By Ahmad Hathout
Quebecor is asking the CRTC to investigate whether Bell is giving itself an unfair advantage by allegedly adding more hurdles for internet service providers looking to access the telco’s last-mile fibre facilities.
The issue is related to what additional equipment Bell requires of third-party competitors to connect their customers to certain speeds on its fibre network, as according to its tariff pages for the interim access regime that went into effect May 7.
Quebecor, on behalf of Videotron, is alleging in its intervention to amended tariff pages filed by Bell that the latter is unnecessarily requiring optical network terminal (ONT) equipment for speeds below and above 1.5 Gigabits per second. For speeds below that threshold, the ISP would need to provide a host system that includes a transceiver; for speeds above that threshold, the ISP would need a host system that can connect to an ethernet LAN port.
For speeds below the threshold, Quebecor argues that Bell is forcing competitors to use a muti-port ethernet host system when Bell is itself using a single-port host system, which it said is unfair because competitors have to pay more for the equipment.
The more contentious point in all of this is that Quebecor believes that Bell – to provide its own services – will need to connect to the ISP-provided multi-host system if Bell must share the fibre.
“By giving Bell access to the multiport host system provided by the ISP, the latter becomes ‘responsible’ for technical problems that could potentially arise for the services offered by Bell, which could considerably complicate the experience of the end customer of the ISP,” Quebecor says in its intervention.
But Bell said in its reply that Quebecor misunderstood the requirements, saying that Bell will “not instruct an [ISP] to install a device to which we will have access and then use to provide service to our retail end user. We will only provide retail services to our end users through our own [modems].”
That’s the extent of Bell’s response on the equipment issue.
Quebecor added in its intervention that for speeds above the threshold, Bell installs an ONT with more than one ethernet port, which would allow competitors to share fibre without requiring the ISPs to install a multi-ethernet port host system. That would ensure that Bell is responsible for the speeds it promises to provide in its tariff, Quebecor said.
“We submit that Bell should provide, for all speeds offered, an ONT within a multi-port ethernet host system,” Quebecor said. “We emphasize that, according to our information, this is what Bell does with its own retail customers. This is also what Videotron does with its own retail [fibre-to-the-premises] customers and this is what we intend to do” if the CRTC requires Videotron to provide access to its last-mile fibre facilities in the future.
“Allowing such regulatory asymmetry would allow Bell to grant itself an undue or unreasonable preference, thereby placing other ISPs at a significant disadvantage, which contravenes section 27(2) of the [Telecommunications Act],” it added.
Short of this, Quebecor is asking in the alternative to require Bell to establish a list of ONTs within a multi-port ethernet host system that are compatible with its network “in order to allow ISPs to provide their own ONT,” adding this is what the cable companies are doing with DOCSIS modems.
“If the Commission were to opt for such a scenario, Bell would then have to be
required to submit new cost studies that take into account the fact that Bell does not provide ONT, which would obviously have the effect of reducing its access rates,” Quebecor said.
Quebecor is also asking the CRTC to have Bell explain why, in the instance that it must provide speeds of up and including 1.5 Gbps, the telco is saying in its tariff that it may need to limit the speed to 940 Mbps where the fibre is shared.
“It goes without saying that such a situation is completely unacceptable and would allow Bell to grant itself an undue or unreasonable preference,” Quebecor said, adding it wants the CRTC to ensure that speeds are not unduly limited.
