Bell tells court cabinet decision on wholesale ‘vindicates’ its concerns

BCE Inc. and a coalition of cable companies have submitted letters to the Federal Court of Appeal arguing that the Aug. 15 statement from Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains that the federal government thinks that the CRTC's wholesale internet rates are too low shows that the government agrees with arguments put forward by the incumbent telecom companies to the court proceeding. The cabinet decision, Bell argues in its Thursday letter to the court, agrees that the CRTC’s decision to lower wholesale rates last year “is not consistent with the objectives set out under the Act and does not appropriately balance those objectives," and "vindicates the concerns" Bell raised throughout the court appeal of those rates. The incumbent telecom companies have consistently argued that the CRTC's wholesale rates decision from August 2019 would harm their ability to invest in network infrastructure. In Bell's letter, the company argues that Bains' statement confirms the company's argument -- offered in a two day hearing back in June -- that the CRTC failed to follow a 2006 Maxime Bernier-era policy direction advising the regulator to “rely on market forces to the maximum extent feasible as the means of achieving the telecommunications policy objectives.” Bell argues, in particular, that the retroactive payments to smaller wholesale internet service providers (ISPs) mandated by the CRTC fail to balance the needs of network investments, and that the regulator did not meet its "obligations of proportionality, efficiency and neutrality." A letter from Rogers Communications Inc., Quebecor Inc., Shaw Communications Inc. and Bragg Communications Inc. filed with the court Thursday also argues that the cabinet decision is "is consistent with the Cable Carriers’ arguments in these Appeals that the CRTC committed an error of jurisdiction by disregarding improperly important policy objectives that it was required to consider," pointing as well to the 2006 policy directive. Meanwhile elsewhere in the fallout from the cabinet decision, TekSavvy Solutions Inc., Start.ca, Distributel Communications Ltd., and Altima Telecom all announced this week that they would be increasing their rates following the cabinet decision. Distributel announced Thursday that customers should expect to see a $5 to $10 surcharge added to their monthly bills, a move which CEO and Competitive Network Operators of Canada (CNOC) president Matt Stein said was a measure designed to hold the company over until the lower rates arrive, which he said he still expects. "We have had to update our pricing and options to reflect the reality that it has been over a year that we've been paying the old rates while offering our services modeled on the new rates which have yet to materialize," Start.ca CEO Peter Rocca said in a Wednesday statement. All in all, Stein said he believes some 500,000 Canadians have seen their internet rates increase following what he called the "uncertainty" introduced by the cabinet decision. Bell argued the TekSavvy price increase is evidence that the ISP is backing off an argument that the 2019 policy directive mandates the CRTC confirm the rates. In increasing its rates, TekSavvy "has since admitted that a change in the rates is now highly likely," Bell said in the letter, citing a TekSavvy press release that says the cabinet decision "effectively directed the CRTC to increase wholesale rates." Respondents in the wholesale appeal will now have another three days to file their responses to the letters from Bell and the cable carriers in the wholesale appeal. — Reporting by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Bell tells court cabinet decision on wholesale ‘vindicates’ its concerns

News | August 20, 2020

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Bell tells court cabinet decision on wholesale ‘vindicates’ its concerns

News | August 20, 2020

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