GATINEAU — The CRTC today denied a review and vary application from Rogers Communications concerning the Commission’s decision in April to extend the deadline for Bell to deploy one-way toll trunks between the two companies’ networks — a deadline extension which Rogers wasn’t happy about.
Considering the Commission’s decision today comes two and a half months after the deadline by which Bell was supposed to have deployed the one-way toll trunks (to connect to Rogers switches in the Bell operating territories where Rogers also provides service), perhaps the whole matter of the R&V denial has become a moot point.
The dispute between Rogers and Bell over the toll trunks (and the way in which toll-free calls are currently routed in Canada) has been going on for more than a year and a half. Rogers first asked the Commission to step in to settle the dispute in May 2019. On December 2, 2019, the Commission issued its decision and said Bell had 150 days (or until May 19, 2020) to deploy the one-way toll trunks to connect to Rogers’ switches to receive Rogers-originating toll-free traffic destined for Bell’s toll-free telephone number customers.
In a procedural letter dated April 3, the Commission extended the deadline for Bell’s deployment of the toll trunks until August 17, 2020, saying the Covid-19 pandemic represented “an unprecedented force majeure situation during which it would not be appropriate for the Commission to expect Bell to make these non-essential changes to their networks.”
Rogers took issue with the deadline extension and filed an R&V application on May 20, calling the delay unjustified.
In its decision today denying Rogers’ R&V, the Commission said it was informed on September 9 by both Bell and Rogers that the one-way toll trunks were not deployed by the August 17 deadline, but the two companies had been collaborating and had reached a mutually agreed upon deadline for the toll-trunk deployment, which was expected to be completed by mid-September. As of today, neither company had raised further issues on the matter, the Commission said in its decision.
As part of its December 2019 decision, the Commission also directed Bell to file revised tariff pages (originally by March 31, 2020 but with a later revised deadline of July 20), so Rogers could begin charging Bell for the toll-free traffic in question once the toll trunks were deployed. The Commission says in today’s decision it approved on August 6 Bell’s filing of revised tariff pages on an interim basis, until the August 17 implementation deadline for the toll trunks.
In its R&V application in May, Rogers had also requested the ability to deduct the toll-free traffic in question from its calculation of the traffic imbalance between the companies on their two-way bill-and-keep trunks by suspending the application of Bell’s tariff to this class of traffic as of May 19, 2020, the original toll-trunk deployment deadline.
In its decision today, the Commission also denied Rogers’ request to exclude, as of May 19, toll-free traffic from the calculation of the bill-and-keep trunk imbalance between Bell and Rogers.
