Lawyer Profile Detail

Biography

Hank Intven, a partner in our Business Law Group, leads the firm’s communications practice. For more than 20 years, Mr. Intven has been recognized as a leading advisor to business, governments and regulators in the telecommunications and broadcasting industries. He has advised a wide range of communications companies, investors, financial institutions, regulators, governments and other clients on communications-related business, regulatory and policy matters in Canada and in more than 20 countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.

Mr. Intven joined the firm in 1986 after serving as Executive Director of Telecommunications at the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). He was the main external advisor to the Canadian government in the preparation of the Canadian Telecommunications Act. He was also one of three members of the Government of Canada’s Telecommunications Policy Review Panel, which delivered a blueprint for the future of Canadian telecommunications policy in March 2006.

Mr. Intven is the author of the Canadian Telecommunications Regulatory Handbook, a comprehensive guide to Canadian telecommunications law and regulation, published in 2012. He is also the editor of the international Telecommunications Regulation Handbook, published in 2000 and distributed around the world by The World Bank and the ITU in English, Spanish, French, Chinese, Russian and Arabic.

In recent years, Mr. Intven has worked on issues related to:

• mergers and acquisitions, including private equity and leveraged M&A financings of telecommunications and broadcasting businesses;
• a range of regulatory, business and financing issues involving Canadian and international telecommunications carriers, including wireline, fixed and mobile wireless, satellite and competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs), resellers, Internet service providers (ISPs), IP telephony (VoIP) providers, cable TV licensees, radio, television and satellite broadcasting services, fixed wireless broadband video and data service providers, fibre-optic cable systems (submarine and terrestrial), and providers and users of a wide range of telecom, broadcasting and other content services;
• telecommunications policy and legislative reforms, in Canada and over 20 other countries, including assisting in the preparation of new telecommunications laws, regulations and policies;
• restructuring and privatization of telecommunications businesses;
• copyright matters involving the application of Canadian copyright laws in relation to television retransmission, the Internet and other communications media; and
• dispute resolution between telecommunications companies, governments and regulators.

Mr. Intven is recognized as a leading lawyer in half a dozen peer-reviewed directories, including the 2013 edition of Chambers Global: The World’s Leading Lawyers, as a leading lawyer in the area of telecommunications and broadcasting. He also appears in the 20103 edition of LEXPERT/The American Lawyer Guide to the Leading 500 Lawyers in Canada, as a leading lawyer in the area of telecommunications, and in all editions of The Canadian Legal LEXPERT Directory, a guide to the leading law firms and practitioners in Canada, as a leading lawyer in the area of telecommunications. Mr. Intven is also listed in The Best Lawyers in Canada and in other directories in the field of communications law.