OTTAWA – Bell Mobility, Rogers and Telus must disclose their interim wholesale wireless rates within the next week after the CRTC found in favour of a disclosure of information request from Vaxination Informatique.
Vaxination filed a request for disclosure of all the confidential information in the wholesale wireless roaming interim tariffs issued on June 4, 2015 by the national wireless carriers, part of the Commission’s decision on wholesale mobile wireless services issued last May.
In a letter to the big three wireless carriers dated October 27, the CRTC said that it rejected submissions opposing the request, saying that the disclosure is in the public interest. It also disagreed with the carriers’ argument that the “public” should be restricted to potential customers who need access to the rate in order to decide whether to take the service.
“In the Commission’s view, a restricted interpretation of public is fundamentally inconsistent with the statutory requirement that tariffs be available for public inspection”, reads the letter signed by Luc Begin for secretary general John Traversy. “Transparency is essential with respect to the administration and enforcement of the regulation of rates, both wholesale and retail.”
The Commission also said that it disagrees with the carriers’ argument that making the information public would increase the risk that interested parties could reverse-engineer total retail revenues from the provision of each roaming service, and that it could negatively impact negotiations around international roaming agreements.
The letter directs Bell Mobility, Rogers and Telus to publicly disclose the interim rates by re-issuing their respective tariff pages within the next five days.
