Bell ‘heartened’ by CRTC chair statements, CEO says

BCE Inc.’s top man George Cope said the company likes new CRTC head Ian Scott’s approach to balancing consumer and business interests. “He said he’s working in the public interest,” Cope told an investors' conference hosted by CIBC Wednesday. “We’re heartened by that because the public interest speaks to consumer and business — that means everyone.” There have been few comments by industry since Scott was handed the helm for a five-year term in July. Cope's statements also come a week after Scott told The Wire Report in an interview, shortly after starting his term earlier this month, that the CRTC should not have a “particular slant.” “Do I want good relations with industry? Yes. Do I want good relationships with consumer groups? Yes. Individual consumers The commission shouldn’t have, in my view, a particular slant towards any of these things,” he said at the time. In his first address as commissioner this month, Scott said that the role of the CRTC is to regulate in the public interest. Critics, including consumer advocates, had wondered whether the former Telus employee would lean toward industry, in comparison to his predecessor, Jean-Pierre Blais, who was known to take a more consumer-focused approach. Blais did not re-apply for the top job. Cope’s comments prefaced an answer to a question about the CRTC’s recent decision to accelerate the disaggregated regime — which will allow smaller companies to lease fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) access from the incumbents — by setting interim rates for that access. On that question, Cope would only say that he doesn’t think smaller providers “should be riding on our network,” but now that the rules say they can, the company would wait to see what the final price is. The CRTC’s August decision set Bell’s fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) interim rate at $121.79, a figure that some have said is still too prohibitive for smaller players to compete meaningfully. At the same time, Cogeco Communications Inc. head Louis Audet told CIBC’s Robert Bek that he doesn’t think there’s a lot of demand yet for the top speeds available through fibre-to-the-home. “When you’re delivering 10 gigabits per second symmetrical, what are you going to need it for? That is far from obvious,” Audet said. Cogeco previously said that its Docsis 3.0 technology can deliver gigabit speeds, with future implementation of Docsis 3.1 allowing it to achieve 10 gigabits per second. “The sweet spot right now is 40 megabits per second,” Audet said, adding that’s where a portion of his customers are. “So when you contemplate one gigabit or 10 gigabits, the distance is huge.” The conference opened up the discussion to other trends, including goings-on in the high-flying wireless world, which has seen industry records in postpaid churn, subscriber growth and higher speeds on existing technology. The LTE standard, for example, has seen ever-higher advances, most recently by Telus Corp., which announced Wednesday that it nearly reached gigabit speeds on an LTE-Advanced test. The new speeds advance the thesis that there is yet life in 4G LTE, which experts have previously told The Wire Report was pushing the allure of 5G to the sidelines for the time being. On Wednesday, Rogers Communications Inc.’s CEO Joe Natale told Bek that the technology is maturing and spectrum efficiency is higher now to allow for further investment in 4G. He mentioned that the company is currently working toward advancing LTE with technologies including four-carrier aggregation — or the amalgamation of spectrum for capacity and speed increases — which Bell has already deployed. “I think now is a good time to step up the investment in wireless and take the next step towards 4.5G,” Natale said. “Then you’ll see us kind of stay in that zone because the free cash flow" growth opportunities make it worthy of that investment. — With reporting by Ahmad Hathout at ahathout@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Bell ‘heartened’ by CRTC chair statements, CEO says

News | September 27, 2017

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Bell ‘heartened’ by CRTC chair statements, CEO says

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