Wholesale debate moves to transport in CRTC rural broadband consult

The familiar argument over wholesale access has made its way to a CRTC consultation on how to remove barriers to rural broadband rollouts, with smaller providers arguing the regulator should mandate and regulate access to transport networks. The CRTC currently only requires incumbents to make the access portion of the network — the “last mile” that connects homes and businesses to an ISP — available for wholesale. The rest of the network, which connects telco central offices or cableco head ends to each other and the internet, is considered the transport portion of the network, which with the exception of BCE Inc.’s Northwestel is not subject to wholesale rules. That means while incumbents must allow wholesale-based ISPs to connect to their networks to serve customers at the end of their existing last-mile infrastructure, there are no rules stipulating that they have to let other ISPs connect to the transport portion to allow the ISP buying wholesale service to build their own access infrastructure in areas that are currently lacking it, as is the case in underserved portions of rural Canada. In areas where providers could use existing incumbent transport infrastructure to extend their networks, rural-focused ISP Xplornet Communications Inc. said in its intervention to the proceeding, “it is critical that providers be able to obtain wholesale access to these facilities in an affordable and timely manner.” The monthly rates for those wholesale services “must be reasonable and predictable, as must non-recurring, one-time charges. Excessive fees can jeopardize the viability of a rural deployment and prevent investments to deliver technological and capacity upgrades.” Wholesale-based provider TekSavvy Solutions Inc. called on the CRTC to mandate access to transport facilities and regulate the rates. It also said there is a problem when it comes to finding out where transport facilities are, and that the CRTC should order incumbents to make that information available. “Parties seeking transport service also struggle with discoverability of supply conditions. No reliable detailed maps of incumbent or third-party transport facilities are readily available. Due to this problem, parties seeking transport services have no visibility into how much supply exists, the identity of the suppliers and the location of potential break- out points,” TekSavvy said. Nunavut-based provider SSI Micro Inc. argued in its intervention that “in remote and underserved regions of Canada, the bottleneck to broadband service is transport, not the access networks.” It said the CRTC should “establish a rebuttable presumption that transport services in underserved areas must be provided on a wholesale basis and must be accessible to competitors through an open gateway facility. The rebuttable presumption should also extend to the rates to be charged for the wholesale service.” Rural broadband funding programs from the CRTC and from the federal government include stipulations that projects built using those funds have an open access component, meaning that once completed, projects have to provide wholesale and retail access, but those open access rules don’t apply to already existing transport infrastructure. Bell argued in its intervention that transport services that terminate in rural and remote areas are already “vigorously competitive.” “We regularly compete for the business of large retail customers who need to connect remote areas with urban centers (such as those in the mining, banking and forestry sectors) and of local wholesale providers (such as regional rural Internet providers),” Bell said. “There is no evidence that would support a reversal of the Commission's decisions to forbear from fibre-based transport services.” Telus Corp. also said it currently sells access to its transport services, and argued that regulating the rates of that transport won’t do anything to improve rural broadband availability, and will actually worsen the problem. “Like all departures from facilities-based competition, regulating the price of transport will disincentivize the use of private capital for new builds. This means that the government will need to spend more public money to provide connectivity in underserved areas,” it said. Another barrier identified by some intervenors was access to infrastructure. While the CRTC doesn’t currently oversee access to passive infrastructure owned by, for example, hydro companies — something there have been many calls to change — some interventions called for the CRTC to strengthen rules around access to telco infrastructure. While telcos, or incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs), currently have “a regulatory obligation to allow competitors to attach to their support structures, including poles and strand,” cableco Rogers Communications Inc. pointed out, they are required do so “only where there is ‘spare capacity’ on those support structures, i.e., where the space is not in use or required for the ILEC’s anticipated future use.” But there are no rules limiting how long ILECs can hold onto this capacity, Rogers said. “The unlimited ability of the ILECs to reserve capacity for themselves has proven to be a key obstacle to network deployment by competitors,” it said. “In Rogers’ experience, this loophole has resulted in cases of exaggerated or unrealistic assertions of ‘future use’.” It said that while the CRTC “does not currently have jurisdiction to address the terms and conditions of support structure access imposed by electrical utilities, the Commission can and should take immediate steps to address current barriers to timely and cost-effective access to ILEC poles.” Cableco Cogeco Inc. said there should be a six-month limit on how long telcos can take to grant access to their support structures. It said when it comes to its currently outstanding requests, it has been waiting for more than six months in 71 per cent of cases and more than a year in 43.9 per cent of cases. Cogeco regulatory affairs senior director Leonard Eichel also brought up support structure access during an appearance at the House industry committee Thursday evening, at which Xplornet’s chief legal and regulatory officer C.J. Prudham said funding, spectrum, key infrastructure access and cooperation are the four key things required for rural broadband connectivity to be achieved. — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Adam Langenberg at alangenberg@thewirereport.ca

Wholesale debate moves to transport in CRTC rural broadband consult

News | May 15, 2020

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Wholesale debate moves to transport in CRTC rural broadband consult

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