Tag: wholesale rates

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Mobile Syrup

CRTC cuts wholesale rates 10 percent, launches review of internet competition

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has announced the launch of a consultation on the internet service market in a bid to “increase competition, create more choice and lower prices.”

“The CRTC recognizes its current approach is not meeting its objective of encouraging more competition in the Internet services market,” reads a news release shared by the CRTC.

The commission says it will re-examine the wholesale rates competitors pay to large telecom companies to access their networks. While it carries out the review, the CRTC says it’s imposing an immediate 10 percent reduction on some wholesale rates.

As a quick refresher, in 2021, the CRTC reversed its 2019 decision on wholesale rates and went with the higher interim wholesale rates. Since then, Canada has seen several smaller ISPs gobbled up by large telecom players, including Oxio, Start.ca and more.

Moreover, the CRTC will examine “on an expedited basis” whether telecom companies should provide access to their fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) networks to competitors.

The CRTC welcomes Canadians to participate by sharing comments on the question of mandating access to FTTH until April 24th, 2023. Those interested in doing so can fill out this online form, write to the Secretary General of the CRTC or send a fax. More details on this can be found in the CRTC news release.

In other internet pricing news, independent ISP TekSavvy asked the CRTC to investigate Rogers’ deal with Vidéotron, alleging Rogers’ offer to lease its broadband network with Vidéotron at a discounted price as part of the Freedom Mobile transfer and the Shaw merger. TekSavvy argues the deal violated the Telecommunications Act — Rogers claims the deal isn’t “preferential.”

Source: CRTC

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Mobile Syrup

CRTC chair Ian Scott speaks on controversial meeting with Bell CEO for the first time

Calls to resign have inundated Ian Scott for years. They intensified when he met with Bell Media CEO Mirko Bibic at an Ottawa pub in December 2019.

The meeting came months after the August 2019 decision by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), chaired by Scott, that internet rates were high and had to go down. But soon after, the CRTC backtracked after receiving appeals from larger telecom companies. This led many to accuse the broadcast and communications watchdog of bias.

Scott’s meeting with Bibic, who was the company’s chief operating officer at the time, only added fuel to the fire.

TekSavvy and VMedia were two companies that called on Scott to resign, sighting Scott’s bias. They pointed out Scott previously worked as a lobbyist for Telus.

More than two years after the meeting, Scott has spoken out defending his actions.

“The simple answer is that nothing inappropriate was done,” he told the Toronto Star in an interview. “I went for a beer with someone I have known for years….And it ended up he chose to address a broadcasting issue a little of what Bell might be doing in the future.”

Scott told the publication Bibic recorded the conversation in the lobbyist registration because the two talked about business, and it remained on his agenda. “No rule was ever broken.”

Speaking on the CRTC’s decision to reverse the ruling on wholesale rates, Scott said he was just one of nine votes on the panel, and he holds no additional weight as the chair.

“We have a process that allows parties who believe we have made a mistake to apply for a review. That’s what happened. They said we got it wrong. We went back and redid our analysis, and we found errors. We corrected the errors, which resulted in different rates,” Scott told The Star.

The ruling, which means smaller providers have to pay millions to larger telecom companies to access their network, is currently being appealed.

Source: Toronto Star

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Mobile Syrup

Federal court greenlights TekSavvy’s appeal of CRTC wholesale rates ruling

The Federal Court of Appeal will hear TekSavvy’s case against the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)’s decision to not lower wholesale internet rates after previously announcing it would.

The court made the announcement on September 15th, according to The Globe and Mail, though a date for the hearing is not yet listed on the Federal Court of Appeal’s website.

TekSavvy has been advocating for months, both through the legal system and in multiple public statements, against the CRTC’s controversial ruling in May 2021 that it would be backtracking on its decision to impose new regulations on wholesale internet rates in Canada.

For context, wholesale rates are the fees that smaller internet service providers — like TekSavvy — must pay in order to access the country’s physical internet network (think wires and lines).

Due to the high initial cost of building the infrastructure, that network is predominantly owned and operated by a trio of telecommunication and media corporations: Bell, Rogers and Telus.

The CRTC had planned on lowering the wholesale rates, but, following legal pressure from several of Canada’s larger carrier companies, decided not to go through with it, claiming that its original findings — i.e. that the rates were grossly inflated — contained errors.

TekSavvy has since blamed the CRTC’s reversed decision for a $3 price increase to its own services, and launched an online petition courting voter support.

The wholesale rates decision has very much become an election issue.

The Conservative Party of Canada is promising to reduce the CRTC’s regulatory powers and called for more competition in Canada’s ISP market.

Meanwhile, the New Democratic Party said it would work with the CRTC to reverse the wholesale rate ruling.

Source: The Globe and Mail