By Ahmad Hathout
The country’s highest court has granted Thursday Telus’s request to hear its case that the CRTC has jurisdiction over wireless access to municipal infrastructure.
The Vancouver-based telecom is appealing from the Federal Court of Appeal’s decision that determined that Parliament did not intend for “transmission line” under section 43 of the CRTC-administered Telecommunications Act to include wireless technologies. Telus has argued that the wireless signals must route back to hard wires anyway.
“By focusing on the point that small cell antennas send and receive wireless signals, the court below failed to appreciate the importance of the physical connections between those cells and existing transmission cables, which are vital to the provision of end-to-end service,” Telus said in its pitch for the Supreme Court to hear its case.
“Small cells constitute an integral part of the Applicant’s transmission network and fall squarely into the plain meaning of ‘transmission line,’” it added.
Telus also argues that Parliament meant for the Telecommunications Act to encompass the entire system, including wireless and wireline technologies, and intended for there to be malleability in its interpretation.
Electricity Canada, which mounted an opposition to Telus’s appeal at the Supreme Court, said Parliament’s refusal to amend “transmission line” to include wireless means they intended for wireless and wireline to be separate under the legislation.
Telus is appealing from the CRTC’s April 2021 decision mandating mobile virtual network operators, but declining to wade into the municipal access issue because it said it didn’t have jurisdiction on the matter.
The telecom argued that allowing municipalities to govern access to these structures means the telecoms will have a very difficult time rolling out 5G services, which it said require 250,000 to 300,000 small cells installed in these locations versus the 13,000 large towers powering the current cell network.
Telus was backed by Rogers and Bell, all of which have argued for years that CRTC oversight of the municipal structures is critical for the expansion of the next generation networks.
