GATINEAU – Perhaps not a full U-turn, but the CRTC did alter the way it allows Bell Canada to implement usage-based billing on certain wholesale gateway access service (GAS) customers. And small ISPs believe the Commission made the wrong decision.
Speaking with Cartt.ca on the floor of the CRTC’s obligation to serve hearing in Gatineau, Michael Garbe, president of Accelerated Connections Inc. (ACI), says the decision (an approval of Bell Canada’s request to review and vary the original decision) will still create serious trouble for the small and medium business Internet provider.
“It absolutely creates a significant negative impact on our business,” he told Cartt.ca, noting that their ability to do business competitively and innovatively is now hampered. “We respect that the Bell, Telus and Rogers may want to impose usage based billing on their customers. That’s their prerogative. However, our ability to provide more bandwidth at a lower price is something that we bring to the table. It’s a competitive advantage. We’re smaller companies, we move faster, and we want to do things at a lower cost. And this decision has removed that capability for us to do that.”
The CRTC’s October 28 decision removes one of the caveats that saved ISPs which buy wholesale services from Bell from having to adjust to UBB. In the original ruling (Telecom Decision 2010-255), the Commission said Bell couldn’t implement UBB on its wholesale customers until such time as all of its retail customers were on usage based plans. Bell appealed this aspect of the decision, saying that it ran counter to the policy direction by interfering with the operation of competitive market forces and wasn’t symmetrical in that cable companies weren’t required to do this.
Bell proposed to grandfather wholesale customers’ unlimited retail customers much in the same way the company has done for its unlimited customers. To be grandfather, a customer (both wholesale and retail) had to be on an unlimited usage plan prior to February 1, 2007. The Commission agreed with this proposal.
Garbe suggests the CRTC’s decision goes against its desires to expand the reach of broadband in Canada.
“The whole thing is incongruous,” he says, noting that all the big providers are in the speed game. “What do you use those higher speeds for? New services that demand them like Netflix and other video services. So if you combine higher speeds with incremental charges for using applications, it runs counter to what you’re trying to achieve. And it goes against what we’re seeing in other areas of the world.”
The ACI president notes the fight over UBB isn’t over and that action will be taken to continue the battle. “We’re actively pursuing different options, but we will be taking action,” Garbe says.
But it won’t be under the Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP) banner. ACI, along with about 20 other independent ISPs have formed a new association, dubbed the Canadian Network Operators Consortium (CNOC) to lead this fight and others that may come before the CRTC.
While he praised CAIP as a “fine organization”, he said it wasn’t providing the types of services ACI and other like-minded ISPs were looking for.
“We needed an organization that was going to become far more proactive and not just reactive on regulatory issues and CAIP wasn’t doing that for us, so we decided to form our own organization,” Garbe explains. “We’re far more well-funded, we’ve got legal staff and government relations is part of it. [We’re] proactively negotiating with the ILECs, which was never done before. So all of that will be part of the new mandate of CNOC.”
