OTTAWA – The CRTC’s recent decision on voice over Internet protocol telephony has rendered complaints from the Canadian cable industry pointless, said Bell Canada in a letter to the Commission on Thursday.
Cogeco Cable, Quebecor Media (owners of Videotron) and the Canadian Cable Telecommunications Association had all complained in April that Bell Canada had launched a VOIP service in violation of the CRTC’s telecom regs, since Bell did not apply for rate tariffs prior to its launch in Quebec City, Trois Rivieres and Sherbrooke.
Knowing full well that the CRTC had already said in a preliminary viewpoint that it would probably consider VOIP a phone service and that it would therefore be subject to regulation (and that a decision was coming in May), Bell launched VOIP in the three communities anyway in late March. It stuck to its guns saying it figured the CRTC had already said it wouldn’t regulate such a service because it was an Internet application, after all.
It was the defense the telco had put up during the VOIP hearings, to little avail.
Now, given the CRTC’s VOIP decision of May 12 (2005-28) which mostly confirmed its preliminary view, Bell said in the letter it would file a tariff for its Digital Voice product in Quebec, “at the earliest reasonable opportunity.”
“However, given the complex technological and legal matters raised by the Commission’s decision, Bell Canada must consider and address these issues (as must all industry participants) before it can be in a position to file a tariff consistent with the Commission’s directives.”
That, and the fact that it would rather wait for the company’s appeal to Federal Cabinet to be heard, too.
In any event, the Commission should dismiss the cable complaints for other reasons, too, said Bell’s letter. That includes the fact that cable VOIP services do not meet the requirements of 2005-28 either. “Such requirements include, for example, Equal Access, and making customer listings available for inclusion in the local telephone directory,” it said.
And besides, the cable complaints are just attempts to pull the Regulator into competitive gamesmanship, says Bell. “It is telling that parties that sought to stall the introduction of Bell Digital Voice service prior to the Commission’s decision are cable companies who themselves have either launched or are in the process of launching their own IP-based voice telephony services. The applications provide no reasons whatsoever as to why consumers would have been, or are, harmed by the introduction of Digital Voice, and the applications should be seen as nothing more than a self-serving attempt to use the Commission for purposes of gaining an artificial competitive advantage,” reads the letter.
While the CCTA and the MSOs have asked the Commission to deal with its application under the Commission’s “Expedited procedure for resolving competitive issues,” Telecom Circular 2004-2, it’s expected the complaint will be rolled into the local exchange forbearance hearings coming in the fall, along with the other telecom complaints mentioned on www.cartt.ca today.
– Greg O’Brien
