Rural broadband delays certain if competitive bidding adopted for Bell deferral account communities

Perry HoffmanOTTAWA - Bell Canada says it’s patently wrong for Rogers Communications to suggest that the CRTC can adopt a competitive bidding process for the rights to roll out broadband networks in Bell’s deferral account communities and not experience any further delays. In its April 18 comments, Bell highlights where the delays would come from. First, if the CRTC opted for an auction now, it would have to conduct another public consultation to determine the auction framework. “Based on prior experience, this, in and of itself, would be a very lengthy exercise which would involve many parties and competing proposals...