OTTAWA – The CRTC has directed Cogeco to implement a mechanized customer transfer process for television and Internet services customers as soon as possible, and no later than January 1, 2015.
In its decision issued Thursday, the Commission responded to an application by Bell Canada submitted in June claiming that Cogeco’s “large number of manual customer transfer requests were inefficiently diverting Bell Canada’s resources and harming consumers”.
As part of the implementation of local competition in the telecommunications industry, a process was developed by the industry for the efficient transfer of a customer’s service, commonly referred to as the customer transfer process. As part of this process, the industry developed standardized local service request (LSR) templates and guidelines for the completion, transmission, and processing of LSRs, allowing customers to be efficiently transferred between service providers. The deadline for the implementation of a mechanized customer transfer process for television and Internet services was May 23, 2014.
Cogeco, in its intervention to Bell’s application, said that it was of the view that it was not required to implement a mechanized customer transfer process for television and Internet services, arguing that the enhancement of the customer transfer process for television and Internet services approved in Broadcasting and Telecom Decision 2013-261 was specifically directed toward service providers that used the LSR process to transfer local telephone services. Cogeco said that it uses an underlying carrier for providing local telephone services, and hence has not directly established an LSR process with other service providers, but relies on the underlying carrier to transfer local telephone service customers.
The Commission disagreed with Cogeco, noting that, in this case, an underlying carrier has been issuing LSRs on Cogeco’s behalf in order to transfer customers to Cogeco’s services.
“The Commission considers that those LSRs constitute Cogeco’s use of the LSR process to transfer local telephone service customers to its services”, reads the decision.
