OTTAWA – With lots of people busy posting spicy takes on the federal government’s recently introduced Bill C-18, it is worth a reminder we are coming up on a year since two major CRTC decisions were issued.
The first is the CRTC’s decision on mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs), issued April 15, 2021, and the second is its decision on wholesale Internet rates, issued May 27, 2021.
Both have proved controversial, and CRTC chair Ian Scott has found himself in the position of defending each decision on multiple occasions in the past year. (You can catch up on this here and here.)
The one-year anniversaries of these decisions are important because cabinet has a year from the date a decision is issued to respond to petitions to the governor in council – and there have been petitions filed for both the CRTC’s MVNO decision and its wholesale rates decision.
Data On Tap (dotmobile), a wireless upstart, filed a petition to the governor in council in May last year, asking for a portion of the CRTC’s MVNO decision to be overturned.
The decision takes a facilities-based approach to implementing an MVNO framework, requiring companies to already own and operate network facilities and have spectrum to benefit from it. dotmobile essentially wants full MVNOs to be mandated and is asking for the spectrum and RAN facility requirements in the decision to be removed, as well as the seven-year limit on mandated access the CRTC put in place.
The petition has been supported by the Competitive Network Operators of Canada (CNOC), Public Interest Advocacy Centre, TekSavvy and others and was opposed by several telecoms including Quebecor.
Cabinet is expected to respond to dotmobile’s petition by the end of next week.
By May 27, cabinet is expected to respond to three petitions regarding the CRTC’s wholesale Internet rates. One petition to the governor in council was filed by TekSavyy, another by CNOC and the final one by National Capital FreeNet (NCF), an Ottawa-based ISP.
The CRTC’s 2021 decision on wholesale rates reversed a decision it made in 2019 to lower the wholesale rates (set in 2016) charged to third party Internet access providers for network access by incumbent wired telecom carriers. All three petitions ask for the 2019 rates to be reinstated.
“The CRTC has bought into the big Telecoms’ two-faced strategy of clamoring to policy makers about reduced investment while simultaneously issuing record dividend increases and repurchasing shares in bulk,” CNOC’s petition argues.
Unsurprisingly, there has been a mix of support for and opposition to these petitions.
