TekSavvy says decision sets bad precedent for competitors
By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC ruled Friday that Cogeco’s decommissioning of its legacy hybrid-coaxial network in four Ontario cities did not give it an undue advantage or unduly disadvantage TekSavvy because competitive alternatives exist.
TekSavvy had requested in March that the CRTC order Cogeco to maintain its legacy hybrid-coax network or mandate access to its fibre replacement at cable rates in Chatham, Windsor, Burlington and Kingston. It warned that the decommissioning of older cable networks – coupled with the fact that cablecos are not mandated to provide regulated access to their aggregated fibre facilities – would disadvantage competitors, harm competition and raise prices, which it argued was contrary to the 2023 policy direction.
But the CRTC denied the application on the basis that TekSavvy has options in those cities.
“Several alternatives were made available to TekSavvy to continue to provide competitive choices to consumers,” the CRTC said. “These included a proposed commercial arrangement from Cogeco as well as access to Bell Canada’s FTTP network in the affected areas. In the Commission’s view, these options were sufficient for TekSavvy to continue to serve its customers.”
Cogeco argued similarly, adding it gave TekSavvy over seven months to migrate to other options, including using its own transport to connect to Cogeco’s infrastructure. It argued that it must decommission the older facilities because they are economically and technically unfeasible to maintain.
“Given that TekSavvy has not shown that Cogeco’s actions would prevent it from seeking or serving customers on high-speed networks, the Commission cannot conclude that there is a preference, disadvantage or discrimination in this case,” the CRTC said. “The Commission notes that cable carriers are upgrading their networks across Canada to maintain a quality of service and speeds that are comparable to those provided by ILECs over FTTP,” it continued. “This is a result of market competition, which ultimately benefits consumers with greater choice of high-quality networks.
“In this particular case, Cogeco also provided evidence demonstrating that these network upgrades are necessary. The technology being decommissioned by Cogeco is no longer supported by manufacturers, and, in some locations, Cogeco is legally required to relocate its network due to the expiration of rights of way.”
TekSavvy has been able to migrate some of the affected customers to Bell’s network but “was not able to retain most of the customers whose addresses were served by the decommissioned Windsor and Chatham sites,” which were decommissioned on April 1, the commission noted.
Andy Kaplan-Myrth, TekSavvy’s vice president of regulatory and carrier affairs, told Cartt that the telecom lost the “vast majority” of its customers in the decommissioning, and charges that the CRTC’s decision sets a bad precedent for all competitors.
“This is a huge problem,” Kaplan-Myrth told us. “Our concern is that cablecos will now decommission coax facilities whereever they install fibre and eliminate or reduce competition whereever they do that.”
He said now competitors are staring at the prospect of having to pay significantly more for access to telco fibre networks, which will increase prices for consumers.
“The CRTC seems to be looking at this decommissioning project in a bubble,” Kaplan-Myrth added, noting that the regulator had just set final fibre rates that competitors have argued are far too high for them to be competitive. These competitors are asking the CRTC to revisit the rates decision.
“We don’t have meaningful access to fibre in a way that replaces the market for cable service — it’s a completely different price point and it’s not as widely available,” Kaplan-Myrth said. “Our experience is we lose many of these customers [to incumbents] rather than staying with us and switching to fibre at a higher cost.”
Despite CRTC staff asking it to continue to preserve TekSavvy’s access, Cogeco moved forward with its previously-scheduled decommissioning in Windsor and Chatham on April 1 and in Burlington on June 2. The Kingston decommissioning is still coming up in September.
Eastlink also told the CRTC that it was decommissioning some of its older facilities in Nova Scotia despite a similar complaint filed by Fibernetics asking the regulator to maintain them.
The CRTC has yet to launch a proceeding on the decommissioning issue, which it promised to do back when it finalized the wholesale internet framework in the summer of 2024.
“They haven’t launched a process; they haven’t said what the rules are in the meantime; they left a regulatory vacuum, and Cogeco here and Eastlink in another case have taken advantage of that vacuum by decommissioning copper and basically challenging the CRTC to do something about it,” Kaplan-Myrth said. “And the fact that the CRTC declines to do anything about it here, declines to step in and address the competition problem is a huge problem for competitors.”
