Yesterday’s Notice of Consultation from the CRTC for the “Review of mobile wireless services” calls for an oral hearing beginning January 13, 2020. That is 319 days from now!
I was trying to think of when a telecommunications proceeding has had that lengthy a run up period.
The Wireless Code Notice of Consultation (2012-557) was issued October 11, 2012 and the hearing started just 109 days later starting on January 28, 2013.
The second Wireless Code notice (2016-293) was issued July 28, 2016 with its hearing opening 193 days later on February 6, 2017.
The original Long Distance proceeding started off with a mini-proceeding (1990-57) just to determine scope of the bigger proceeding. The preliminary process public notice (1990-57) was issued June 11, 1990 and it resulted in Notice 1990-73, issued August 3, 1990. The hearing itself began 308 days after the original scope proceeding, opening April 15, 1991.
So today’s #CRTC consultation is showing a timetable 11 days longer than the most generous view of the hearing that led to long distance competition in Canada. Has anyone seen a longer lag time between the opening of a CRTC telecom proceeding and the start of the oral hearing phase?
[It is interesting to note that the Long Distance Decision (1992-12) was released two years plus one day after the original public notice.]
Note that the Legislative Review Panel is expected to release its final report in January 2020. Will the proposed Policy Direction be in force? Will the post-election government be like-minded? Stay tuned!
Michael Connolly
MIDELCON Spectrum Consulting