Why Videotron and not Rogers? Why MTS Allstream and not Bell and TELUS?
Here are some thoughts.
Videotron has been making solid gains with its local phone service product and would have been an immediate loser if Bell had received the flexibility to aggressively price its own VoIP services to market, rather than within a regulated band. So Videotron gained the most last week.
Rogers, which has been selling a higher priced voice package, was likely less concerned about Bell launching a price war in Ontario. On the other hand, Rogers has to be concerned about the ongoing regulatory uncertainty associated with yet another review of the Local forbearance framework, that was triggered by PN 2006-12, launched coincidentally with the reconsideration Decision.
Bell and TELUS did not get what they wanted from the VoIP reconsideration and it is hard to tell if the CRTC will change (some would say ‘fix’) local forbearance enough to satisfy the big ILECs. While the Commission is reassessing the percentage thresholds, it is not looking at the geographic area boundaries, which in some cases make it mathematically impossible to get regulatory relief.
Because MTS Allstream is not facing lots of competition in its home turf of Manitoba, it is less concerned about getting regulatory relief as an ILEC. Its press release commending the Decision seems predicated on a viewpoint that what is bad for Bell is good for MTS Allstream. From their perspective, the CRTC did no harm.
It is a bit of a mixed bag for the big ILECs. In Bell’s case, it has already launched two different flavours of next generation residential voice – some folks are questioning if Bell’s Digital Voice is really VoIP, but that is a different matter. TELUS has not yet launched a consumer VoIP service, despite the flexibility that the CRTC has enabled for Bell.
Historically, the CRTC has been complaint driven – it waited for the industry to file an application before it would respond to changing conditions. The fact that the CRTC is choosing to review Decisions (like Local Forbearance) on its own may take some getting used to.
We’ll look at implications of a more active Commission tomorrow.
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CRTC, Cabinet, Bell, Telus, Videotron, Rogers, MTS Allstream, VoIP, Cabinet, Mark Goldberg