By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC has approved final attachment rates for competitors to access Bell and Telus poles.
The rates, on a per unit per month basis, are higher than those approved by the commission many years ago but are less than what the telcos asked for.
After roughly 15 years renting out its poles in Ontario and Quebec for a rate of $1.04, Bell got a final approved rate of $1.32 – 77 cents less than what it asked for. Telus’s pole attach rates for British Columbia and Alberta were bumped up from $1.61 to $2.29, 20 cents less than what it asked for. That original request riled up the cablecos.
The CRTC said the new rates will allow Bell and Telus to recover their costs to support the poles while also ensuring that they facilitate the deployment of broadband for increased competition and lower prices.
“While the Commission acknowledges that ILECs may not be fully compensated for their maintenance costs solely through the attachment rates, it considers this appropriate, because a portion of the costs can be allocated to the pole owner’s operations as well,” the CRTC said in its decision. “It therefore follows that attachers should not bear the full burden of the pole maintenance costs.”
The CRTC analyzed various factors to make the adjustments, including depreciation, historical and additional maintenance, and inspection. Bell’s annual costs of operating the nearly 1.9 million applicable poles are $29,775,974 million, while operating Telus’s 547,642 applicable poles runs it $15,056,570, according to the CRTC.
The CRTC made the final rates retroactive to March, when it made the old rates interim.
Bell and Telus did not respond to a request for comment in time for publishing.
The interim rates decision came after the CRTC approved in late January the terms and conditions to attach to those poles. That decision brought into force rules the commission made in February 2023 that, among other things, shifted from competitors to pole owners the cost of bringing those structures into compliance standards when there’s a new request to attach.
As a result of the February decision, and before the interim rates decision, both telcos asked for a bump up of their rates because they claimed the current costs are out of sync with the additional burden of complying with the new rules.
The CRTC said at the time that it wasn’t going to make the rates interim because it had yet to approve the terms and conditions. But then the January decision came and the commission again punted the issue down the road. That prompted Bell to file a procedural request on February 17 to make those rates interim, warning that it would otherwise be losing money on rates set over a dozen years ago and that were allegedly made unjust and unreasonable by the new rules.
Bell, in fact, said in a Federal Court of Appeal application requesting a stay of the CRTC’s January decision that it was expending approximately $2 million a month on unrecoverable costs as a result. It pulled the application after the interim rates decision.
Photo via Bell
