By Ahmad Hathout
Bell is challenging a decision by the CRTC that ruled the telco was not in the right to disconnect service to Iristel for failing to pay late charges on top of amounts owed to it.
While the CRTC ruled in December that Iristel was required to pay the amounts it owed to Bell, it also said that the telco could not disconnect services when Iristel failed to pony up late payment charges (LPC) because those are non-tariffed amounts.
Bell, which said the regulator didn’t spend time explaining that decision, claims this is a grave error because the LPCs are directly tied to the amounts owed. In other words, if not for the failure to pay the tariffed amount, then there would be no need for the non-tariffed amounts, which serve as a deterrent against the former behaviour.
“If customers know that incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) cannot readily enforce the payment of LPCs by way of disconnection, even when those LPCs are associated with tariffed services, it will send a dangerous message that paying for services when due, even tariffed services, is optional, and that ILECs have limited ability to enforce LPCs,” Bell said in a Part 1 application, made public Monday.
“This will encourage customers to use ILECs as interest-free debt financing, undermining the very purpose of LPCs,” the application added. “It will also reduce the capital and financing availability to ILECs, which is critical to investment and network infrastructure. Finally, it will lead to substantial market uncertainty, which could significantly disincentivize investment and innovation.”
Bell says this is a novel application because the regulator has never before contemplated the issue.
“The characteristics of LPCs associated with tariffed services are materially distinct from the scenarios considered by the Commission leading to its determination that ILECs are not permitted to disconnect the tariffed services of customers for failure to pay charges for non-tariffed services,” Bell claims. “This leads to materially distinct policy considerations, which weigh in favour of differing treatment for such LPCs.”
Bell is asking the CRTC to rule that telcos are allowed to disconnect the tariffed services of customers for failure to pay charges for non-tariffed services, “provided that the outstanding charges for non-tariffed services are limited to LPCs associated with tariffed services,” and to allow them to “disconnect a customer’s tariffed services if the customer has made partial payments sufficient to cover outstanding arrears for tariffed services, but insufficient to cover outstanding arrears for LPCs associated with tariffed services.”
The application is the culmination of a years-long saga between Bell and Iristel related to call volume traffic.
The issue first emerged in 2023, when Iristel filed a Part 1 to the CRTC claiming that Bell had effectively reneged on its agreement to provide a convenient call traffic point of interconnection (POI) at Kuujjuaq in northern Quebec and Whitehorse.
Iristel said from 2015, it had reluctantly agreed to an interim arrangement in which it would route traffic to Kuujjuaq through a single exchange in Montreal. Iristel alleges, after repeated requests and denials, that it was finally offered the alternate local POIs in Whitehorse and Yellowknife in 2023 — four years after it was informed that Northwestel was relocating the original POI; one year after it started withholding payments for Bell/Northwestel services in 2022; and after it said it had suffered financial and reputational damages.
Despite that, in July 2024, the CRTC found that Iristel failed to provide sufficient evidence that it was wronged in the dispute and ordered it to pay amounts it withheld from Bell in protest. The regulator has made similar decisions since.
