OTTAWA – Bell Canada won’t be making public data to support its claim that over-the-air fee-for-carriage rate hikes will prompt subscribers to drop its ExpressVu service.
In a letter, dated April 25, to the CRTC, Bell’s regulatory affairs chief Mirko Bibic said it won’t file the data because of its “great commercial sensitivity’’ and “the Commission’s disinclination to accept it on a confidential basis,’’ even though the CRTC Chairman Konrad von Finckenstein said Bell could file the data in confidence.
Bell noted that the “disaggregated monthly data’’ “could be of assistance’’ to the Commission, but refused to have information it considers highly sensitive and proprietary fall into public hands. Instead, Bell attached publicly available information on the impact of price increases.
CBC/Radio-Canada and the Canadian Association of Broadcasters started this war of letters when it wrote the CRTC to complain that Bell shouldn’t be permitted to file new evidence after von Finckenstein asked Bell during its presentation on April 9 to submit its evidence in confidence.
Unlike the CBC and the CAB, which Bell says filed evidence based solely on price changes that were apparent to the public markets, Bell had said it might to give the Commission proprietary information concerning “actual observed behaviour’’ of its customer base in response to various price changes.
