President says Iristel will work to implement alerts
By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC has denied a request to subsidize small telecoms’ delivery of emergency alerts on LTE or newer networks.
Last year, Iristel argued that the regulator underestimated the cost for smaller carriers to deliver the alerts and filed an application requesting a subsidy from the National Contribution Fund, which bankrolls basic telecom service. In the alternative, Iristel asked that those carriers be exempt from the 2017 policy until they have enrolled at least 50,000 LTE subscribers, which it said would reduce the cost per subscriber. If that is also refused, it asked the regulator to force the incumbents to wholesale public alerting to the smaller carriers.
While the CRTC said Thursday that smaller carriers have fewer resources and may face a financial burden in implementing the system, wireless public alerting (WPA) has been a condition of service since 2018 and small carriers have implemented it without funding from the NCF.
“The Commission considers that using the NCF to help Iristel meet the WPA requirement would depart from the established use of that funding mechanism, which has not traditionally been used to support industry compliance with regulatory requirements,” the commission said in its decision, noting it has never determined that WPA is eligible for NCF funding, despite Iristel arguing it should be considered a basic service.
“Compliance with a condition of service is generally considered to be a cost of doing business that must be borne by the service provider,” it added. “The Commission also considers that using the NCF to fund a single carrier’s compliance with a requirement that all other relevant WSPs have met without subsidization would be inequitable and, therefore, inappropriate.”
The CRTC also determined that exempting carriers with less than 50,000 subscribers would create two classes of carriers and “could leave Iristel’s subscribers, including those in northern, rural, and remote communities, without access to emergency alerts until Iristel reaches the proposed threshold.
“All other relevant WSPs, including those with fewer than 50,000 LTE subscribers, have implemented WPA,” it added. “Granting the requested exemption would therefore be inconsistent with the objective of the Policy (i.e., helping to ensure that Canadians receive timely emergency alerts on LTE or newer wireless networks through the NPAS). It would also run counter to the Commission’s broader objective of closing gaps in WPA coverage so that all applicable Canadian mobile subscribers have access to public safety alerts.”
As for wholesaling WPA, the CRTC said there is nothing on the record to show that this “could be implemented within a reasonable timeframe.
“In particular, the record does not show how WPA could be separated from the rest of a WSP’s network and provided as a wholesale service while Iristel continues to provide primary wireless services over its own network. Developing such an arrangement would require further technical analysis and could involve significant development, costs, and time, without any assurance that Iristel would implement WPA as a result.”
Even if something like that could work, the CRTC said the solution doesn’t address areas where Iristel is the only service provider and therefore doesn’t have a larger carrier from which to wholesale. That situation would create a “partial solution,” the CRTC said, leaving some Iristel customers without alerts.
“This outcome would be inconsistent with the previously stated objective of the Policy and with the Commission’s broader objective of closing gaps in WPA coverage so that all applicable Canadian mobile subscribers have access to public alerting,” the commission added.
Iristel now has 12 months to implement the alerting system. In the meantime, it must tell its customers that emergency alerts are not available until then.
“Public alerting saves lives, and our customers in the North deserve the same protection as everyone else,” Iristel President and CEO Samer Bishay said in a statement to Cartt. “We will implement wireless public alerting on our LTE network as the Commission has directed. We’ll keep working with the Commission so alerting is delivered reliably across our communities.”
