We have no obligation to offer paper bills: telecoms

There is no legal or regulatory obligation on telecoms to offer paper bills, BCE Inc. said in a filing to the CRTC, responding to an application asking the regulator to ensure companies must provide a paper bill to customers who ask for one. In a June Part 1 application, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) said that the intent of a 2014 Telecom Act amendment forbidding telecoms from charging customers to receive paper bills was to ensure subscribers could access paper copies at no charge. “It entirely defeats the purpose of the enactment if it can be circumvented by refusing to offer paper bills at any price,” PIAC said. The group filed the application after Telus Corp.’s Kodoo discontinued paper billing and began charging customers $5 to receive a bill copy upon request. But Bell said in an intervention filed Friday that neither the Telecom Act nor the Wireless Code obliges wireless carriers to offer paper bills. “The former prohibits from charging for a paper bill, whereas section B.1(i) of the latter prescribes only that the wireless service contract and related documents be provided in paper format on request of the customer, but stops short of extending this requirement to bills,” it said. It also pointed to practices by Netflix Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., which don’t offer a paper billing option. “The results of our survey indicate that neither Netflix nor Amazon Prime contractually agrees to provide monthly bills … in paper format and that none is obliged to do so by law or regulation,” Bell said. The Canadian Network Operators’ Consortium (CNOC) also argued in its intervention that there are no existing regulatory obligations on telecoms to offer paper bills. “Accordingly, granting any of the relief sought in the Application will require the application of a new regulatory requirement related to the offering of paper bills,” it said. But if the CRTC does decide to put in place a new requirement, it should only apply to Kodoo or other wireless providers, CNOC argued. PIAC’s application focused only on Kodoo, it noted, and as such other telecoms may not be aware of the proceeding or that it might apply to them. That means “the record of this proceeding will be insufficient to support any broad reaching regulatory policies affecting other classes of ,” it said, adding that if the CRTC wants to review other paper billing practices by others, it should start a dedicated proceeding.

We have no obligation to offer paper bills: telecoms

Brief | July 10, 2018

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We have no obligation to offer paper bills: telecoms

Brief | July 10, 2018

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