Rate setting for wholesale essential services is a complicated but incredibly important exercise. Rounding error can lead to millions of dollars in misdirected payments if rates are set with insufficient significant digits of accuracy to take into consideration the thousands, or millions or billions of units that are being acquired.
There are simply not enough experts in engineering economics to enable regulators and industry participants to check each others’ work.
A CRTC reversal issued today may indicate why the CRTC decided last month to open up the wholesale rate setting process to greater transparency.
The CRTC has agreed with Allstream that it had made significant errors when it previously set the rates for unbundled local loops, the basic building blocks of many competitive local voice and internet services.
The details can be seen in the decision itself; the resultant change in rates is more than 10%, depending on the rate band. The CRTC has made the revised rates retroactive three years, to December 2009.
Today’s adjustments were a direct result of the persistence of competitors in convincing the CRTC that there had been a mistake in a painfully detailed process – and then assisting the CRTC in reaching the correct decision.
To what extent did this decision influence the CRTC to mandate greater transparency and disclosure in future rate setting proceedings? The reversal today showed the benefits of extra eyes checking the numbers.