The CRTC said it will not alter the Feb. 13 implementation deadline for Telus, Bell and SaskTel to provide competitors with workable access to their fibre networks in a decision last week that rejected Telus’s October 2024 request for a four-month extension to the implementation date in British Columbia and Alberta.
In arguing for the extension, Telus had said its systems would not be fully automated by Feb. 13 and using manual order processing created the potential for processing errors, which could have adverse effects on wholesale customers and their end users.
The telecom regulator…
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In a decision published Tuesday on its website, the CRTC has denied an April 2024 application from the Regional County Municipality of D’Autray that sought to have Bell refund costs associated with corrective work to its poles that the telecom had charged to the municipality as part of its pole access agreements.
Although a February 2023 telecom regulatory policy made the costs for corrective work on poles the responsibility of the pole owner, the CRTC determined in this week’s decision that the revised support structure tariff pages filed by Bell in…
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By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC is directing the country’s legacy telcos on Tuesday to modify their tariffs to address certain issues surrounding corrective and make-ready work to hasten access by third parties to their telephone poles.
The commission ordered Bell, Telus and SaskTel to amend their tariff pages to ensure both make-ready and corrective are on the same timeline for completion and be scheduled together to minimize third party attachment delays. Make-ready is the work involved in preparing the pole for a new attachment and corrective work deals with things like meeting construction standards.
On the matter of simple work, such as…
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The CRTC is looking for input on how to improve the routing of calls and texts to Canada’s 988 suicide crisis helpline service.
Currently, when someone calls 988, the call is routed to a toll-free 1-8xx number using the caller’s area code, and then routed to the crisis response centre closest in location to that area code, not where the caller is actually located. In addition, calls made from blocked numbers are routed to the national crisis centre in the absence of area code information.
The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), which delivers the 988 service in Canada, has…
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By Mark Goldberg, a telecommunications consultant
The headlines were breathless – Canada’s telecom regulator is going to cut the cost of internet services for people living in the far north
What the CRTC didn’t say, and what was entirely missed in the coverage, is the regulator wants customers in the rest of Canada to pay for it.
This is the same regulator that continually chastises Canada’s internet and wireless providers for not doing enough to lower prices while pushing for more investments to connect remote areas. This, despite the federal government’s own data showing cellular and internet prices keep falling while the…
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Following its Jan. 16 launch of a public consultation on implementing a far north internet subsidy, the CRTC last week asked the body it proposes will be administrator of the subsidy how quickly the necessary updates to the National Contribution Fund (NCF) can be made to distribute the funds to internet service providers operating in the far north.
In a letter sent to the Canadian Telecommunications Contribution Consortium (CTCC) — which along with the Central Fund Administrator (CFA) would be tasked with administrating the subsidy under the CRTC’s proposal — the telecom regulator asked…
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By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC has contract work for a study on the “promotion, discoverability, and prominence of Canadian content across the broadcasting system.”
The research study, posted to the federal government’s procurement website Monday, will need to look into the “business strategies and practices across the spectrum of media and industry stakeholders and regulatory approaches regarding the discoverability and prominence of audio and audiovisual Canadian content across the Canadian broadcasting system,” the contract says.
The regulator wants to understand, among other things, tools used to promote content; how business models vary between online services, including ad- and subscription-supported content and video-on-demand;…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Quebecor’s plea that the start date be retroactive for its access to Bell’s wireless network on mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) rates flies in the face of the CRTC’s requirement that an agreement for that access first be signed, Bell is arguing to the regulator.
The CRTC ruled this past summer that Quebecor must sign a separate network access agreement on top of a commission-established tariff agreement to access Bell’s network on MVNO rates. Quebecor alleged in a review-and-vary application challenging that decision last month that the regulator failed to consider that Freedom Mobile and…
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The CRTC has approved on an interim basis tariff pages, including terms and conditions, for aggregated wholesale last-mile fibre access to provide competitors with workable access to the fibre networks of Canada’s large telephone companies by Feb. 13.
The telecom regulator in October 2024 set the interim wholesale fibre rates smaller players will pay Bell, Telus and SaskTel to use their last-mile fibre networks. In August 2024, the commission had ordered the large telecoms to provide competitors with workable wholesale access to their fibre networks by the February date.
In…
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Regulator forcing Northwestel to implement auto credits for outages
By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC announced Thursday it is now collecting comments on how to implement a monthly internet subsidy for residents of Canada’s far north, the region with some of the most expensive high-speed internet services.
The regulator is contemplating providing the subsidy to internet service providers (ISPs) through the National Contribution Fund (NCF), which would then be delivered to eligible residents in all households of the region with sparse populations and difficult terrain. The NCF relies on ISP contributions and provides the funding for the CRTC’s flagship $750-million Broadband Fund.
The subsidy…
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