By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC launched a consultation on Tuesday that could see the elimination of certain reporting requirements to better align with the goal of the federal regulatory system to reduce red tape.
The regulator said it holds the preliminary view that certain reporting requirements could be “simplified or removed immediately” without “materially impacting regulator oversight.”
The CRTC currently requires telcos to report semi-annually on 14 different quality of service indicators in areas that are forborne from regulation to ensure competitors receive a minimum standard of service. But “as technology evolves and consumers migrate away from legacy local voice services, it may no longer be necessary to continue the ongoing monitoring of QoS indicators for local voice services,” the CRTC said. “Instead, it may be more efficient to either remove QoS monitoring requirements or consider a simplified approach, such as complaints-based reporting.”
Years ago, the CRTC required small telcos to report annually on quality-of-service indicators, such as installation appointments met and repair times, to help ensure that customers in rural areas were getting a comparable level of service as those in urban areas. Now that people are moving away from landline services, the commission is now looking into simplifying this approach by either adopting a complaints-based approach or removing the reporting requirement altogether.
The CRTC is also looking into whether it should similarly simplify or do away with annual reporting by incumbent telcos and cablecos on technical quality-of-service indicators related to non-mandated wholesale services, which was instituted in 2018; with semi-annual reporting on legacy lower-cost data-only plans that came before the CRTC’s wireless review, which led to mandated mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs), in 2021; and on semi-annual reporting from the four national carriers, starting after that MVNO decision, that includes information on service availability, branding, promotion, uptake and the number of subscribers for each plan.
In the MVNO decision, CRTC mandated annual MVNO progress reports, which include information such as tower and site deployments over the course of the year, new communities being served, the number of new customers acquired and deployment or expansion plans for the upcoming year.
“Information necessary to track the progress of the MVNO framework is now being collected by the Commission on an annual basis through the Data Collection System; therefore, this requirement may be duplicative,” the CRTC said.
The CRTC is also seeking input on whether there are other reporting requirements that could be simplified or removed without harming regulator oversight, and whether there are best practices, principles or mechanisms to “help ensure that reporting requirements remain appropriate over time, including preventing the accumulation of unnecessary obligations and enabling greater automation, standardization, and reduced administrative burden.”
Comments are due November 20.
The regulator, which has a running progress report on reducing red tape, said it will launch a separate consultation diving into “more complex reporting requirements.”
