The Telecom Act requires that regulated rates be just and reasonable. These terms go back more than a century to the days when telecommunications was regulated under the Railway Act. What do you do when you believe that some decisions made by the CRTC are neither just nor reasonable?
You ask them to take another look.
Telus has filed a review and vary application, asking the CRTC to have a fresh look at the retroactive adjustment of rates for interconnection that were set out in Decisions 2006-22, 2006-23 and 2006-42.
The Decisions were issued in April and June of 2006, but apply to rates charged to competitors in the period as far back as 2000.
Many of these competitors don’t exist any more. Others have gone through corporate changes, like Call-Net being acquired by Rogers, Allstream (it was called AT&T; Canada at the time of the original filing) linking with MTS and GT hooking up with Bell. The fiscal books for the period in question have been closed and audited by all of the companies long, long ago.
Further, TELUS claims that after all this time, the CRTC got the rates wrong in any case. After all that time, the CRTC ignored TELUS-specific cost information and imposed the costs that were submitted by other ILECs.
This one will be interesting to watch.