A missed teaching moment

My son tells me that the blog posts he enjoys the most are when I talk about the evolution of the industry, relating an important historical perspective to a current issue or trend. I like to think of those posts as teaching moments.

I was disappointed that a number of other commentators missed an important teaching moment in their discussions of the appeal of an important technical detail in the implementation timetable for the Wireless Code. Some were telling any news media that would listen that the appeal was filed “with hopes to delay safeguards until nearly 2017”.

A law professor selected excerpts from the transcripts of the proceeding to portray the appeal as a change of tune, completely missing the opportunity to discuss the formal legal opinion had been filed by SaskTel as part of the proceeding. But instead, it was SaskTel’s (and other carriers’) oral testimony on how most customers would be changed over to the code early that was presented as a “change of tune”.

The article quoted SaskTel at line 8922 of the transcripts (Volume 4). Just a few minutes earlier (line 8723), SaskTel was quite clear on the matter that is now in front of the Federal Court of Appeal:

Lastly, I would like to address the option outlined in the draft Code that the Code could apply to all existing customer contracts. With respect to that proposal, we were concerned that this might be retroactive ratemaking, and we have taken the liberty of obtaining a legal opinion which we will file on March 1.

Rogers also was pretty clear in how long it would take for all of its customers to be covered by the code. In response to a question by Commissioner Molnar, Rogers responded (at line 3965 of Volume 2):

… it occurred to me as I was hearing the question, it’s three years. I mean, to get every last customer who’s in — the person who signed the contract the day before the Code came into effect, it’s going to be three years later. Now, a lot will be doing an early hardware upgrade and getting a new contract, but every last one, the answer is three years.

Where is the change in tune? The carriers were pretty clear, from the outset, that they were not comfortable with the idea of applying the code in a manner that would relieve a subset of customers of their obligation to walk away without having fully amortized the cost of their device. The CRTC’s own numbers show that 1 in 5 Canadian consumers will be relieved of their contracts under the interpretation in the staff letter.

It might have been interesting to hear, for example, a law professor offer perspectives on the legal issue of the CRTC possibly overstepping its powers. After all, the CRTC was warned this would be an issue. It was, unfortunately, a missed teaching moment for some.

On this site, the issue of the implementation date was predicted, covered and we have even offered a possible resolution.

As always, your comments are welcome.

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