OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Look for a local telephony price battle in Montreal.
The CRTC took a first step towards local telephony deregulation on Thursday when it granted – on an interim basis – Bell Canada’s request to price its voice over IP service differently in different regions. Until now, if telcos wanted to drop prices, it had to drop prices across its entire footprint and could not target certain markets.
However, in Quebec, MSO Videotron is offering local telephony for as little as $16 a month and Bell is losing thousands of customers per week.
Bell doesn’t face similar pricing pressures in other territories and ostensibly wants to keep its prices higher in Ontario, for example, where the cable companies there are not offering such deep discounts. Bell is still losing thousands of customers a week, though, to the likes of Rogers and other cable operators like Mountain Cablevision as well as third party providers like Primus.
Bell Canada also wanted – and was granted on an interim basis – the ability to set a range of potential prices which would be pre-approved new tariff ranges within which Bell could offer its services and alter without Commission approval.
Videotron is not pleased with Thursday’s decision.
Saying the CRTC is “deregulating prematurely,” Videotron director of regulatory affairs, telecom, Dennis Beland added, “when you start dropping safeguards here and there just to please Bell, it is bad public policy.”
Beland added that Bell’s Digital Voice product isn’t actually a VOIP service anyway and shouldn’t be considered for this new interim regulatory change. “(BDV) is not a VOIP service at all,” he said. “A game has been played here and the CRTC got fooled on this one.”
Indeed the CRTC just went through a week’s worth of hearings into the conditions required to deregulate the local telephone market and Beland said he was surprised at this decision. “We had a hearing two weeks ago and already one market safeguard is being dropped,” he added.
Videotron’s cable brethren were of a different mind, however.
“Cogeco initially opposed Bell Canada’s proposal, but subsequently stated that it had reconsidered its position,” according to the Commission decision, which also said Rogers Communications held no opposition to Bell on this.
“Cogeco acknowledged that all other ILECs are currently able to offer telecommunications services at rates which reflect provincial boundaries and, consequently, it did not object that similar treatment be extended to Bell Canada on an interim basis with respect to the provision of this VoIP service. Cogeco submitted that any future application proposing to de-average within a band, including de-averaging between provinces, should be the subject of a full public proceeding,” it reads.
Videotron is considering what possible recourse it might have.
