In an interview last week with Cartt.ca, CRTC Chair JP Blais said “As long as people say they want predictability, I’m fastidiously predictable.”
Consider a regulatory decision that came out just two days after the interview. MTS made significant investments to upgrade its province wide emergency network and applied to the CRTC for these costs to be treated as an exception, just as the CRTC had ruled in 2010. However, in this case, the Commission said “Regarding MTS’s submission that the Commission had previously approved the company’s proposed 9-1-1 service rate change related to the upgrade of its ALI database, past approval of exceptions to the frozen rate treatment is not a reason in and of itself to approve the company’s application.”
In a speech on Thursday, Minister Navdeep Bains called for carriers to invest more in infrastructure.
Isn’t predictability in the regulatory treatment a reasonable expectation, especially when carriers are making significant investments in upgrading 9-1-1 infrastructure?