By Ahmad Hathout
If the CRTC mandates information disclosure for wireless services like its 5G home internet, then it could stunt Rogers’s effort to bridge the digital divide, the cable giant said Thursday.
“Introducing what’s being considered here, for something that’s not captured by the legislation, could impose costs and burdens upon Rogers in the infancy of its launch of this product that actually undermine achievement of that critical public policy objective,” Dean Shaikh, Rogers’s senior vice president of regulatory affairs, told the commission studying the implementation of standardized information to make it easier for customers to choose internet services.
“This is a real risk where the market has worked to produce a market outcome that achieves critical public policy objectives,” he added. “I don’t want as an outcome of this proceeding that after the market has solved the public interest problem, regulations might undermine our solution.”
Shaikh was addressing a CRTC question that referenced a recommendation by Bell executives on Wednesday that the CRTC should focus its regulatory sights on satellite and fixed-wireless services because those services, by their wireless nature, show the most variation in internet speeds.
But Rogers executives said that’s actually one reason why it would be so onerous to standardize information with those services. “For example, when we build the wireline connection from our network to a home, we have a very good understanding of the level of speed and performance that home will get,” Howard Slawner, Rogers’s vice president of regulatory for telecom, told the commission.
“But with the wireless connection, there are certain other variables that will influence the actual end performance,” Slawner continued. “For example, how far are you away from the cell tower? Are there any obstructions between your home and the cell tower?”
Slawner said the company’s 5G home equipment can be moved around – referring to the service as nomadic – so measuring would be an individualized experience, further complicating the matter.
Though Rogers opposes a standardized broadband label, it said if the CRTC must, it should do the minimum required by Bill C-288, which triggered this proceeding: include just peak period typical internet speeds for wireline services at presale and give the provider maximum flexibility for disclosing that information.
“Mandating a label cluttered with other highly technical information will only overwhelm the average consumer, defeating the stated goal of making shopping for home Internet easier,” it said, providing an example of latency being such a
Telus on Wednesday was more open to a label, recommending the CRTC could include median speed, maximum speed, latency, and technology type. It noted that combining the maximum and median speeds will encompass the variability – held largely by current language “up-to” – in the speeds that consumers need to make an informed decision.
That recommendation, coupled with Bell’s suggestion that the commission could focus on wireless services, did not sit well with the folks from Rogers.
“I hope it’s not the case that Bell and Telus simply want to use regulation to distort competitive outcomes by imposing upon us additional costs and burdens on our 5G home internet service that creates a market distortion and affects our ability to compete and serve customers,” Shaikh said.
“I hope that’s not the case, but if you did that, it would be the case.”
Otherwise, like other service providers that have appeared before it, Rogers says it has been meeting and exceeding its “up-to” advertised internet speeds – with “up-to” providing a caveat to the limited cases where sometimes those speeds won’t be achieved.
Whatever the CRTC comes up with with respect to standardized information, small service providers should not be included in the mandate, the Independent Telecommunications Providers Association (ITPA) pitched Thursday.
“The Commission decided in 2019, and again in 2021, that the Internet Code should only apply to the largest service providers and we think that logic continues to hold today and for any new measures,” said the trade group, which represents 21 service providers, all of which are rural, facilities-based fibre network builders.
“The Code directly protects almost 90 per cent of residential Internet subscribers and there’s no evidence that news measures are needed to protect small ISP customers. 95 per cent of CCTS complaints come from the companies that are directly subject to the Internet Code. For their part, ITPA members receive very few complaints either at the CCTS or directly to their offices. This should not be surprising – we operate and live in local markets where we are known personally by many of our customers – so misleading them, or misrepresenting our offers, would come back to haunt us immediately.”
Imposing such regulatory obligations on those small providers would “result in very little incremental benefit but impose costs on them which would be quite high,” it said.
Both Bell and Telus, however, argued that any standardized information should be applied across all service providers.
Otherwise, the trade group supports a label that will allow customers to easily compare the services. It recommends that the label, which would be provided presale, include price, typical download and upload speeds, and transmission technology – fibre to the home, coaxial to the home, or a combination. The organization said it has seen vague “fibre powered” marketing in the wild.
The organization is also cautioning the commission about bundled offers, where only one service is captured by the mandate. “Having a label that only addresses one of the services in a bundle is a recipe for customer confusion and opportunity for vertically integrated providers to play shell games with costs,” it said.
“Even if things are very clear for Internet, when you combine Internet with other services, opportunities for customer confusion arise due to the complexity and the interplay of the various price points of the bundle.”
It notes that the CRTC plans to merge all three codes – internet, wireless and television – into one in a future determination, and asks the regulator to take any decision from this matter to “address the clarity needed for service bundles.”
Screenshot of Howard Slawner, Rogers’s vice president of regulatory for telecom, on Thursday
