CRTC Orders Conformance to Signaling Standards

In an order issued January 26, 1998, the CRTC again sent a message to the Stentor companies that non-conformance to industry standards would be discouraged. In Telecom Order CRTC 98-40, the CRTC defined the CCS7 signaling message set that would permit open interconnection between local carriers and access to long distance carriers. Of greatest significance was the CRTC’s determination regarding the cost recovery for adapters to meet the standard interface.

Stentor had argued “that the costs should be borne by the service provider that benefits from the interface.”

To the contrary, the CRTC found “that where protocol conversion is required at a point of interconnection, the company that has to adapt to the common interface standard should be responsible for the costs. The Commission therefore finds that Stentor member companies must bear the costs of providing the calling name parameter to competitors at the point of interconnection in a format compatible with the GR-317 specification.”

In the past, Stentor had deployed non-standard implementations of signaling standards in order to speed products to market, leveraging its almost universal use of Nortel switches. Last summer, on August 5, 1997, in Telecom Order CRTC 97-1055, the CRTC found Stentor to have been sloppy in its notification process for defining terminal interface standards, thus providing Nortel with an advantage over Mitel in providing certain calling identification features.

The January 26, 1998 order continues in this theme – sending a consistent message that the CRTC expects to be followed in resolving interconnection issues.

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