A public hearing into Bell's $3.4-billion acquisition of Astral Media got underway Monday morning in Montreal.
    
The CRTC hearing will focus on how much of the English-language TV market the telecom giant will corner if the deal were to go through.
    
The commission will examine the multibillion-dollar transaction and hear from multimedia, telecom and radio companies, and producers as well as film groups and consumer advocates, many of them against the deal.
    
Bell's parent company BCE said if the deal is approved it will own 33.5 per cent of the English-language market.
    
That's under the 35 per cent threshold set by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission for approval.
    
However, competitors of BCE disagree with the way calculates market share and argue it would get too much clout.
    
(The Canadian Press)