Voice is voice

The CRTC has decided to review its own Decision on local forbearance and it has issued Public Notice 2006-9, Proceeding to examine whether mobile wireless services should be considered to be in the same relevant market as wireline local exchange services with respect to forbearance, and related issues.

Catchy title, eh?

In some ways, the CRTC was put in a difficult position by Statistics Canada. On the very day before the Commission rejected considering wireless a substitute for regular phone service, StatsCan released its Residential Telephone Service Survey which showed that there was far greater substitution than the CRTC had previously considered. In Vancouver, mobile wireless has replaced home phone service in 10% of households.

It is good to see that the Commission has decided to conduct a review of its Decision on its own motion, rather than delay by a more lengthy process by way of an application.

In its VoIP Decision, the CRTC had stated that Voice is Voice, independent of the underlying technology. Mobile wireless had been a service that had regulatory treatment somewhat inconsistent with this approach.

Will the results of this Public Notice take advantage of our view that unbundles voice from access; to look at the underlying transport independently of the voice application? It may help the CRTC uphold its view on voice, by considering the regulatory treatment of the bundled service based on the competitiveness of the access delivery.

Technorati Tags:
CRTC, local forbearance, VoIP, mobile, Statistics Canada, Mark Goldberg