CRTC lifts 100 Mbps wholesale internet speed cap – for now

The CRTC has quietly informed wholesale-based internet service providers they will be able to continue offering speeds faster than 100 Mbps under the old aggregated wholesale regime, a measure small ISPs have been clamouring for months. The speed cap will remain lifted until the CRTC makes its final decision on an application by the Canadian Network Operators Consortium (CNOC) asking it to reconsider the disaggregated regime for wholesale internet it instituted in 2015. The CRTC hasn’t yet decided what the final rates for that wholesale regime will be. The issue for the small ISPs CNOC represents was that -- until Wednesday’s decision to lift the cap -- once the CRTC issued the final rates, wholesale-based ISPs would be prohibited from offering customers speeds of 100 Mbps download or faster using the old, aggregated regime. That rule was a measure meant to incentivize small ISPs to move to the 2015 disaggregated regime. “Once the … rates are made final, we no longer have to worry that we’ll be held back from providing speeds that Canadians are already used to buying today,” Matt Stein, CNOC chair and CEO of Distributel Communications Ltd., said in a phone interview. If the speed cap hadn’t been lifted, it would have effectively meant Canadians would "no longer be able to buy speeds above 100 from competitors” because "nobody has made disaggregated-type services available yet," he said. That would have had a “big impact” on those small ISPs, Stein said. He noted in a follow-up email that CRTC data shows that 25.8 per cent of Canadians in 2017 were buying internet speeds at or above 100 Mbps -- up from 15.8 per cent a year earlier and eight per cent in 2015. He said CNOC data, and projections based on that rate of growth, indicate more than a third of Canadians who are now signing up for internet services are subscribing to speeds above 100 Mbps. The CRTC sent the decision in a letter from its secretary general to all parties involved in CNOC’s Part 1 application on Wednesday, including large telecoms and other intervenors. As of late Thursday afternoon, it had not been posted to its website, and spokespeople did not respond to questions about the reason for the delay. In the decision, the CRTC said it is "concerned that implementing the Speed Cap as planned could prove disruptive for consumers in a growing segment of the retail Internet services market,” and that under the "present circumstance, the public interest rests with the outcome with the lowest potential disruption for consumers, which would be to suspend the implementation of the Speed Cap until the Commission makes final determinations on the Application.” CNOC filed its review-and-vary application of the 2015 decision implementing the disaggregated wholesale regime in late 2018, saying it was too expensive and unworkable. Stein said at the time that raising or lifting the cap would buy the small ISPs time to deal with the other elements of the regime. CNOC has been warning that “many” ISPs could shut down as a result of problems with the disaggregated system, while TekSavvy Solutions Inc. recently registered to lobby for getting rid of the speed cap. Large ISPs have opposed that request, saying granting it would eliminate the motivation for providers to adopt the 2015 regime. “This decision means that we can continue to sell high speed services where we already have access to them, even if the CRTC goes ahead and finalizes a disaggregated regime that turns out to be totally unworkable for us,” TekSavvy’s vice-president of regulatory affairs, Andy Kaplan-Myrth, said in an email. The CRTC’s decision outlined that CNOC’s request actually didn’t meet the test the regulator normally uses when determining whether to issue interim relief, known as the RJR-MacDonald criteria. Despite that, it said, the "issues raised in this request are unique and significant enough that they warrant further consideration and a departure from the Commission’s general practice.” — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Kyle Duggan at kduggan@thewirereport.ca

CRTC lifts 100 Mbps wholesale internet speed cap – for now

News | March 21, 2019

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CRTC lifts 100 Mbps wholesale internet speed cap – for now

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