By Ahmad Hathout
The Supreme Court of Canada has approved late last month the applications of four organizations to submit interventions in its hearing on whether the CRTC has jurisdiction over wireless access to municipal infrastructure.
The Canadian Telecommunications Association, the attorney general of Quebec, the Business Council of Canada, and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce will have the opportunity to submit arguments in the case that could hold significant consequences for the roll-out of 5G technology – or at least that’s what the large telecoms have argued.
Telus is the telecom that won the appeal to the country’s highest court late last year, after the Federal Court of Appeal said that Parliament did not intend for “transmission line” under section 43 of the CRTC-administered Telecommunications Act to include wireless technologies.
The Vancouver-based telecom argues that interpretation fails to take into consideration that Parliament meant for the Telecommunications Act to encompass the entire system, including wireless and wireline technologies, and intended for there to be malleability in its interpretation. It also argues that, in any event, the wireless signals have to route back to wires on the tower to carry the traffic anyway.
The telecom argued that allowing municipalities to govern access to these structures means the telecoms will have a very difficult time rolling out 5G services, which it said require 250,000 to 300,000 small cells installed in these locations versus the 13,000 large towers powering the current cell network.
Telus is backed by Rogers and Bell, all of which have argued for years that CRTC oversight of the municipal structures is critical for the expansion of the next generation networks.
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities and Electricity Canada are the primary opponents in Telus’s application. The latter has argued that Parliament’s active refusal to amend “transmission line” to include wireless means they intended for wireless and wireline to be separate under the legislation.
Telus is appealing from the CRTC’s April 2021 decision mandating mobile virtual network operators, but declining to wade into the municipal access issue because it said it didn’t have jurisdiction on the matter.
