OTTAWA – Telecom consumers are still not getting the benefits promised to them by industry competition, and have received few benefits from government reforms designed to deregulate telecom services, says the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC).
The Ottawa-based consumer organization released a 218-page report Thursday stressing the need for reform of the regulation and performance of markets for telecom services. Specifically, the report calls on the government to rescind the Policy Direction of December 2006; establish a licensing regime for all carriers with codes of conduct for all licensees; and give the CRTC more powers and resources as recommended by the Government’s Policy Review Panel Report of 2006.
“In 2006 and 2007, the government stepped in to tell the CRTC to deregulate as a priority and to deregulate local telephone service faster promising better deals for consumers. As our report notes, this did not happen despite all the hype”, said Michael Janigan, PIAC’s executive director, general counsel, and author of the report. “It is one thing to try a course of action that doesn’t work out: it is another to ignore the results and simply try more of the same. It doesn’t now make sense to have a government Policy Direction in place that hampers both competition and consumer protection”.
The report, called Waiting for the Dream: The Consumer Case For Telecom Reform and Results-based Regulation, is available here.
