Big Three united in call for scrapping CRTC pricing guarantee

BCE Inc.’s push for the CRTC to remove a provision that would require wireless providers seeking funding under the $750-million Broadband Fund to make a pricing commitment has won the backing of Canada’s remaining Big Three providers. Telus Corp. and Rogers Communications Inc. both filed interventions to Bell’s Dec. 23 review and vary application to the CRTC’s application guide for the rural connectivity fund, supporting Bell’s call for a pricing guarantee to be deleted. The guide requires applicants to the fund, to “commit to providing mobile wireless service packages at a rate no higher and with a capacity no lower that the ones proposed in its application, for a minimum of five years from the project completion date.” In its intervention, Telus agrees with Bell that offering the pricing commitment would be “technically difficult” and “onerous”, requiring training of technical and sales staff, changes to IT systems and the creation of separate mobile wireless plans to serve hexagons with “potentially very small groups of people.” The CRTC uses a hexagon geographical criteria for the fund. The criteria survived a challenge by the SouthWestern Integrated Fibre Technology Inc. (SWIFT) in February 2019, when the non-profit argued that it excluded too many poorly serviced rural communities. In its review-and-vary application in December, Bell said it would limit its mobile wireless applications to “projects dedicated to improving service along unserved highways where no households are present” unless the commitment was deleted so rates were able to be altered. Telus stopped short of saying it would also limit its applications, but said the price commitment could compromise the business case to build networks in unserved and underserved areas, even with funding from the Broadband Fund. “While it is too early to say categorically that Telus will not make an application funding of such projects, onerous requirements will certainly be taken into account as Telus structures the projects for which it will seek funding,” the intervention states. The intervention says the CRTC should determine that the price commitment does not apply to projects intended to create mobile coverage on major highways, if it decided to keep it in place at all. Telus also claimed the CRTC had made an error of law by failing to give major providers an opportunity to comment on the five-year pricing stipulation, because there had been “no mention” of it in the regulator’s preliminary application guide consultations in February, or in its application guide announced in June. “The Commission can remedy that error of law by now considering the merits of whether this requirement should have been included in the application guide,” Telus’ intervention states. In a separate intervention, Rogers said Bell’s proposed move to delete the pricing commitment would enable mobile wireless service providers to “more fully participate” in the fund. Meanwhile, smaller wireless provider SSI Micro Ltd. also lodged an intervention calling on Bell’s review-and-vary application to be dismissed, arguing it had failed to demonstrate that the CRTC’s ruling was flawed. It accused Bell of having a “sense of entitlement” to receive money from the Broadband Fund. “If Bell determines that it cannot make the commitments, including as to pricing, required of applicants to the fund, then it should definitely abstain from applying,” SSI Micro said in its intervention. “Likewise if its objective is to subvert the objective of the fund so as to siphon available money away from projects that will introduce wireless service to unserved and underserved hexagons, towards projects that will subsidize already established firms to improve their on value proposition by boosting highway coverage, then it should stay away.” The fund was first announced in 2016 and will provide $750 million over five years to projects in hard-to-reach communities. The CRTC is set to announce the results of the application process this year. — With reporting by Adam Langenberg at alangenberg@thewirereport.ca and editing by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca

Big Three united in call for scrapping CRTC pricing guarantee

News | January 23, 2020

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Big Three united in call for scrapping CRTC pricing guarantee

News | January 23, 2020

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