On our own motion

The Usage Based Billing debacle just won’t go away.

When the CRTC set new wholesale internet access rates nearly two years ago, problems with it led to a successful application by CNOC to “review and vary” that decision (I had written up the problem in a blog post in January 2012); the resolution of the CNOC review and vary triggered a challenge by TELUS that led to a decision by the CRTC to deny the TELUS application but the Commission varied, “on its own motion, the rate for this service.”

Are you following?

Our tale actually goes back to December 2008, when the CRTC approved an application by Cybersurf to get wholesale access to the same speeds of services offered by incumbents.

The federal cabinet expressed concern about the potential impact on incentives for incumbent investment, and at the deadline (one year less a day), Order-in-Council 2009-2007 sent the speed matching decision back to the CRTC for reconsideration.

That led to an August 2010 determination on the “Wholesale high-speed access services proceeding“. In the meantime, in May 2010, the CRTC had approved a usage based billing wholesale access service.

The public outcry that arose from these 2010 decisions, as well as a January 2011 rate setting decision, led the CRTC to launch a proceeding to review them on “its own initiative” in February 2011. Recall that the CRTC chose to review those decisions before cabinet had a chance to force such a review.

That review begat “Billing practices for wholesale residential high-speed access services“, the determination released two years ago, on November 15, 2011.

That triggered the CNOC challenge which led to a decision earlier this year, which in turn generated the TELUS appeal that led to today’s acknowledgement by the CRTC of at least 3 calculation errors.

Five years, multiple challenges to the CRTC and cabinet and at this late stage, the CRTC finds a typo in the decision and three calculation errors that partially offset each other but still result in a 7% change to the TELUS rates. It is unclear as to whether similar errors were made on rates for other carriers.

The wholesale internet file is not one of Canada’s prouder regulatory moments.