OTTAWA – There are just under 40 independent telephone companies left in Canada – little telcos that for one reason or another, were never swallowed up by Bell Canada.
All of them, save one, are in Bell’s Ontario or Quebec territory. Of those, there are six which are owned by municipalities: Bruce Municipal Telephone System, Cochrane Public Utilities Commission, Dryden Municipal Telephone System, Kenora Municipal Telephone System, The Corporation of the City of Thunder Bay – Telephone Division, all in Ontario, and Prince Rupert City Telephone, in British Columbia.
This week, the Department of Canadian Heritage closed a comments period on whether or not to allow these companies to hold broadcast distribution undertaking (BDU) licenses. CRTC policy, as it stands, does not allow these city-tels to hold cable licenses and the Department is investigating whether or not to tell the Commission to change its policy.
The group of them have asked that they be allowed to hold BDUs and one of them, Thunder Bay Telephone, has applied for such a license, although its application has not yet been made public.
A 1997 amendment to the Broadcasting Act was one of a number of steps taken at that time to implement the Government of Canada’s Convergence Policy that had been announced on August 6, 1996. In that policy, the Government declared that all telecommunications carriers that meet the Canadian ownership and control requirements would become eligible to hold broadcasting licences.
Other steps to implement this policy included amendment of the Bell Canada Act to allow Bell Canada to hold broadcasting licences. As well, the Direction to the CRTC (Ineligibility of Non-Canadians) was amended to extend to BC Tel and Québec-Téléphone (telephone companies that had already been grandfathered under the Canadian ownership requirements of the Telecommunications Act) eligibility to hold broadcasting distribution licences.
While it’s a small issue affecting only a few communities, should these city-tels be given the ability to gain BDUs, it’s seems only fair that competition be opened in their traditional markets. As the CRTC’s telecom policy currently stands, the local telephony market in all independent telco regions is not yet open for competition, so Norcom in Kenora and Shaw Cable in Thunder Bay, for example, are not allowed to launch telephony in those regions.
But, if a city-tel can be a cable operator, it seems the local cable operator should be able to become a competitive telco.
– Greg O’Brien
