CRTC should step in to ensure timely transition to more IP services, providers say

Incumbent “corporate inertia” is slowing the pace of a national conversion to Internet-based voice communications and the CRTC must step in to ensure Canadian technologies don’t fall behind, wireless service providers told CRTC commissioners at a hearing on interconnection issues. Over the final two days of opening remarks Wednesday and Thursday, Globalive Communications Corp., Shaw Communications Inc., Public Mobile Inc., and Mobilicity told commissioners that the incumbent telcos are unfairly resisting the global move towards IP communications. The result is that the IP-based carriers pay up to 26 times as much as other telcos for connecting their customers’ signals to callers on other networks and that the implementation of technologies with “the potential to change the way customers view telecommunications” are stunted, they said. “The commission must take steps to ensure that the benefits of IP interconnection become broadly available to consumers at the earliest opportunity,” Edward Antecol, vice-president of regulatory and carrier relations for Globalive subsidiaries Yak and Wind Mobile, said Wednesday. “There is no other single change that has as much potential to drive innovation, improve network efficiency and lower costs.” Some of those technological advances include the use of multimedia calling features and the synchronization of data streams to a voice call, Antecol said. For now, that technology essentially means high quality video-calling, Dave Dykstra, Shaw’s director of telecommunications systems, said Thursday. “It is more than just voice. It’s the next generation of voice, which converges different services with it. So as we move to that IP world, it’s high-quality video calling,” Dykstra told the commission. “There’s video-calling on Apple iPods and iPhones today. We’d like to see where we extend that, so I can do that from my home and it’s not Skype quality, it’s full-quality voice and full quality video ... that’s what we see moving forward.” Under the existing regulatory regime, telcos are required to offer competitors interconnections over traditional, circuit-switched formats, but not over IP platforms. This forces many IP-based providers to negotiate for interconnection arrangements in which they typically assume the cost of converting their signals to a format compatible with the incumbents’ circuit-switched technology. That conversion negates the functions that make IP video-calling possible. It also gives the incumbents considerable leverage in negotiations, which can be used to delay a new provider’s entrance into a marketplace, the IP providers argued. “I’m not trying to say there’s some conspiracy there to keep us out of the market,” Jean Brazeau, Shaw’s senior vice-president of regulatory affairs, said Thursday. “I think it’s more corporate inertia than anything else. We just need to move beyond that.” He suggested that the current regime seems to provide significant competitive advantages to circuit-switched systems and fails to live up to the commission’s technological neutrality standards. Also speaking before the commission Thursday, Brian O’Shaughnessy, Public Mobile’s chief technology officer and vice-president of networks, said 53 per cent of Canadian wireless and wireline customers are already IP-enabled. This totals 23.5 million subscribers, he said. “With the majority of traffic already being IP-enabled, it is more costly and less efficient for the industry as a whole to convert such traffic ... at the point of interconnection,” O’Shaughnessy said. “Traffic should be handled through IP interconnection. To do otherwise would mean that carriers, and ultimately consumers, unnecessarily incur the costs of operating and maintaining dual architectures.” Several of the parties arguing on behalf of regulatory intervention over four days of hearings this week asked the commission to establish a tariff that would define what IP-based providers would pay telcos for interconnections. But several companies want to ensure that carriers can work outside the tariff regime when possible through mutually beneficial commercial agreements. “The commission asked whether it should mandate IP-based network interconnection and establish basic rules or if it should be commercially driven,” Globalive’s Antecol said. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be all-or-nothing.” The issue of IP communications technology was hotly contested throughout the commission's four days of hearings this week. On Monday, representatives from incumbents Bell Canada Enterprises Inc., SaskTel, and Telus Communications Co. agreed that IP-based technologies are the way of the future but argued that the commission should not force them to adopt the technologies until they were ready to do so. They said it is unfair to saddle them with IP-based interconnection costs that would not benefit their customers directly. SaskTel said such costs would ultimately be passed on to its customers. During hearings Tuesday, MTS Allstream took a similar view, arguing that it is too early in the general development and implementation of the technology to mandate IP-to-IP interconnections. Rogers Communications Inc. and Eastlink also argued in favour of regulatory intervention, as did Cogeco Cable Inc. Quebecor Media Inc. (QMI) suggested that the commission may eventually have to step in to regulate IP interconnection, but not necessarily at this time. The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) took a similar approach Wednesday afternoon, calling for a working panel to monitor the growth of IP networks and interconnections to advise the commission of whether it sees regulation as necessary within the next 30 months. “While we believe the commission should encourage IP-to-IP interconnection for those parties who mutually desire it, we do not believe the public interest is served at this time by mandating ,” Gerry Wall, president of Wall Communications Inc., said on PIAC’s behalf. The hearings resume Monday and Tuesday next week with oral rebuttals. nkyonka@thewirereport.ca

CRTC should step in to ensure timely transition to more IP services, providers say

News | October 27, 2011

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