The CRTC issued a policy decision last week (2008-27) dealing with access to telecom services by credit challenged subscribers.

Under a pilot plan, for customers seeking reconnection, a debt repayment schedule would be established; no interest would be charged on the amounts owing; security deposits would be waived; and the reconnection fees would be spread over six months. The CRTC has dispensed with this arrangement, since the pilot program did not seem to deliver better levels of default on debt than non-regulated plans.

At the end of the day, the Commission is going to rely on a clause in each of the ILECs’ Terms of Service that prohibits them from disconnecting or threatening to disconnect, for non-payment, any of a customer’s tariffed services if that customer (a) has made partial payments; and/or (b) is willing to enter into and honour a reasonable deferred payment agreement.

According to the consumers groups, not all of the ILECs have been as reasonable as others in structuring deferred payment plans.

However, in the interest of lessened regulation, the CRTC is going to migrate monitoring of such issues to the Commissioner for Complaints:

the Commission requests that the CCTS track and monitor complaints related to (a) credit management issues and (b) the reconnection policies of its telecommunications service provider members with a view to determining whether further action, for example, the development of an industry code, is required.

The Commission noted that the average debt for involuntarily disconnected consumers ranged from $400-$500, with certain debts exceeding $3,300.

Will the CCTS order telcos to write off some of the bad debt in cases where the ILEC was less than reasonable in defining a repayment plan?

With the Good Friday holiday, I have been catching up on my reading, which lets me check out some of the proxy circulars that arrive this time of year. It is another sign of spring – who knows when (dare I say, “if”) we might actually see the birds return this year.

A year ago, when I was flipping through the 2007 proxy materials from Nortel, I observed the remarkably low tenure of the senior officers.

At the time, I wrote:

Only one officer, the treasurer, has been in their role more than a few years. Of the 28 listed executives, just one was appointed in 2004, 12 in 2005 and 14 in 2006.

Fast forward to this year’s proxy circular. Now, there are no officers that pre-date 2005, when President and CEO Mike Zafirovski joined the company. Besides Mike Z., there are now just 4 others from 2005, and 13 remain from 2006.

Last month, I referred to John Roese writing about the journey to transform Nortel. The proxy statements demonstrate the amount of change that is leading the company.

Nortel President and CEO, Mike Zafirovski will be speaking at The 2008 Canadian Telecom Summit in June.

Have you registered yet?

While it is now officially Spring, it seems hard to imagine tulips emerging with all of the snow still on the ground. Still, it is the beginning of another season and there are some interesting industry dynamics at play.

I received an email asking for help in finding people to fill a number of director level jobs at a mobile wireless company. Some of the applicants in the AWS auction are already starting to gear up staffing for their wireless operations.

Spring also means there are less than 3 months to go before The Canadian Telecom Summit, June 16-18.

Our brochures are now in the mail. The brochure will also be an insert in the next issue of Wireless Telecom and in TechMedia’s Telemanagement. Or, you can download it by clicking here.

Register soon!

Earlier this week, Tech Mahindra and British Telecom signed another strategic sourcing agreement valued at $350M over 5 years, under which BT will be provided with application maintenance and support for business critical BSS and OSS platforms.

As I wrote last month, Tech Mahindra and BT have a long history of strategic sourcing projects.

Strategic sourcing is the theme of a session being led by John Chang of PricewaterhouseCoopers on Monday June 16 at The Canadian Telecom Summit. In addition, CP Gurnani, the international operations president of Tech Mahindra, will be speaking in a session with Clive Selley, the CIO of BT Wholesale to end the day on June 17. Their session will look at how British Telecom has restructured to compete domestically and globally.

Which Canadian carriers will pick up on this trend?

The Federal Court of Appeal (FCA) has upheld the CRTC’s Deferral Account Decision.

A year ago, Cabinet rejected an appeal. The question remains whether Bell may appeal the FCA decision to the Supreme Court.

There were actually two appellants in the FCA case – Bell and the Consumers’ Association of Canada. As the Court summarized the case:

Both appeals raise issues as to the scope of the authority of the CRTC to order the disposition of the balance of a deferral account created pursuant to a prior CRTC order. Bell Canada says that the CRTC cannot order it to use the balance of the account for subscriber rebates. Consumers’ Association of Canada and National Anti-Poverty Organization (collectively, the “Consumers”) say that the CRTC must order the balance to be used for subscriber rebates (or to improve accessibility to telecommunication services for persons with disabilities).

You can read the ruling for its rationale, but the FCA said that the CRTC was acting within its jurisdiction in reaching the conclusions set out in Decision 2006-9 (a little more than 2 years ago) when it told the ILECs to set aside 5% of the deferral funds for accessibility projects, develop rural broadband plans for the rest.

Funds that weren’t approved under the broadband initiative will get paid back to you and me.