OTTAWA – The Commission has approved revisions to the monthly recurring rates and service charge rates for wholesale unbundled loops in Bell Aliant’s and Bell Canada’s incumbent operating territories in Ontario and Quebec.
Incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) are required to unbundle their local access facilities and make them available on a wholesale basis to competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs). These unbundled local access facilities are referred to as ‘unbundled loops’ and are used by CLECs to provide connections for services between individual customer premises and an ILEC’s central offices.
Telecom analyst Mark Goldberg said in a blog post that the decision permits alternate service providers – including Internet service providers – to build out an alternative to wholesale access to bundled telco offerings.
“There is now certainty in the pricing of unbundled loops”, Goldberg writes. “With the advent of usage based pricing on aggregated wholesale services, perhaps it is time for competitors to develop differentiated services using their own facilities. It would increase consumer choice and put more competitive pressure on the larger service providers, consistent with the CRTC’s long standing policy for competition.”
Click here for the full decision.
