AT&T Canada and Edmonton settle specific dispute, but access issue unresolved

A dispute between AT&T Canada Corp. and the City of Edmonton on municipal access has been settled without the battle going to the CRTC. This is the latest in a series of skirmishes that the telco has resolved before the commission stepped in. The CLEC had filed a Part VII application on August 9 asking the CRTC to impose the provisions of Decision 2001-23, the Ledcor ruling, on the Alberta capital. Even though the Ledcor judgement was limited to the City of Vancouver (NL, Jan. 29/01), it has been cited by several telcos in their attempts to resolve fights with municipalities. AT&T Canada had a municipal access agreement with Edmonton that ran from 1997 until last May. Because many of the terms and conditions in the rights-of-way pact contravened Ledcor, the CLEC chose not to renew. But a major customer wanted a transmission line to its building in Edmonton. The telco applied for an installation permit but found the terms demanded by the City to be excessive. Because city council was unlikely to deal with the matter until mid-September, AT&T Canada filed its Part VII. That spurred the two sides to negotiate a settlement. AT&T Canada has been at the forefront of protecting its turf in municipal access disputes. A battle with the City of Surrey B.C. was settled earlier this year (NL, Dec. 5/01). Previous to that, Telus Communications Inc. negotiated a deal with the firm that operates New Westminster's Pattullo Bridge. "It's normally we're negotiating, trying to reach the Ledcor terms," Teresa Griffin-Muir, AT&T Canada's VP regulatory affairs, tells Network Letter. "And if we seem not to be reaching an agreement on those terms we've done a Part VII." That usually results in a solution, she reports. The system is not perfect, however. Still unresolved is a dispute between AT&T Canada and the City of Toronto (NL, June 18/01). That process resulted in the CRTC issuing Public Notice 2001-99 on municipal access. An attempt by the City of Toronto to delete its contract with AT&T Canada from the public record was rejected by the commission (NL, Dec. 18/01). The CRTC has yet to rule on the proceedings arising from the public notice. The ongoing process was cited by the regulator earlier this month as the main reason for suspending AT&T Canada's Part VII application against the City of Calgary - Telecom Decision 2002-46 (NL Update, Aug. 19/02). The application seeks to apply the terms of the Ledcor decision to AT&T Canada's existing access agreement with the city (NL, July 15/02). The Federal Court of Appeal has scheduled a two-day hearing on suits involving the telco and several municipalities for October 29.

AT&T Canada and Edmonton settle specific dispute, but access issue unresolved

News | August 27, 2002

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