OTTAWA – The CRTC has granted interim approval to BCE Inc. to revise the way it charges small Internet service providers (ISPs) who rent parts of its network.
Bell Canada and Bell Aliant can now introduce two new speed options, usage-based billing rates (instead of the flat rate billing they use now), and levy an “excessive usage” charge for its gateway access services (GAS).
GAS is a mandated Bell Canada wholesale service that ISPs use to provide retail Internet services. It carries an ISP’s customer’s Internet traffic from the customer’s location to a point in the Bell Canada network where the aggregated traffic generated by the ISP’s GAS customers is handed off to the ISP.
The Bell companies made the proposal last March in response to a December 2008 ruling from the CRTC requiring Bell to provide wholesale ISPs access to the same speeds Bell offers.
The approved new speed option for GAS-residence is up to 2 megabits per second (Mbps) downstream and up to 800 kilobits per second (Kbps) upstream. GAS-Business speeds can be up to 1 Mbps downstream and up to 640 Kbps upstream.
In Telecom Order CRTC 2009-484, the Commission also approved usage-based billing for retail Internet and wholesale GAS, effective 90 days from the date of this decision to allow GAS customers time “to adapt their business plans and billing systems and to manage their relationships with their end-customers”.
Additionally, the CRTC approved the Bell companies’ proposal to introduce an excessive usage charge for GAS of $0.75 per GB in excess of 300 GB, effective the date the Bell companies notify the Commission in writing that they apply an excessive usage charge of $1.00 per GB in excess of 300 GB to all their retail customers on usage-based billing plans.
Bell’s application also included a request for an “uncorrelated usage charge”, saying that in some instances it cannot correlate Internet usage that has been authenticated by a particular GAS-ISP’s end-user with a specific line to which that end-user subscribed. The Commission declined to rule on this proposal, citing the need for further information.
