In an unusual move, the CRTC issued an interim decision at the end of its oral hearing that was reviewing the CCTS.

The office of the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services was established 3 years ago and one of the key issues in the current review process was whether membership would continue to be mandatory and if so, for what period of time.

Until yesterday, telecommunications service providers (TSPs), including carriers, resellers, ISPs, mobile service providers, etc. with annual Canadian TSP revenues greater than $10M were required to be members. There was a planned expiration of that order: December 20, 2010.

The CRTC will not be issuing its formal decision until January which left a possible gap in the ability for the CCTS to operate with any level of certainty. So, at the conclusion of the oral proceeding yesterday, the CRTC asked for a 15 minute adjournment and it returned with a statement:

we are of the view that all residential and small business consumers that obtain forborne telecom services in Canada, including those that receive services from TSPs that do not have more than $10 million in revenues, should benefit from the services provided by the CCTS.

In the precedent setting ruling from the bench, the Commission decided that all TSPs (offering services within the scope of the CCTS’s mandate) are to be members of the agency for a period of 5 years.

The 5 year period was determined to be appropriate “to ensure sufficient certainty for the effective planning and operation of the Agency.”

The ruling is effective as of December 20th for current members of the CCTS and will apply to current non-member TSPs at a date that will be specified in the Commission’s decision, expected to be issued in January 2011.

In its Monitoring Report, the CRTC has estimated that there are about 500 entities delivering internet access services; most ISPs are not members of the CCTS.

Will they all join? I doubt it.

Will all of the smaller service providers really need to join in order to provide consumers with a uniform level of protection? The regulatory requirement to join may be sufficient to push service providers to consider consumer complaints with appropriate levels of seriousness.

Industry Canada has released its consultation paper seeking comments on the “Policy and Technical Framework for the 700 MHz Band and Aspects Related to Commercial Mobile Spectrum” [pdf, 309 KB].

Long title.

Maybe that is one of the reasons we have 3 months to prepare our comments in response to a number of issues under consideration by the Department.

The consultation paper is seeking input on a number of areas related to promoting competition, including a discussion on possible “Open Access” requirements, set asides, rural broadband initiatives among other ideas.

Comments are due February 28, 2011 with replies to those comments due by March 30.

Comcast and Level 3 get into a tiff over interconnection fees and the blogosphere screams out “net neutrality”. This issue does not mean the end of the internet as we know it, despite the rhetoric of the blogosphere that has been conscripted by Level 3 to their side of the issue.

Level 3 was first to invoke the FCC’s Policy Principles in its statement on Monday. Comcast responded, saying that Level 3’s traffic was out of balance by a 5:1 ratio on its peering interconnection. Level 3 replied today.

Comcast has a clearly stated peering policy [Settlement-Free Interconnection] that would seemingly apply to all parties. Among other requirements, it says:

Applicant must maintain a traffic scale between its network and Comcast that enables a general balance of inbound versus outbound traffic.

Level 3 appears to have failed that balance, by a very large margin. This is not a naive, unsophisticated customer that had the traffic imbalance come out of the blue. This is a straight commercial issue between two very large companies.

It appears to me that any other interconnecting company would be told the same thing, that it no longer qualifies for Settlement Free Interconnection, so here is our other product: Wholesale Dedicated IP Transit.

Comcast has to treat all interconnecting carriers the same. Anything else would be discriminatory.

The CRTC is in the midst of the oral phase of its Review of the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services.

This proceeding is examining the independence of the agency and its effectiveness in fulfilling its mandate. In addition, the Commission is re-visiting the existing membership requirement.

In its comments, Shaw sets out a strong position against mandatory membership:

Shaw submits that the Commission does not have the legal authority to mandate membership in the CCTS and that it is neither necessary nor appropriate from a policy perspective to do so. Shaw also believes that the funding mechanism for the CCTS is a deterrent to voluntary membership.

In the opening session of the oral proceeding, the Commissioner acknowledged that he does not enjoy a consensus of his Board on a number of issues.

The mandatory membership requirement is contentious and it has already been the subject of a review and vary application. In ruling on that [Decision 2008-46], the CRTC said:

The Commission considers that once the Agency has operated for a few years, consumers would be aware of the organization and would rely upon it to resolve their complaints. In such circumstances, the Commission considers that market forces could be relied upon to ensure sufficiently comprehensive membership in the Agency and, therefore, that mandating membership would no longer be necessary to ensure its effectiveness.

Have the market evolved to the point that consumers will consider membership in the CCTS when choosing a service provider?

As one of the CRTC Commissioner asked, if the competitive marketplace can be trusted to discipline pricing, is there a reason why competition and market forces can ensure that complaints are dealt with as well?

I used to advise clients that disputes shouldn’t be taken to the regulator right away – too lengthy a process was just one of the complaints.

But every so often – perhaps too often – there are issues that simply can’t get resolved by negotiations. When I was looking through the CRTC’s weekly listing that previews coming attractions, I noticed that there are three files dealing with related matters: It appears that there have been some issues in the way TBayTel in Thunder Bay has been providing digital access services to its competitors. TELUS and MTS Allstream want refunds on overcharges; TBayTel wanting to change the tariff that is causing the complaint. 

Some things need the CRTC to step in, hear the facts and issue a ruling. In this case, the process has worked its way through the system pretty quickly: TELUS originally filed with the CRTC in late June; MTS Allstream in mid-July; the exchange of answers and final comments didn’t conclude until the end of September.

And the CRTC will resolve all three complaints later this week – about two months into its deliberations. The CRTC wrote to the applicants to let them know that these files were considered to be “Type 1 Part VII applications” as defined by Circular 2006-11:

• Type 1 Part VII applications – 90 percent of determinations to be issued on an interim or final basis within four months of the close-of-record; and
• Type 2 Part VII applications – 85 percent of determinations to be issued on an interim or final basis within eight months of the close-of-record.

How do you resolve issues quickly? Try to deal with the issues on your own – playing nicely with the other kids in the sandbox. Otherwise, try to keep the complaint simple: Type 1 applications are those that generally don’t involve multiple parties or raise significant policy issues.

After any CRTC decision, there are 3 avenues for an appeal, as I have described in the past.]