By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC on Wednesday ordered Telus to include in its support structure tariff a provision allowing third parties to be compensated directly from the telco in the event the structure is forced to move by a government entity.
The interim ruling comes after Telus [TCI] was ordered to file a tariff proposal that would outline how it would provide for such compensation to the third parties, an issue that was triggered by a Rogers and Shaw application before the former acquired the latter. The issue was that while Telus was being compensated for the move ordered by British Columbia’s Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure [MOTI], the cable companies were not.
“The Commission’s direction to TCI to file tariffs that provide for such compensation was intended to give TCI the chance to propose a solution to compensate attaching carriers, and to give parties the opportunity to comment on those details and provide the Commission with a complete record on which to determine the most just and reasonable mechanism for the compensation of attaching carriers,” the CRTC said in Wednesday’s decision.
“The Commission considers that TCI has filed tariff pages that are not consistent with that intent,” the CRTC added. “They do not propose any form of compensation for attaching carriers. Instead, they give permission to attaching carriers to negotiate compensation directly from the public authority, which attaching carriers are already permitted to do.”
Rogers and Shaw asked that MOTI enter into agreements with them so that fair compensation can be hashed out, proposing that Telus’s tariff wording be amended to include a proviso that a relocation would not be allowed until the attacher and the public authority agree on compensation or until there is something in place to ensure cost sharing.
In response, the CRTC ordered in November 2022 that MOTI enter into separate agreements with third party attachers and ordered the ministry to either stop compensating Telus or compensate the attachers at a rate not less favourable than what Telus receives.
That order was appealed by MOTI, which argued that such a requirement to enter agreements with attachers would become administratively unwieldy, forcing the ministry to implement and maintain systems for identifying attachers and auditing.
Put another way, it would be far simpler if Telus were required to compensate the third parties for a move required and paid for by MOTI, it argued.
As such, the CRTC on Wednesday approved, on an interim basis, that Telus modify a paragraph in its tariff pages to include the following:
Nothing contained in this Tariff Item limits, restricts or prohibits the Company from honoring existing or entering into future joint-use or joint ownership agreements regarding Support Structures used or offered under this Tariff Item and the SSA, provided that the existing rights of a Licensee shall not be prejudiced by a joint use or joint-ownership agreement entered into by the Company after the Licensee has been granted access to Support Structures. The one exception to this provision is a circumstance in which the Company is forced to move a Support Structure by a property owner or a public authority, in which case a Licensee must move its Facilities at its own expense.
Notwithstanding the above, effective 5 June 2024, in the event that the Company is being compensated by a public authority requesting a relocation for the relocation of the Company’s Facilities, and the Licensee is not, the Company shall compensate the Licensee for a fair portion of the Licensee’s relocation costs, in order that neither the Company nor the Licensee is advantaged over the other. The share payable to a Licensee should be equal to the total relocation costs received by the Company from the public authority for relocating facilities supported by the structure to be relocated divided by n, where n is equal to 1 plus the total number of Licensees with Facilities supported by the structure to be relocated.
The telco has 30 days to propose how the attachers will be compensated, at what rate and why.
The regulator will then address the issue of that cost being retroactive in a future final order, it said.
