The Commission asks: What's essential?

OTTAWA – Is access to an ILEC's local loop – or even a cable operator's plant – an essential service that must be opened to competitors? That's just one of the questions being asked of the telecom industry by the CRTC in a public notice released Thursday. It will be a huge and complex undertaking that involves the Competition Bureau, the Telecom Policy Review Report and the federal government and could end up redrawing the rules of the telecom game so that the Competition Act, and not the Telecom Act, takes precedence over the industry's disputes. In legalese, the Commission...