Court dismisses Bell’s motion for stay in mobile-TV case

The Federal Court of Appeal has dismissed a motion by BCE Inc. to extend the deadline by which it has to comply with a CRTC ruling on its mobile-TV service. Bell had asked the court for a stay in its appeal of the commission’s Jan. 29 decision that said Bell could no longer exempt the streaming service from data charges. Bell had stated that if a stay is not granted, its wireless division would “suffer severe harm to its market share and reputation, and its customers will be severely inconvenienced.” The Canadian Network Operators Consortium argued that granting a stay would affect the “business case” of competing services that count against a user’s data cap. In the decision Monday, the court said that because the CRTC’s ruling on mobile-TV applies to both Bell and its competitors, its effect on competition will be neutral. The court noted that Rogers Communications Inc. stopped exempting its mobile-TV service from data caps and Quebecor Inc.’s Videotron has stated it would also do so. “Bell would therefore be the sole remaining provider of this service if the CRTC Decision were to be stayed. The is the opposite of irreparable harm in that granting the stay would confer a competitive advantage on Bell by allowing it to continue to offer a product on a basis which its competitors have ceased to offer as a result of proceedings before the CRTC,” the decision said. It noted both Rogers and Videotron had to deal with the same “reputational harm” caused by changing the pricing model, and that “it cannot be irreparable harm to confront the same difficulties as one’s competitors have confronted as result of a change in the regulatory environment.” The decision also said Bell had estimated it would cost $10 million to change its billing and accounting systems to implement the decision and noted $10 million is not “an amount that threatens corporate existence.”

Court dismisses Bell’s motion for stay in mobile-TV case

Brief | March 23, 2015

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Court dismisses Bell’s motion for stay in mobile-TV case

Brief | March 23, 2015

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