By Ahmad Hathout
TbayTel is asking the CRTC for an additional 12 months to implement a self-service mechanism allowing customers to change or cancel their internet and wireless phone service plans as part of the regulator’s new rules to more easily facilitate switching.
The Thunder Bay-based telecom service provider said in a Part 1 application, made public Monday, that it is “facing unforeseen technical constraints” to implementing the system mandated by the CRTC by April 26, 2027 to allow customers to make changes or cancel plans without having to go through a customer service representative. The regulator broadly defined the mechanism as one that is “easy to use and enables a customer to perform actions in relation” to their plan, “without interacting with a live customer service representative, for example, through an app, a website or by email.”
The company is asking for an extension to April 26, 2028.
“As a smaller, independent regional provider, granting Tbaytel this temporary exemption poses a low risk of confusion for the broader Canadian market and allows Tbaytel to meet the requirement in way that is absolutely relevant and proportionate to its current circumstances,” the company said in its request.
Tbaytel said in its application that it already flagged its concern with implementing such a system during the consultation phase, stating it “can face increased developer/vendor constraints and competing IT priorities that create a disadvantage as compared to larger providers with larger operational economies of scale spread over a larger customer base.”
Implemented almost 20 years ago, Tbaytel’s myTbaytel system already allows customers to modify their service plans. “Any Tbaytel wireless customers subscribed to prepaid services can modify their service using the unique prepaid website portal, which allows them to change their plan between the different transactional, monthly or prepaid plans that Tbaytel offers,” it said.
“Tbaytel fully supports the Commission’s objectives to ensure Canadian consumers have more choice, and can exercise that choice simply and easily through innovative and differentiated self-service mechanisms,” the company said in its application. “Despite identifying technical constraints that pose a challenge to the April 26, 2027 timeline, Tbaytel fully intends to meet the requirements imposed on it by the Commission.”
Photo via Tbaytel
