By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC said in a letter Wednesday that it will clarify rules surrounding the disclosure of information related to last-mile fibre locations for competitors.
The letter was prompted by a Telus Part 1 application, dated June 9 but made public Wednesday, that asked the CRTC to impose enforcement action against Rogers for cutting off its access to the cable company’s wholesale access portal on April 4. The service was eventually restored within a day, but the Vancouver-based telco said the incident “severely” disrupted its operations.
Telus said it received notice on that Friday afternoon from Rogers saying that it intended to suspend the acceptance of new wholesale orders from the telco and its affiliates later that afternoon until the cableco was granted access to its aggregated fibre network.
Telus said it denied Rogers access to its fibre network because it believed the cableco wanted to resell the telco’s internet in areas where Rogers already operates, which is forbidden under the final wholesale internet framework of August 2024.
The CRTC, which had been in the know about the issue because Rogers sought assistance, acknowledged in the Wednesday letter that it appears the dispute is related to an interpretation of a new requirement under the final wholesale framework – specifically, information sharing on fibre-to-the-premises locations with competitors.
Telus alleges Rogers did this “to exert pressure for an unrelated commercial objective, which was to secure TELUS’ premises list for wholesale FTTP access.”
Paragraph 58 of the final wholesale internet decision stipulates that the telcos must “compile a list of locations within their traditional wireline incumbent serving territories where FTTP services are available as of the date of this regulatory policy. Such lists are to be made available to competitors upon request and access to those lists can be made conditional to entering into a reasonable non-disclosure agreement.”
The regulator said it is currently deliberating on that issue, which was triggered by an existing Quebecor application that asked the commission to require Bell and Telus to disclose the locations where FTTP services are available within their traditional wireline incumbent serving territories.
“The Commission therefore expects that the issues raised in TELUS’ application regarding the process for sharing available FTTP locations will be addressed through the decision on that other application,” the CRTC said Wednesday.
Rogers did not respond to a request for comment.
Telus said it was cut off from Rogers’s TPIA portal at 6 pm that April day, which was restored after negotiations, but not before allegedly distributing orders that had already begun processing and preventing the initiation of others.
The telco said the disruption had a tangible impact on its business, and said the CRTC should consider enforcement action to deter telecoms from unilaterally pulling the plug when they feel they are right on an issue of rules interpretation – and because the move had nothing to do with Telus’s access to the cable company’s network.
“Allowing such conduct to go unchecked would encourage other parties to bypass the formal dispute resolution process and adopt similar self-help measures, creating a risk of regulatory disorder,” Telus said. “This would ultimately erode the stability, predictability, and fairness that the Commission’s oversight is intended to protect.”
“This was not an inadvertent disruption caused by human or technical error, but a deliberate, calculated cessation of services for punitive purposes,” Telus says in its application, claiming the disruption acutely affected Koodo Internet in eastern Canada, which “lost valuable sales leads” and forced rescheduling of service that “may have impacted [customer] perception of the quality of Koodo’s service.”
Telus had recommended the CRTC implement a staff-level process to address urgent disputes, but the CRTC said Wednesday that the existing dispute resolution process “remains appropriate.”
Telus has been using the CRTC’s wholesale internet access regime to expand eastward. It is the only one of the three largest telecoms to favour the CRTC’s policy that allows for Rogers, Bell and Telus to have mandated access to competitor networks.
