The CRTC has granted modest relief to telecom carriers in approving aspects of their application to review and vary parts of Decision 2007-130, the Decision that gave effect to the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS).
In its Decision 2008-46, the CRTC accepted a number of concerns that were raised in two applications that were filed on February 4 by a group of cable companies and a group of telephone companies.
The Commission identified three areas of the original Decision that were at issue:
- Should all service providers with revenues over $10 million be required to be members of the Agency?
- Will awards by the CCTS be constrained by contractual limitations of liability?
- How should collective and representative complaints be processed by the Agency?
The Commission affirmed its view that it has the power to mandate membership in the agency. However, it has said that it will review this requirement in 3 years. The CRTC believes that mandatory membership is required as CCTS gets underway in order to give it sufficient credibility and effectiveness at its genesis. Later on, the perspective is that market forces may be able to govern whether a service provider retains its membership.
The CRTC will authorize the CCTS to look beyond limits of liability to award up to $5000 in direct damages for losses actually incurred, but not punitive or exemplary damages, which would need to be pursued in the courts.
Finally, the CRTC confirmed that it sees merit in permitting collective complaints:
The Commission remains of the view that allowing consumers the option of pursuing their complaints either individually or collectively, with or without the assistance of a representative consumer organization, would help enhance the accessibility and effectiveness of the Agency.
However, it has clarified that should a collective complaint be filed, the $5000 maximum award applies, regardless of the number of complainants.
As a result, we don’t expect that the CCTS will be the way to pursue collective complaints of a large scale, such as system access fees or other consumer pet peeves. Unless of course, the CCTS receives millions of individual applications, instead of one application representing millions of customers.