CoopTel says Bell subsidiary doesn’t need 5 months to implement competition changes

Quebec-based telecom company CoopTel wants the CRTC to order a BCE Inc. subsidiary to demonstrate how there is a shortage of expertise that would justify delaying CoopTel’s entry into the low-density market of Upton, Que. Monday, Bell’s Maskatel filed a plan with the CRTC for establishing local competition in Upton after CoopTel notified the company of its intentions to compete in the area. In an intervention published Thursday, CoopTel told the commission that it does not believe that Maskatel, or its parent company, need five months to make the necessary technological changes. Maskatel told the CRTC that it would take five months, dating from when its plan is approved by the commission, to implement the necessary changes to LNP because it is working with “relatively old technology” (a Nortel DMS-10 switch) for which the expertise “is relatively limited,” and it would need to work with a third-party to implement the changes. It added that should those dates fall in the summer, it would take longer because of “other work” that is carried out by the network during that time. “We find the deadline proposed by Maskatel… is very long and that the justification for the latter seems a little weak,” CoopTel told the CRTC in its intervention, according to a translation. According to a 2006 CRTC decision, small incumbent local exchange carriers (SILECs) must file an implementation plan with the commission within 30 days of receiving an expression of interest from an LEC or carrier requesting to use competitor services within a SILEC’s territory. The implementation plan must include details like how customer transfer procedures would be managed and plans to include local number portability (LNP). CoopTel argued in its intervention that “it is hard to believe” that Bell would not be the third-party in question, and said that Bell used, and may still currently use, DMS-10 switches in its other low-density markets, making it “hard to believe that there is no expertise available.” CoopTel also told the CRTC that it found a 2011 letter addressed to the commission in which a Maskatel affiliate, Téléphone St-Éphrem, stated that its “DMS-10 switch is already equipped with software” “It seems to us then that between Bell and Maskatel, there must still be a certain expertise concerning DMS-10 and associated LNP,” CoopTel argued to the commission, according to a translation. “We therefore ask the commission to demand from Maskatel to demonstrate to you that there is really a shortage of expertise at both Maskatel, and its parent company Bell, which justifies such a long implementation period which unnecessarily delays, in our opinion, a strong competition in local telephony at the expense of the citizens.”

CoopTel says Bell subsidiary doesn’t need 5 months to implement competition changes

Brief | October 21, 2021

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CoopTel says Bell subsidiary doesn’t need 5 months to implement competition changes

Brief | October 21, 2021

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