Small providers want emancipation from landline price regulation

By Ahmad Hathout Small landline service providers are asking the CRTC to forbear from regulating the wireline voice service in their operating territories because they say it is getting harder for them to compete on regulated rates when alternatives exist. The Independent Telecommunications Providers Association (ITPA), a trade group representing those providers, filed an application published last week that argues the market for those services has changed since the commission last made a major change to the forbearance framework on landline service in 2009. The ITPA argues that a combination of declining landline subscribers over the years and the substitution...