By Ahmad Hathout
Bell is accusing Quebecor of refusing to discuss issues related to a standard access agreement required to lease capacity from its wireless network, flipping the script on the telecom that filed a Part 1 to the CRTC alleging an undue delay in accessing that network.
By the time of the Part 1 application filed last month, the CRTC had already selected on October 10 Bell’s price for access to its network through an arbitration process. But Quebecor alleged in the undue preference complaint that Bell has delayed that access by requiring that it sign a Bell service agreement, which Quebecor claims is different than the CRTC-sanctioned tariff.
Quebecor said it had made plans to launch mobile virtual network operator services on Bell’s network on October 11, one day after the arbitration decision. Now, it is asking for the CRTC to backdate the rate to that date because of the alleged inappropriate delay.
Bell filed a partially-redacted response this week claiming that — because the commercial agreement to start MVNO services wasn’t signed — the Part 1 application is an attempt to apply the MVNO access rate retroactively to Quebecor’s use of standard roaming access prior to the launch of MVNO services, which it said are two different services and that the commission cannot enforce that. Bell notes that Quebecor services had already launched on existing roaming agreements with Bell following the arbitration decision in October.
The telco giant has argued that the service agreement supplied to Quebecor, which it said it has refused to engage with, is a standard commercial contract that lays out the stipulations involved in access to its wireless network.
As such, Bell is alleging this is an attempt by Quebecor to get a “windfall payment” from the company because Quebecor wants penalties levelled against Bell.
“Bell has acted with speed and efficiency, and consistently with the terms of the MVNO Tariff and MVNO access framework, to finalize the MVNO access agreement necessary for commencing Bell’s MVNO access service with QMI,” Bell said in its reply to the Part 1. “In contrast, QMI has repeatedly and unnecessarily delayed the progress of implementing that service.
“QMI could have easily and directly addressed with Bell any genuine issues it had with Bell’s MVNO access agreement. Instead, QMI has refused to even negotiate such an agreement, disregarding the requirements of the applicable tariffs and wholesale access regime,” Bell said, adding this is a “departure from the prior approach we had established together under our Roaming Agreement and the approach that is followed by all other carriers accessing wholesale roaming or facilities-based MVNO access services from Bell.”
The Public Interest Advocacy Centre said in an intervention that it believes this dispute could be a matter of CRTC ambiguity in the language of its arbitration decision.
Specifically, the public interest group says that while Quebecor could believe that the CRTC direction is “simply a contractual iteration of a tariff in force,” Bell may believe it is a separate agreement that must be negotiated.
PIAC says it is hard to gauge who is right or wrong in this case because much of the record is redacted. But the conditional offered by the organization is that if Bell’s service agreement “contradicts the tariff materially,” then Quebecor has a legitimate grievance.
The issue has implicated Telus because of a network reciprocity agreement between the telco giants, which is what the Vancouver-based telecom believes is what’s causing some confusion for Quebecor.
Under Telus’s MVNO service agreement, in a joint-network area, the competitor must enter a commercial agreement with Bell because the MVNO framework requires access to the entire radio access network – regardless of which telco built it. So in order for a competitor to use Telus’s network in these areas, it must come to a service agreement with Bell, which would provide the services on that network.
Telus also points to Bell’s tariff, which is similar to its own, that stipulates a competitor must enter a commercial agreement before MVNO services can be utilized. The CRTC already approved those tariffs in May.
As such, Telus is requesting that the CRTC deny Quebecor’s retroactive rate adjustment request.
