Delete wireless price commitment in Broadband Fund: Bell

BCE Inc. is asking the CRTC to remove some of the pricing stipulations on mobile wireless offerings in its November call for applications to the regulator’s $750-million Broadband Fund. In a review and vary application filed two days before Christmas, Bell hones in on a specific category of the Broadband Fund’s call for applications, which it points out was not there in earlier versions of the application guide. The paragraph from the CRTC says that applicants to the fund must “commit to providing mobile wireless service packages at a rate no higher and with a capacity no lower that the ones proposed in its application, for a minimum of five years from the project completion date.” This five-year stipulation, Bell says in its Dec. 23, 2019 review and vary application, is a surprise given that it was not included either in the the regulator’s preliminary application guide consultations in February, nor in the application guide announced in June. “While a price commitment criterion may be justifiable in the context of fixed wireline and fixed wireless broadband Internet access services,” Bell writes in the new submission, “we submit that it is not desirable to apply this criterion to mobile wireless funding applications.” Because mobile wireless services are necessarily not tethered to a given area, Bell said, “it would therefore be very impractical and uneconomic to implement a mobile wireless retail plan limited to the small geography of a given project’s eligible hexagons.” The hexagon geographical criteria used by the CRTC for the fund survived a challenge by the SouthWestern Integrated Fibre Technology Inc. (SWIFT) back in February 2019, when the non-profit argued that the hexagon mapping criteria excluded too many poorly serviced rural communities. Apart from SWIFT’s long standing criticism of the hexagonal model, the attorney general’s office has also criticised the hexagons for not being precise enough, creating a barrier for applicants to effectively target their applications. Bell says that “the driving purpose for funding improved mobile wireless services is to extend the coverage of LTE, notably along major highways,” and that the pricing rules won’t apply in areas with no households. “But this means that the pricing commitment will apply, for major transportation projects, even when there is a single household in the relevant hexagons.” As an example, Bell points to a stretch of highway in northwestern Ontario near the town of Marathon. “Service maps indicate that it is within a cluster of five hexagons eligible for mobile wireless funding, yet the map data also shows that the associated 125 square kilometers contain at most only a dozen households,” Bell writes in the application. “It is ludicrous to create a pricing plan for a handful of households. And it is not credible that a wireless applicant's business case for a major highway extension will depend on whether a handful of households will pay pursuant to a customized plan or the rates generally applicable in the province,” Bell writes. What’s more, the company says, if a customer from a rural area moves away, they would take their cheaper, funded plan with them. “He or she would be able to "export" the customized pricing plan to the new location since, in contrast to a fixed service, a mobile wireless service's continued availability is not tied to the subscriber's permanent address,” Bell writes. “Should this subscriber benefit from a unique, crystallized roaming rate?” Instead, Bell argues, the company should be allowed to charge rates that compare with those on offer in major urban centres, which can change within a five year period. If the paragraph is not removed, Bell says in the application, “we will have to limit our participation to fixed broadband projects and mobile wireless projects dedicated to improving service along unserved highways where no households are present.” Comments on Bell’s application are due Jan. 22. — With reporting by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Delete wireless price commitment in Broadband Fund: Bell

News | January 3, 2020

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Delete wireless price commitment in Broadband Fund: Bell

News | January 3, 2020

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