By Ahmad Hathout
Telus CEO Darren Entwistle said in many words Thursday he expects the CRTC to reaffirm its decision to allow the three largest telecoms in the country to have access to the wholesale internet regime, and that some of the company’s decisions in the east will depend on it.
“We’re going to make the bold assumption,” Entwistle began during a fourth-quarter conference call with analysts, “that regulatory decisions pronounced by the CRTC after a comprehensive and rigorous and exhaustive process, where the diversity of voices was consulted in terms of all stakeholder constituency groups, where the documentation of the…
Continue Reading
The CRTC has asked LGBTQ+ TV broadcaster and streamer OUTtv for additional information as the commission considers an October 2024 application to grant OUTtv must-carry status with a guaranteed wholesale rate of 12 cents per subscriber per month.
In a letter dated Jan. 29, the CRTC asks OUTtv CEO Brad Danks if the company would find it acceptable if the commission were to grant OUTtv mandatory distribution on digital basic service by all BDUs with more than 2,000 subscribers in English markets, but without the option to negotiate package and rates with the BDUs.
The…
Continue Reading
CNOC calls move “disappointing” but not surprising
By Ahmad Hathout
Bell CEO Mirko Bibic announced Thursday the telco is again cutting its fibre buildout target after the CRTC earlier this week refused to ban the largest internet service providers from using its last-mile fibre network in Ontario and Quebec.
Bibic said the company is now targeting less than 8.3 million homes for direct fibre by the end of this year.
“This decrease in our fibre buildout is a direct result of the CRTC’s refusal to ban Telus and other large carriers from reselling the FTTP network we’ve built,” Bibic said in a fourth-quarter…
Continue Reading
By Ahmad Hathout
Rogers has filed an application requesting that the CRTC reverse its decision to expand the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) regime to internet of things (IoT) and enterprise services.
The market for those services, claims Rogers in its application to review-and-vary posted last week, “is likely one of the most competitive markets for telecommunications services in the country. Beyond Canada’s domestic national and regional , there are literally hundreds of service providers, including global wireless carriers, global and regional IoT/M2M aggregators of MVNOs, and global and regional IoT/M2M solutions providers in the Canadian market.”
The regulator affirmed…
Continue Reading
The CRTC announced last week it has approved more than $14 million in funding via its Broadband Fund for CityWest Cable and Telephone Corp. to build approximately 253 kilometres of fibre infrastructure to bring high-capacity transport services to two communities in northern British Columbia and one in southern Yukon.
Totalling approximately 113 households, the three communities to benefit from the project are Jade City and Good Hope Lake (Dease River) in B.C. and Upper Liard in the Yukon. The project is expected to improve access to reliable and high-quality internet service.
“We are taking action to help ensure…
Continue Reading
The regulator now moves to challenges against final wholesale decision
By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC said large provider access to the aggregated last-mile fibre facilities of mainly Bell but also Telus in Ontario and Quebec have proven to increase consumer choice and competition between internet service providers, rejecting a cabinet recommendation to impose a ban on Rogers, Bell and Telus (Big 3) from accessing those facilities.
The commission’s relatively short decision hinged largely on what it said was a lack of evidence that such access would hinder network investment as well as evidence showing that Telus is now…
Continue Reading
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…
Continue Reading
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…
Continue Reading
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…
Continue Reading
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…
Continue Reading
