Rogers says claim is “baseless”
By Ahmad Hathout
Ztar Mobile is claiming Rogers is making it difficult for the reseller to port the numbers of some 40,000 customers to a new provider after the cable giant terminated its wholesale agreement.
Rogers ended a roughly 20-year agreement with Ztar last year, leaving the small mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), which provides low-cost pre-paid phone services to convenience stores, scrambling to assist with the transition because it claims it no longer has access to the cable giant’s system, according to the complaint dated last week.
The MVNO, which found an alternative to Rogers, is asking the CRTC to make an interim order restoring its unrestricted access to the system to review and assist with port requests.
“As a result of the termination of the Rogers Agreement and the termination of services by Rogers to Ztar’s retail customers, the Ztar customers have been seeking new wireless service in recent weeks, and many have been requesting to port their numbers to new service providers,” the complaint says.
“Because the direct provider for these customers was Ztar and not Rogers, Ztar is the only carrier with the necessary information to complete a port out of their numbers,” the complaint continued. “As a result, Ztar must be involved in the port out process. If Ztar is not allowed access to Rogers’ system, these consumers will not be able to complete the port out process.” (Emphasis is Ztar’s.)
Ztar claims that it has provided all the necessary information to port out the numbers to new providers, but “Rogers’ billing system only allows 100 port requests to be active at any one time, and any delay on any one request prevents any other request from being acted upon.” It is asking the regulator to look into whether the claimed port bottlenecks in Rogers’s systems are in compliance with CRTC rules.
Barring expeditious intervention, Ztar says these customers could lose their numbers, which means it will lose the bulk of its subscriber base, and Rogers will allegedly be able to scoop them up.
“With regard to consumers upon disconnection, Rogers has conferred upon itself a contractual right to re-route calls, so that any attempts to access services would instead result in an announcement advising customers on how to obtain those services directly from it,” the complaint claims. “This would create a captive market that Rogers could seek to convert to Chatr subscribers.”
On Friday, the CRTC agreed that this is an urgent matter.
“As a result of the issues raised in the application and its potential impact on consumers, Commission staff considers that processing the Part 1 application on an expedited basis is reasonable in the circumstances and would not result in prejudice to parties,” the CRTC said in a letter Friday, setting a deadline of February 16 for interventions.
In a statement to Cartt, Rogers said: “Ztar’s allegation is baseless, as the company was provided ample opportunity to transfer its customers. We are currently reviewing the application and will respond by the deadline.”
In June of last year, Ztar filed a Part 1 application to the CRTC requesting that it stop Rogers from disconnecting services; to address “unreasonable wholesale rates that ensured that Ztar could not remain competitive as Rogers’ flanker brand, Chatr”; and claimed it had to pay “significant up-front costs” to transition from 3G to LTE and Voice over LTE (VoLTE) services, which was what Chatr began offering.
Rogers, which already had a plan to decommission the 3G network and said it cannot keep it running for Ztar, said that the MVNO agreement was forborne from regulation; that the cable giant was owed money (Ztar claimed it had been overcharged); and that it gave Ztar plenty of time to get a deal with another mobile network operator, which it did in March 2025.
Rogers claimed then that, ultimately, it’s the MVNO’s fault for failing to transition its customers in a timely manner.
Photo via SaskTel
