TIMMINS – On Wednesday everyone, save one company, told the CRTC that adding broadband delivery to the telecom industry’s basic service objective is something that the Commission must do.
And a few even said nevermind those paltry 3-4 Mbps goals, we need to aim at 10, at least (but we’ll get to that in a bit).
MTS Allstream, as we detailed here, not only said the CRTC should make broadband a BSO, but even tied a number, $7 billion over 10 years, which would pay for broadband to every single Canadian household – because letting market forces take care of it just won’t work when you’re talking about hitting every home down every dirt road (and even the ones where there aren’t any roads).
Crown Corp SaskTel backed up MTS in that claim Wednesday afternoon. “In rural areas market forces alone will not result in either telephony or broadband services which are reasonably similar in terms of affordability or performance to those available in urban areas. Unlike urban markets, there is a need for national policies to supplement the abilities of carriers to provide rural services,” said SaskTel’s president and CEO Ron Styles.
“It’s SaskTel’s belief… that the contribution fund must be improved and strengthened to include broadband in order to reach the goals of the Telecommunications Act to promote economic growth and social cohesion.”
But what about the likes of wireless provider Barrett Xplore, asked CRTC vice-chair telecom Len Katz? The company said Tuesday it can provide broadband access to everyone in Canada, without any subsidy – and SaskTel even uses Barrett Xplore to get to customers its wired net can’t reach.
“Satellite does wonderfully, especially for people who have had nothing before,” said SaskTel’s regulatory affairs director Bob Hersche. But the company believes satellite and wireless to be gap-fillers, final options when it’s all that can be provided. And offering it to SaskTel customers at $56.95 a month means the telco is paying Barrett an equipment subsidy, too.
“Satellite is good for serving a portion of the unserved rural and remote population, but not for all the remote and rural population,” added Hersche.
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THE LONE COMPANY to object to adding broadband to the BSO was Bragg Communications (EastLink), which is based in Halifax but serves hundreds of rural communities with TV, internet and phone across the country.
“Expansion of broadband is already occurring as a result of aggressive competition, upgrades to existing carrier networks and new technologies. The markets will naturally continue to expand to meet Canadians’ needs for broadband without imposing a regulatory obligation to provide it,” said Bragg Communications’ VP regulatory Natalie MacDonald. “The evidence already provided in this proceeding establishes that, today, 95% of Canadians have access to high speed Internet services.”
But as chairman Konrad von Finckenstein pointed out, this hearing is about that last 5%, not the 95.
However, EastLink concentrated its efforts on opening up competition in markets served by SILECs (small incumbent local exchange carriers). These SILECs, while they have been able to push into TV – and beyond their traditional geographic territories – have been protected from competition on the voice side.
So in some communities EastLink, as a CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier) faces competition from a local SILEC in the TV business, but is prevented from offering telephony in the same community.
“We request that the Commission lift this suspension so that consumers in these communities can receive the benefits of competition,” said MacDonald. “EastLink requests that, at the conclusion of this proceeding, the Commission take immediate steps to approve CLEC entry plans in those exchanges where implementation plans have been filed, and require SILECs to comply with the 2006-14 process in response to entry plans filed by CLECs.”
In some regions, EastLink has been ready to launch phone service for two years, but the regs prevent them from moving since SILECs say they are too small and fragile to be made to face competition on voice. They say competitors cause a “doughnut effect” where the newcomers concentrate on the populated, profitable areas, leaving the unprofitable outlying areas to be served by the incumbent.
It’s this very issue and the regulatory delay that drove Kincardine Cable’s former owner to sell his business to Rogers, he told Cartt.ca this week.
“In this proceeding, the SILECs paint a picture where their businesses would be in dire circumstances should they be required to allow competition in their incumbent territories, and yet they compete aggressively in other markets,” noted MacDonald. “Outside their SILEC territory they offer triple and quadruple play bundles, and, in some cases, they tie their customers to multi-year contracts. At the same time, they enjoy the security of a monopoly incumbent market where they receive full subsidies in exchanges where we are prohibited from offering telephone service.
“In fact, in one community, Listowel, Ontario, where EastLink is the incumbent cable provider and Bell Aliant is the ILEC, there are two SILECs now competing with us as CLECs and offering services via fibre to the home,” explained MacDonald.
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THREE LOCAL NORTHEASTERN Ontario groups also appealed to the Commission demanding better broadband for the region. They recounted the difficulty in attracting businesses to the north and when they succeed – how challenging it is for those businesses to find reliable broadband service, especially since the basic service obligations say telcos don’t have to run wire to people who ask for serve beyond 165 meters from the end of the existing plant.
The Town of Kirkland Lake’s director of economic development Wilfred Hass told of one business owner who set up shop, relied on the existing broadband from the local telco, “yet once he moved into that location, the telco cut the service and stated that it was not required to extend it there any longer. This is despite the fact that high speed service was available directly across the street from his store (at a competitor’s location no less).”
NEOnet, a not-for-profit information and communication technology (ICT) development organization based in Timmins that wants to see infrastructure in the region enhanced used its presentation to show commissioners the many and various gaps in broadband service in its catchment, from Temiskaming to the shores of James Bay.
Working with all the local Internet service providers (and there are seven in the region), it was able to identify areas with no broadband (not counting satellite) and plot it into a Google Earth application that lets it identify, down to the house, whether there is service or not.
For example, this home on Highway 101 in Fauquier-Strickland, has no broadband access.
NEOnet’s goal is to work with ISPs and others as partners to extend broadband to fill all the gaps – many of which are First Nations communities – and its executive director, Dave McGirr, has a goal for the CRTC in mind if it wants to set a national broadband target: 10 Mbps for all.
“We need at least 10 megabits,” he said, pointing to how Finland has made broadband access a basic right and has a target date of December 2016 set for when all Finns are to have access to 100 Mbps.
Vice-chair Katz noted that Canada’s geography does not exactly compare to Finland’s but McGirr, a former executive with Bell Canada and Northern Tel was undeterred by that excuse.
“I don’t believe this country should hide behind our geography,” he said. “If we want to make Canada more innovative, we should challenge the (broadband) companies to get behind this.”
More to come tomorrow from this hearing.
