“Left with no choice” due to CRTC’s wholesale rate reversal, the ISP says
CHATHAM, Ont. — Independent ISP TekSavvy announced in a blog post yesterday it has no other option than to raise the price of its residential Internet packages as a result of the CRTC’s May 2021 reversal of its 2019 decision to lower wholesale Internet rates.
“Starting with the Oct. 1 billing cycle, most existing TekSavvy residential Internet customers will see an increase of $3 a month on their service packages,” reads the post written by Peter Nowak, TekSavvy’s vice-president of insight and engagement.
“To be clear, we do not want to institute this increase and would much rather lower prices, as we have done in the past. But we have been left with no choice thanks to recent reversals by a regulator that is now clearly siding with and padding the profits of Big Telecom — the CRTC,” Nowak continues.
The CRTC’s reversal of its 2019 decision “also largely cancelled the refunds owed by Big Telecom and derailed indie ISPs’ pricing and investment plans,” Nowak said in his post. As a result, “TekSavvy cancelled its wireless ambitions and pulled out of this summer’s spectrum auction. Fibre expansion plans have been scaled back.”
Earlier this summer, TekSavvy petitioned the federal cabinet to overturn the CRTC’s wholesale rate reversal, and then went a step further and filed a court appeal against the Commission’s decision.
As part of its petition to cabinet, TekSavvy is also asking for CRTC chair Ian Scott to be removed from his position. In his blog post, Nowak makes reference to private meetings Scott had with large telecom companies, including Bell Canada CEO Mirko Bibic, before the CRTC released its final wholesale rate decision this summer.
“Scott is on the record as preferring those large companies over wholesale-based competitors such as TekSavvy, so it’s hard to imagine how consumers will ever get a fair shake under his stewardship,” Nowak writes.
Nowak also refers to other recent CRTC decisions that seem to favour incumbent telecom providers, such as its April 2021 decision on mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) and its July 2021 decision to not mandate access to in-building fibre.
“It is up to cabinet now to right the ship. The Liberal government was elected on the promise of lowering telecom bills and helping middle-class Canadians. Recent polls have shown that affordability is once again a top concern as the nation heads into an election,” Nowak says.
He concludes his post by asking customers to visit PayLessToConnect.ca to send a letter to their member of parliament requesting they “pledge to overturn the CRTC’s wholesale rates reversal and to force the regulator to once again serve Canadians rather than large, ultra-profitable companies.”
To read Nowak’s full blog post, please click here.
