GATINEAU — Cablevision du Nord has until September 22 to respond to a Videotron complaint alleging Bell-owned Cablevision has been refusing to process some of Quebecor-owned Videotron’s third-party Internet access (TPIA) orders as well as interconnection capacity upgrades in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region of northwestern Quebec, the CRTC informed both parties in a letter on Friday.
Videotron claims its service launch in the region is being stymied by Cablevision’s alleged actions, and on September 1 the Quebecor-owned company filed a Part 1 application (as we reported here), asking its complaint be expedited, and for Cablevision to file its response within…
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By Denis Carmel
GATINEAU – Enough delay, say the independent ISPs.
TekSavvy, Distributel and the Competitive Network Operators of Canada on Friday filed applications with the CRTC demanding the incumbent telco and cable carriers file new tariffs as ordered by the Commission in its August 2019 decision setting new wholesale internet rates (CRTC 2019-288).
The decision gave the network owners until September 14, 2019 to do so, but only Telus filed. Later, SaskTel filed its tariff pages after a CRTC reminder. The other incumbents declined to do so, pending the three appeals of the decision filed shortly after the August 2019 rates…
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GATINEAU – After the CRTC found Iristel and Telus in breach of the Telecommunications Act, the former for traffic simulation in the 867 area code and the latter for the actions it took against Iristel, the Commission started a process to determine whether an Administrative Monetary Penalty should be imposed.
Without surprise, Iristel immediately asked the Commission to review and vary and to stay the decision.
CNOC supported the stay request, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre asked the deadline be postponed and Telus asked for the process to be suspended (it may well have an R&V of its own…
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MONTREAL – Bell Canada said today it will hit the gas again on its rural Wireless Home Internet rollout, including an expansion of 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload speeds to more locations.
“The Wireless Home Internet program is fully funded by Bell but also enabled by a federal government policy environment that fosters investment in critical network infrastructure,” said Mirko Bibic, president and CEO, in a release which also resends another message to the federal government. “With Covid-19 underscoring the critical importance of high-speed Internet access for Canadians everywhere, and government support for enhanced investment, Bell is dedicating…
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CHATHAM, Ont – TekSavvy Solutions, Canada’s largest third party internet access provider, said today that unless and until the network owners it uses starts paying the retroactive costs owed to it which was demanded by the CRTC, the company will stop paying its monthly wholesale fee payments to Bell and Rogers.
While praising yesterday’s decision from the Federal Court of Appeal, which upheld the wholesale rates set in August 2019 by the CRTC with a decision that also called for retroactive repayments of the difference between the interim rates and the new rates, dating back to 2016, TekSavvy drew…
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Incumbents have already asked the CRTC for a stay of the rates
By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – In a lengthy, thorough decision, the Federal Court of Appeal on Thursday said the CRTC’s August 2019 decision setting final wholesale rates for aggregated wholesale high-speed access services, and hundreds of millions in retroactive payments, was just fine.
The decision goes through the history of wholesale rate setting, which actually dates back to 1979. The Court outlines the details of decision CRTC 2019-288 referencing productivity factors, upstream traffic growth rates, attribution of segmentation costs, speed-banding, unrecovered costs, working fill factors (WFF), coaxial cable…
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OTTAWA – The Federal Court of Appeal has sided with the third party internet service providers in their defence of the August 2019 CRTC decision which lowered wholesale rates they pay to the incumbent telcos and cablecos – and established retroactive payments dating back several years.
It was a unanimous 3-0 decision and grants the respondents (the independents) their legal costs, too.
Companies like TekSavvy and Distributel and Start.ca serve tens of thousands of Canadians by leasing space on the networks of Bell, Rogers, Telus, Cogeco and the like and when the CRTC set the new rates with that decision,…
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By Denis Carmel
GATINEAU – Back in May, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) had filed an application with the CRTC stating contact tracing applications which were then mostly only on the drawing boards were worrisome and asked the Commission to investigate the wireless carriers’ involvement to ensure there would be no violation of the Telecom Act.
On 17 August, CRTC staff wrote back saying they thought the public interest would not be well served by a public inquiry. However, PIAC is trying again, now that the federal government’s app has launched and has been downloaded by many Canadians…
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GATINEAU — As expected, Iristel is officially asking the CRTC to review, vary, rescind and stay certain aspects of its recent decision which found the company guilty of traffic stimulation toward phone numbers in the 867 numbering plan area (NPA) area code in Canada’s far north.
The Commission’s decision (which we reported on here) was meant to end a dispute between Telus and Iristel in which the former accused the latter of traffic stimulation-related activities that caused a noticeable spike in traffic from Telus’s network to Iristel’s 867 numbers, which generated revenue for Iristel through high long-distance termination charges.
In…
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By Denis Carmel
GATINEAU – Operating a competitive pay telephone service provider (CPTSP) is difficult since it is, after all, a nickel-and-dime business.
AFX Communications is, or rather, was, such a company, providing competitive payphone services in certain regions in Quebec.
In May 2019, it filed an application with the CRTC claiming Bell stopped, since March 2019, paying the required $0.80 a call when the payphone was connected to a Bell business line. Bell said the tariff only applies to calls made over a pay telephone access line (PAL) and not to calls made on phones connected to business lines. Bell also…
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