Telus supports Bell’s plan to strike Matrix from the record
By Greg O’Brien
GATINEAU – Of the 11 organizations to respond to the CRTC’s request for comment on Bell Canada’s demand to strike a key economic report from the public record of the wireless policy review proceeding, only one supports the idea.
Bell has asked the Commission to remove a report from the official record of the policy review which underpins the Competition Bureau’s submission to the CRTC that a modified, but mandated, mobile virtual network operator regime must be established. The Bureau’s final comments and the report done by Matrix Economics…
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Looking at fines for each of up to $1.25 million
By Denis Carmel
GATINEAU – High long-distance termination rates could provide an incentive to competitive local exchange carriers to increase traffic there because it could be beneficial financially in an era where many phone customers have unlimited long-distance plans. However, a common retaliation approach by incumbents delivering said traffic is to reduce the capacity of certain circuits by carriers.
This is what is detailed in a decision issued Friday where the CRTC put an end to a dispute that started in August 2018 where Telus asked the Commission to Continue Reading
By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – On August 15, 2019, the Commission issued Telecom Order 2019-288 setting final rates for aggregated wholesale high-speed internet access services.
That order set access rates the large incumbent providers (Canada’s big cable and telecom firms), found too rich (capacity rates are 15% to 43% lower than the interim rates and the access rates are 3% to 77% lower) and they did not appreciate the fact that an estimated $328 million was to be paid retroactively to competitive third party internet access providers.
So, the incumbent providers used the three appeal avenues available to them in the…
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GATINEAU – The CRTC announced this afternoon over 10,100 households in rural Manitoba, the Yukon and Northwest Territories will soon get access to improved broadband.
The Commission’s Broadband Fund will contribute $72 million to the selected five projects which will cover 51 communities, the majority of which are Indigenous. The total size of the fund is $750 million, to be distributed over five years, and the Regulator is currently considering applications made to its second round of funding.
The money from this first round will go to Broadband Communications North for a satellite project in northern Manitoba, and to Bell Canada…
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PETERBOROUGH COUNTY, Ont. — In a press release on Tuesday, The Eastern Ontario Regional Network (EORN) has asked the federal and Ontario governments for funding support to deliver gigabit Internet to homes and businesses in the region through what it envisions as a $1.6-billion public-private partnership.
EORN said in the news release it would seek to fund the project through a combination of funding from the federal and provincial governments, loans from the Canada Infrastructure Bank and the private sector. If funding is approved, EORN is hoping to complete construction in five years and while the organization prefers fibre,…
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By Denis Carmel
MONTREAL – In a news release issued on Friday, Quebecor claims it won a CRTC-adjudicated dispute in which the company alleged Bell had engaged in undue preference when packaging Bell Media’s sports channel RDS and Quebecor’s TVA Sports for Bell TV customers.
“In a letter sent to the parties earlier this week, which has been kept confidential to protect strategic information, the CRTC stated that Bell’s proposed new packaging structure still fails to comply with the decision issued in December 2019. The latest CRTC decision is yet another indication of Bell’s bad faith and the anti-competitive practices it…
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By Greg O’Brien
GATINEAU – The federal government’s Competition Bureau was a rather prominent player during the now 16-months long CRTC process reviewing the regulations governing the wireless market in Canada.
UPDATE, Aug. 7: Please see the bottom of this story for an update from the Competition Bureau.
Last year the Bureau fought the carriers and the Commission for access to confidential data from Canadian wireless companies so it could do its own “objective economic analysis” of the market, telling the Commission in 2019 the “information that we are seeking is critical to our ability to make an evidence-based submission…
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GATINEAU — Iristel has filed a complaint with the CRTC alleging Rogers has been manipulating caller ID information for some of its retail mobile subscribers to make it appear as though calls are originating from the United States, which Iristel claims gives Rogers an undue preference.
According to Iristel’s Part 1 application, posted to the Commission’s website on Monday, Iristel believes the alleged scheme is “designed to circumvent routing arrangements between companies who are Local Exchange Carriers (LECs) and some of their international partners,” and would allow Rogers “to benefit from termination rates that are more advantageous than those they…
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By Denis Carmel
GATINEAU – Bell Canada has told the CRTC independent payphone provider AFX Communications is not playing by the rules.
AFX is a Quebec-based competitive pay telephone service provider (CPTSP) and as such receives payment for toll-free calls made from its pay phones. Last month, AFX filed its own complaint with cabinet to challenge a CRTC ruling over its levels of payment.
In a new submission to the CRTC, Bell Canada alleges AFX is not playing by the rules. “We have uncovered evidence that raises strong concerns about the legitimacy of the volume of toll-free calls made over AFX…
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By Greg O’Brien
VANCOUVER – As expected, Telus executives said their company is very well positioned to weather whatever storm the newly launched Shaw Mobile releases into the Albert and British Columbia telecom marketplace.
Pointing to its long-term track record, relationships with its customers and solid distribution channels (Telus has 300-plus retail stores in the two provinces compared to 19 for Shaw, although the latter does have additional retail partners like Wal-Mart), company executives on its second quarter results conference call with financial analysts on Friday sounded pretty confident they have prepared well for this new competitive brand.
“We’ve been…
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