Rogers ordered to keep serving new TekSavvy customers on FTTP

The CRTC has told Rogers Communications Inc. it has to keep providing wholesale service for new customers of TekSavvy Solutions Inc. in a building with fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) infrastructure. Last year, Rogers upgraded its network in a Toronto condo building from a hybrid fibre-coaxial cable to an “an optical-fibre-based solution,” and removed the coaxial cable at the request of the property manager, the CRTC said in a decision Wednesday. Rogers informed Teksavvy that it would migrate its customers to the new fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) infrastructure at the current rates, but that TekSavvy couldn’t add new customers until the CRTC’s policy on wholesale access to FTTH networks comes into effect. The CRTC said that in the process leading to that wholesale policy “the incumbent carriers generally assured the Commission that they had no intention of removing existing copper or coaxial access facilities when installing entirely fibre access facilities. Because of this assurance, the Commission did not specifically address what regulatory obligations, if any, should apply when incumbent carriers remove copper or coaxial access facilities.” However, it did determine in that decision that “to ensure that wholesale access to the facilities required to provision downstream retail Internet services is always provided for” the removal of the obligation to provide access through the current wholesale regime and the introduction of the new regime “would be subject to a transition plan.” The commission said that by denying wholesale providers the ability to add new customers in the condo building, Rogers “would be conferring upon itself an undue preference and subjecting competitors to an undue disadvantage,” since it would be only company able to add new customers until the new regime comes into effect. It ordered Rogers to keep providing TekSavvy and other small ISPs with wholesale access for both current and new customers at the current tariffs over the new FTTP facilities. The CRTC added that “in cases where incumbent carriers undertake network upgrades resulting in the installation of FTTP access facilities and the removal of copper or coaxial access facilities over which competitors provide service to end-users, such actions may, subject to a full examination of the facts and submissions, be in violation of subsection 27(2) of the Telecommunications Act.”

Rogers ordered to keep serving new TekSavvy customers on FTTP

Brief | November 9, 2016

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Rogers ordered to keep serving new TekSavvy customers on FTTP

Brief | November 9, 2016

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