CRTC was wrong to rely on policy direction to rule on last mile fibre: Bell

By Ahmad Hathout Bell will argue before the Federal Court of Appeal that the CRTC was not right to rely on the government’s policy direction to order telcos to provide interim access to their bundled transport and last mile fibre facilities because it is inherently contradicted by the Telecommunications Act. Section 10 of the 2023 policy direction to the CRTC requires the commission to mandate the provision of an aggregated wholesale high-speed access service. At the same time, section 8 of the Telecommunications Act provides the government with the ability to order the regulator to make decisions of “general application...