OTTAWA – As CRTC chair Charles Dalfen mentioned in his speech to the Canadian Telecom Summit on Wednesday, the Commission has put out a call for comments to figure out whether or not wireless service should be factored into the local phone deregulation calculation.
When the CRTC set out its rules surrounding the deregulation of local telephone service, it did not include the so-called "wireless substitution" phenomena in the framework. Wireless substitution happens when a telephony customer abandons a wired line altogether in favour of wireless only, something Industry Minister Maxime Bernier says he has done already.
Telus CEO Darren Entwistle said at the Summit that 10% of Vancouverites already do this.
When the CRTC delivered its local forbearance decision in April, it didn’t include wireless because:
* While the prices of wireline local exchange services and mobile wireless services may be similar in some cases, the pricing methodologies represent a fundamental difference in how the services are priced.
* Generally, mobile wireless services are not marketed as a replacement for wireline services.
* The Statistics Canada Residential Telephone Service Survey, December 2004, in which Statistics Canada had estimated that, as of December 2004, only 2.7% of all households in Canada had replaced their wireline services with wireless services.
* The Commission’s view that while some consumers were substituting mobile wireless services for their wireline services, the level of substitution was not significant enough at the time to provide a constraint on the market power of the incumbent local exchange carrier.
However, the 2005 Statscan phone service release showed serious growth in the number of Canadians opting for wireless only (up to 4.8%) and the CRTC says it is now open to changing its mind.
"In light of this more recent information, which was not available to be taken into account in the proceeding leading to Decision 2006-15, the Commission considers that the issue of whether mobile wireless services are in the same relevant market as wireline local exchange services should be re-examined," says today’s call for comments.
The deadline to comment is July 7th. Click here for more.
