File CRTC application to review and vary Basic Service Objective decision
GATINEAU – Three consumer groups filed an application with the CRTC asking it to review and vary its much ballyhooed basic service objective decision – one which make access to broadband a fundamental part of telecom service to Canadians.
ACORN Canada, the National Pensioners Federation, and the Public Interest Advocacy Centre say the Commission must alter Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2016-496, Modern telecommunications services – The path forward for Canada’s digital economy because the new policy does not establish an affordability funding mechanism for low-income telecommunications users.
The filing says the groups like most of the new policy and don’t want to stand in the way of the industry moving ahead with most of it, but also that the CRTC made “a number of errors which created substantial doubt as to the correctness of its determinations regarding the affordability of telecommunications services,” reads the application.
While the Commission set new universal service objectives saying everyone should have access to broadband, no matter what, and reallocated funding to help network operators fund the extension of broadband to high cost serving areas, “the Commission, despite extensive evidence on the need for it, rejected the creation of a similar affordability funding mechanism to subsidize retail consumer access to fixed and wireless broadband or to fixed and mobile wireless voice services,” says the application.
“The CRTC missed a crucial opportunity to level the playing field so that all Canadians, regardless of their socio-economic status, can have access to the same standard of internet and telephone service that the CRTC said all must have”, said John Lawford, executive director and general counsel at PIAC. “We must ask, therefore, on behalf of Canada’s least well-off, for the CRTC to use their mandate and authority to create an affordability fund.”
An affordability funding mechanism (AFM) proposal was filed with the CRTC in the basic service hearing last year by the three groups. The AFM would provide low-income Canadians with a monthly subsidy to use on the telecommunications service of their choice (broadband, home phone or cellphone service) and from the service provider of their choice.
“The CRTC found that broadband, like home telephone service, is a ‘basic’ telecommunications service that all Canadians should have access to so that they are able to participate in Canadian society and the digital economy,” said Herb John, president of the NPF. “Therefore Canadian seniors and those on a fixed incomes should not be shut out of these essential services simply because they lack the means to access them.
