GATINEAU – As more Wind Mobile customers endure dropped calls when they get beyond the reaches of the company’s wireless network and roam onto the Rogers Wireless net, the wireless newcomer has told the CRTC it has had enough – again – and that the Commission must act and set aside its recent decision.
Wind Mobile has asked the CRTC to review and vary a decision rendered on June 3 (TD CRTC 2011-360) which dismissed the Wind’s undue preference complaint against Rogers over the hard handoffs from network to network when Wind customers roam, mid-call, onto the Rogers’ net.
It has also demanded a hearing into the matter, not just a letter like last time.
As it stands now, when Wind customers chat and drive up Highway 400, for example, and out of a Wind zone, their calls just end and they have to call back, only then using the Rogers network.
Wind insists that because Chatr – the Rogers low-cost brand which directly competes with Wind in many ways, from pricing to its similar city zones – does not put its own customers through hard handoffs when they leave their Chatr zones to roam, Rogers is conferring an undue preference upon itself, contrary to subsection 27(2) of the Telecommunications Act.
“Chatr’s rates and billing structure were very similar to WIND’s, and the areas where Chatr was available closely matched WIND’s footprint, except that it prominently offered, and provided, zone-to-zone roaming without dropped calls. In point of fact, it was the core proposition by which Rogers sought to distinguish Chatr from new entrants like WIND,” reads the Wind submission.
Plus, previous Chatr advertising even boasted that it had fewer dropped calls than its competition (a claim with which the Commissioner of Competition has a $10-million-problem).
In Wind’s August 30th brief, it notes that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission considers seamless handoffs part of “common carrier obligations” and laments somewhat when Industry Canada set the rules surrounding the 2008 advanced wireless spectrum auction, it was mum on seamless handoffs at the same time it called for mandatory roaming and tower sharing.
Back in June, when it dismissed the initial complaint, the CRTC noted that Rogers was not required to provide seamless handoffs, that the company was not granting itself an undue preference because Chatr does not have its own network, that it would not deal with seamless handoffs and that the two parties are free to negotiate such handoffs into the roaming arrangement.
But Rogers refuses to even talk about seamless roaming, according to Wind, whose submission insists the CRTC got the June decision wrong and the issue must be reopened, noting: “the Commission has found consistently that carriers which provide themselves with superior access or functionality on their own networks, but which prevent competitors from offering their subscribers with similar functionality, have granted a preference or disadvantage or have discriminated (and then, applying the second part of the test, often determined that they did so in a manner that is unjust, undue, or unreasonable).
“WIND has long sought to negotiate seamless hand-offs with Rogers on reasonable commercial terms. Suffice to say, as an incumbent, Rogers has a strong disincentive to agree to terms that are not mandated.”
The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) and the Consumer Association of Canada (CAC) have also applied for a review and vary of the same decision.
