What is the best strategy to encourage investment in facilities based telecommunications competition?
That question is at the core of both sets of telecom carrier appeals to cabinet filed in mid-March.
In the Essential Services Decision, the Commission wrote:
117. The Commission notes that fibre-based access and transport services include CDN DS-3, OC-3, OC-12, and Ethernet services.
118. The Commission notes that the record indicates a high incidence of competitor self-supply or alternative supply of fibre-based access and transport facilities. The Commission considers that the reported level of alternative supply demonstrates the existence of competition in the upstream market for such facilities.
In evidence [pdf, 425KB] filed with cabinet, there is a question raised about whether the CRTC’s statistics may have been somewhat self-fulfilling; the evidence shows that a trivial percentage of Toronto’s business addresses have access to competitor fibre facilities.
But is that a fair characterization of the issue? Let’s face it, corner convenience stores and dry cleaners aren’t priority fibre candidates for either the ILEC or for competitive carriers.
Isn’t the real question whether competitors are able to reach the same types of “high data rate” customers as the ILEC?
That was the question the CRTC looked at in its statistics gathering and the facts established evidence of “a high incidence of competitor self-supply or alternative supply of fibre-based access and transport facilities.”
The Commission also looked at the issue of competition for fibre-based services on an exchange-by-exchange basis in the context of digital network access forbearance for high speed services. A substantial number of exchanges are forborne on the basis of this detailed analysis.
Two different ways of looking at the numbers; both indicate competitive supply for fibre-based services.
We’ll be looking at these policy issues and so much more at The 2009 Canadian Telecom Summit, June 15-17 in Toronto. Are you registered yet?