OTTAWA – “We’re extremely pleased with the decision,” Chris Pierce, executive vice-president government and regulatory affairs for Manitoba Telecom Services, told www.cartt.ca on Thursday after the VOIP decision was released.
While MTS is the entrenched Manitoba incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC), it is also a national competitor in the VOIP space via its Allstream division – and wanted as much as Canadian MSOs for the decision to go the way it did. For example, MTS/Allstream is helping Mountain Cablevision in Hamilton with its voice over IP product, which is already in the marketplace.
“(The Commission) didn’t accept, really, the misinformation and the specious stuff being put out by Bell Canada, most notably, that it’s somehow an Internet application,” he added. "The CRTC is to be commended for recognizing that dominant providers like Bell Canada have an incentive to pre-empt competition with targeted, unregulated pricing designed to stamp out their smaller rivals.
“We recognize that in Manitoba we’re dominant in terms of voice services, but outside nationally we are a facilitator for Mountain Cable, for Primus, for a number of competitive entrants, but the reason why they need that facilitator is that you have to use the public switched network to provide this voice service to users and to do that, you’re dealing with the dominant provider,” said Pierce
Pierce believes the decision will dramatically increase the speed of competition, leading to deregulation for ILECs sooner, rather than later. “With this decision, (competition will come) a lot more quickly because now you have removed one significant barrier to entry, which is the notion of targeted pricing by the incumbent – and with the forbearance proceeding that the Commission has just kicked off, we’ll have some criteria up front so one could hope that in a relatively short period of time – whether that’s months or years – you’ll be in position to see some type of forbearance in the local market.”
– Greg O’Brien
