In a posting at the time the Decision was released, we followed up on a Mark Evans summary of 4 areas of concern in the CRTC’s original Decision. At that time, we looked at
- The proposed 25% threshold
- The time lag to deregulate
- Local competition not including mobile wireless
- The geographic area definitions
The mobile issue has been getting re-examined since June. The 25% criteria is now under review. The time lag issue can be dealt with fresh data, which the ILECs have been invited to submit.
That leaves the matter of the definitions of geographic areas. The issue is how big an area to apply the 25% criteria.
As we wrote in April:
the CRTC had to pick a reasonable geographic territory in which to measure the competitor entry. They picked Statistics Canada’s census areas. Why? Why not. It lets the CRTC point to another government agency. But it does introduce yet another regional separation into telephonic regulatory lexicon. We already have wire centres, exchanges, local calling, LIR, provinces, operating territories, etc. Again the issue of symmetry arises: why use something as broad as a census area when competitors enter the market exchange by exchange. While on one hand the CRTC argues that “there are economic, social and practical factors that will allow locations to be aggregated into a larger geographic area”, does the petrochemical driven economy of Sarnia really have anything more than an Area Code in common with Chatham? Given the alignment of CMAs in Ontario, we could see forbearance approved sooner in Guelph, Barrie and Oshawa than in Toronto, only because of closer alignment of the CMA to exchanges.
It is somewhat ironic that the CRTC chose Statistics Canada CMA boundaries. It was Stats Can’s release of its residential telephone survey that first poked holes in the Local Forbearance Decision, the very day it was released.
Is it going to take a third review of 2006-15 or will the CRTC expand the scope of its current review to examine geography as well?