Petitions to overturn recent CRTC decisions gaining steam

Days after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau won another minority government mandate, several petitions to the governor-in-council asking his cabinet to overturn recent CRTC decisions are gaining support. Wednesday was the deadline for submissions on Data on Tap Inc.'s petition to cabinet, which asked the Trudeau government to overturn an April CRTC decision to restrict mandated access to incumbent wireless networks to a limited number of regional operators with spectrum holdings, widely known as the mobile virtual network operators (MVNO) decision. In a submission filed with the department of Innovation, Science, and Economic Development (ISED) Wednesday, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) wrote that it supports Data On Tap's petition "in light of the commission’s failure to address the changed competitive circumstances resulting from the announced acquisition" by Rogers Communications Inc. of Shaw Communications Inc. The CRTC, PIAC argues, wrote its decision with Shaw in mind, and failed to revise the decision when it should have after the announcement of the acquisition. The decision "clearly was based on the assumption that Shaw would be uniquely placed to leverage the commission’s doublespeak definition of 'MVNO' to further strengthen Shaw’s position as a fourth quasi-national wireless carrier in additional provincial and regional wireless markets where Shaw did not yet possess network facilities," PIAC wrote. The decision, PIAC continued, "was therefore no longer supportable, even accepting the commission’s clear effort to shape the wireless market, once the Rogers-Shaw merger announcement was made. It was and is dead on arrival." In a separate submission, TekSavvy Solutions Inc. argued that the CRTC's decision failed to conform to a 2019 policy direction to the CRTC from ISED under former Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains, which sought to change CRTC focus from market forces to affordability and consumer interests. "By enabling competition from only facilities-based operators, this approach directly contradicts ISED’s policy direction to 'encourage all forms of competition and investment'. Service-based providers were excluded from the decision," TekSavvy wrote. "By enabling only limited facilities-based competition, the CRTC has removed an important enabler for innovation and service differentiation from the wireless marketplace." TekSavvy also took aim at what it says are the changed conditions following the Rogers-Shaw merger. "Even if the transaction is approved with the condition that Shaw’s wireless subsidiary Freedom Mobile is sold to another party, the threat that any of the facilities-based providers could one day be consolidated remains. Consequently, facilities-based competition alone does not provide any assurance of improved affordability, service, or innovation," the company wrote. TekSavvy had expressed an interest to branch into wireless service at the February 2020 wireless review hearings at the CRTC, and had applied to be part of the 3500 MHz spectrum auction. Following a separate May CRTC decision reversing wholesale third-party internet access rates back to 2016 levels, TekSavvy pulled out of the auction. Competitive Network Operators of Canada (CNOC), for its part, called on the CRTC to grant Data on Tap's petition, as well as fully rescind a 2006 policy direction to the CRTC under then-Innovation Minister Maxime Bernier which prioritized free market solutions. "By rescinding the 2006 Policy Direction and leaving in place the 2019 Policy Direction,9 this will eliminate ambiguity and wiggle-room in Canadian telecommunications policy," CNOC wrote. In a series of submissions on a set of three separate petitions on the CRTC's May wholesale rates decision, VMedia Inc. wrote that the "CRTC essentially stated that it got it wrong in the decision, but said it would not go to the trouble of showing how it got it wrong, as it would be too time-consuming and pointless in the face of the looming transition to a disaggregated fibre to the home framework." "Such reasoning, in the face of the fact that the decision was nearly four years in the making, is an insult," VMedia wrote, "to the efforts of the CRTC team and commissioners who came to the conclusion that the then-(and now) prevailing tariffs were unjust and unreasonable," as well as to the Canadian public "who are entitled to expect the CRTC to put their interests ahead of Incumbents, who are among the most profitable telcos and cablecos in the world." VMedia is a member of CNOC, which had filed one of the petitions. The intervention also calls out what VMedia says is evidence of bias on the part of CRTC chair Ian Scott, pointing to Scott's background as a telecom executive and his stated personal preference for facilities-based competition. — Reporting by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca and editing by Jenna Cocullo at jcocullo@thewirereport.ca

Petitions to overturn recent CRTC decisions gaining steam

News | September 23, 2021

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Petitions to overturn recent CRTC decisions gaining steam

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