By Ahmad Hathout
Bell is telling the CRTC it has not received approval on a proposed tariff that would address the issue of the cost of prep work for its poles to which a Montreal municipality wants to attach.
The Municipalité régionale de comté (MRC) de D’Autray, located in the Lanaudière region northeast of Montreal, filed a Part 1 application in April asking the CRTC to force Bell to make adjustments to its existing attachment applications so that the telco, not MRC, is absorbing the costs of corrective work incumbent upon it.
The demand stems from a February 2023 decision by the CRTC that clearly delineated the cost responsibility for certain work that needs to be done on poles to house more attachments, including forcing the owner to make corrective work on its own dime.
But in response to the application, Bell said late last month its tariff adjustments to comply with the 2023 order have not been approved by the CRTC.
“An approval [is] necessary for these changes to take effect,” Bell said in a French-language reply to the Part 1 application. “These deadlines do not depend on us; we required provisional approval of these tariff pages so that holders can benefit from these tariff changes as soon as possible. However, this would also have the effect that any increase in monthly pricing would be retroactive to the provisional approval date and some parties have opposed provisional approval.”
Bell pointed to a notice in one of its tariff filings in April last year that said it would need to significantly increase the cost for pole access in Ontario and Quebec – where it is the incumbent pole owner – after the February order.
“Until the access rate has been changed to reflect new Council policies and to incorporate costs based on a detailed cost study, there will be a discrepancy between the rate charged for pole fixings and the cost incurred to provide this service,” Bell said in its reply to the MRC’s application.
Bell said it has submitted on October 16, 2023 an updated cost study to update the pole attachment rate so that it aligns more with what it believes to be “just and reasonable” because the rate hasn’t been updated in over a decade.
It is now asking the CRTC to immediately approve the tariff so these issues can be resolved.
In any event, Quebecor filed an intervention in the case supporting the MRC, correctly predicting that Bell would argue that its tariff adjusting its attachment rate hasn’t been approved yet.
“Approval of tariff language should only be a formality, particularly with respect to responsibility for payment for corrective work,” Quebecor said in its French-language submission. “However, it has now been more than 15 months since the publication of [February order]. The latter is of capital importance in the matter of access to the support structures of incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) and the benefits of the Commission’s determinations must be applied urgently and without delay.”
In alleging that Bell is using its poles as an “anti-competitive weapon,” Quebecor is asking the CRTC to force Bell to absorb all costs related to corrective work.
