SDI Telecom says Bell is trying to force it out of the payphone business
GATINEAU — Bell Canada says it has evidence illegitimate toll-free calls are being made over SDI Telecom payphones and has filed a request with the CRTC to be allowed to withhold payment of disputed charges to SDI for toll-free compensation per call.
SDI is a competitive pay telephone service provider (CPTSP), and owns and operates approximately 115 pay telephones over the Bell network, mostly in the greater Toronto area. In a decision last December, the Commission determined CPTSPs are entitled to compensation for toll-free calls originating from their pay telephones over any Bell access lines, and the default compensation rates were set as follows: $0.25 per toll-free call applies to toll-free calls originating from payphones made over any of Bell’s access lines other than pay telephone access lines (PALs), including regular business lines; and $0.80 per toll-free call applies only to calls made over PALs.
However, Bell says in its Part 1 application dated September 4 (posted to the Commission’s website September 11 in an abridged version), it has “strong evidence” which raises concerns about the legitimacy of the volume of toll-free calls being made over SDI pay telephones. Bell has even used on-site investigators and video surveillance to gather its evidence that illegitimate toll-free calls are allegedly occurring.
Much of the supporting evidence for Bell’s claims is redacted in the online version of its application. However, what has been made public is Bell’s claim that its on-site investigators observed an individual it says is associated with SDI potentially tampering with or connecting a device to SDI pay telephones in two separate locations in Toronto. These same pay telephones generated hundreds of toll-free calls during the time the device appeared to be connected, although the investigator in each case did not observe anyone approaching or using the pay telephone during that time (other than the person believed to be associated with SDI).
Prior to dispatching an investigator to conduct surveillance on SDI’s pay telephones, Bell had observed suspicious toll-free calling patterns, where many calls from the pay telephones were being made to the same toll-free numbers, in a repeating pattern and for very short and near-identical periods of time, says the Bell application.
“Our review of the toll-free calls made from SDI pay telephones indicates that their volume is artificially inflated, likely through auto-dialers, and does not reflect the use of pay telephones by actual users,” reads the Bell application.
This isn’t the first time Bell has questioned the legitimacy of toll-free call volumes from SDI pay telephones. In 2010, Bell disputed SDI’s billing for high volumes of toll-free calls which Bell suspected were generated by an automated dialing mechanism being used to drive up call volumes. In that case, Bell and SDI reached a settlement for the disputed amounts.
This time, Bell is asking the Commission to grant it relief by confirming Bell can withhold payment of the disputed charges until the legitimacy of the toll-free calls in question is established by SDI.
In addition, Bell is also requesting the ability to provide certain SDI confidential information to other interexchange carriers (IXCs), at their request, “when it is reasonably required by the requesting IXC to investigate and evaluate their SDI bill.”
Bell notes in its application that as the underlying supplier of SDI’s access service lines, it is able to verify both the nature of the lines (whether the line is a PAL or a regular business line) to validate the rate per toll-free call being billed, as well as being able to check the call records for the date, time, duration and destination number for toll-free calls. Other IXCs don’t have this ability and must rely on the invoices generated by SDI, Bell says.
“We propose to only provide information specific to toll-free calls terminated on the requesting IXC’s network, on a confidential basis, as well as the nature of the access line used by SDI (that is, PAL or regular business access) and the address of the pay telephone line. We submit that this is necessary to permit IXCs to be able to perform basic verification of their invoices, which may be particularly desirable given the anomalous calling patterns we have detected,” says the Bell application.
Bell also makes reference to its concurrent dispute with AFX Communications, another CPTSP which Bell claims has invoiced for illegitimate toll-free calls. (As Cartt.ca reported last week, AFX has decided to cease its operations in Quebec, as of August 31.)
We contacted SDI for comment on this filing (the company does not appear to have a website so we emailed a company address found in CRTC regulatory filings). SDI proprietor Richard Seni responded.
“All allegations are fabricated by Bell, if you read the application in detail,” he told Cartt.ca in the email. He said Bell “has no proof, just four pictures of an SDI official emptying a coins box (we do that every day) and a battery charger.”
Seni explained “SDI payphones are not connected with outside (110v) power, the internal main board memory needs 5v at all times otherwise the payphone will not work, we sometimes charge the internal battery manually.
“The rest of the application is written by Bell officials with fabricated numbers, no evidence, obviously Bell can provide any numbers they want. SDI is the only private payphone operator in Ontario, any payphone in Ontario without Bell name will be owned by SDI, Bell wants SDI out of business, Bell doesn’t want payphones. It’s been years of fight with Bell,” he continued, noting SDI payphones are installed in areas where there are no Bell payphones.
He added SDI payphones users have been making 20,000 toll free calls every month for a number of years.
“The way toll free call compensation works, is that if you call a toll free number from your house or cell phone, there is no cost, if a low income person, or someone living outside calls a toll free number from SDI payphones, because they are using SDI equipment, (per CRTC order) the Telecom carriers must pay a compensation to the equipment owner (SDI).
“Bell doesn’t want to pay SDI, they would not care about the needy people without a cellphone that need to make a phone call the government, public assistance, medical assistance, they told me many time ‘your payphones cost us money, we don’t want them’,” Seni continued.
When SDI started in the payphones business 18 years ago, Seni said there were approximately 400 competitive payphone companies like his. “Today SDI is the only one… SDI will continue to fight against Bell for the needy people.”
The Commission has set October 13 as the deadline for interventions to be filed by interested parties.
