sits as a Nationa ...

had also signalled his opposition to losing another major Quebec-based company. Altice and Rogers said they would continue to pursue a purchase, with Rogers promising to maintain a separate management team and regional headquarters for its Quebec operations. In October 2020, Altice made a second offer, increasing it to CA$11.1 billion in cash, which was again rejected by the Audet family. The offer expired that November. Rogers subsequently sold its remaining stakes in the Cogeco companies to the

Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (, CDPQ; ) is an institutional investor that manages several public and parapublic pension plans and insurance programs in the Canadian province of Quebec. It was established in 1965 by an act of the ...

in December 2023. Following the acquisition of systems in Ohio in 2021, Atlantic Broadband rebranded as Breezeline in early 2022. On 21 October 2020, Cogeco Communications announced an agreement for the acquisition of DERYTelecom by its subsidiary Cogeco Connexion for $405 million. Founded in Saguenay, DERYTelecom is the third largest cable company in Quebec. The closing of the transaction is announced on 14 December 2020. In February 2023, the company announced that it had acquired the telecommunications operation of Internet service provider Oxio.

Digital services

Digital cable television

Within its Canadian cable operations in Ontario and Quebec, 98% of all homes passed by Cogeco Cable-owned plant are able to access digital cable services. In August 2018, Cogeco announced that it would convert its cablesystems to

IPTV Internet Protocol television (IPTV), also called TV over broadband, is the service delivery of television over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. Usually sold and run by a Telephone company, telecom provider, it consists of broadcast live telev ...

using MediaKind platforms.

Internet access

Cogeco Cable was one of the first major cable operators to deploy its network compliant with the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) standard to provide all of its

Internet Protocol The Internet Protocol (IP) is the network layer communications protocol in the Internet protocol suite for relaying datagrams across network boundaries. Its routing function enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the Internet. IP ...

(IP) based services, such as internet access and

VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also known as IP telephony, is a set of technologies used primarily for voice communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. VoIP enables voice calls to be transmitted as ...

as early as 2002. In April 2009, Cogeco implemented a penalty for surpassing the bandwidth limits for each tier. As of August 2021, Cogeco offers up to gigabit download speeds (30 Mbit/s upload) in certain areas which takes advantage of its DOCSIS 3.1 platform upgrades and 180 Mbit/s download (10 Mbit/s upload) most of its footprint on DOCSIS 3.0.

VoIP digital telephony

Cogeco Cable launched its digital phone service in June 2005, a

-based telephony service offering customers unlimited local & long distance calling within Canada and to the United States, voice mail, call display, call waiting, visual call waiting, call forwarding, 411-directory assistance, 911-emergency assistance, 611-technical support assistance, 711-message relay services and 0-operator services.

References

External links

Official website

Facebook page

Twitter account

History of Cogeco Inc. - Canadian Communication Foundation

{{Morningstar National Bank Québec Index Companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange Companies based in Montreal Cable and DBS companies of Canada Internet service providers of Canada Telecommunications companies established in 1957 1957 establishments in Quebec