This week, I am helping lead portions of the Executive Development Program being run by the Masters of Engineering in Telecom program at University of Toronto.
The objective of this year’s program is “Providing a Framework to Analyze the Impact of Internet Economics on Content, Applications, Service, and Network Infrastructure Provider Businesses.”
It’s a mouthful, but achievable. We have four and a half days this week with 50 executives attending from the major carriers and manufacturers. Today’s focus is on the state of the industry and looking at some key policy issues. There should be an interesting discussion on net neutrality, with a senior policy VP from one of the major carriers speaking, followed by a presentation from a U of T professor.
I am hoping that we’ll generate some interesting material for me to write about later in the week.
I have to admit that I like watching Videotron in action. Robert Depatie has a refreshing enthusiasm that he brought as an outsider – you could say he has a nutty background – Planters Peanuts to be specific.
Each quarter, Videotron continues to post great results.
During the 12-month period ended March 31, 2007, we recorded the highest overall growth rate of all cable companies in Canada, with increases of 63,000 customers for our cable television service, 141,000 customers for illico Digital TV, 146,000 customers for our cable Internet access services, 222,000 customers for cable telephone service, and 20,000 lines for our new wireless telephone service, launched nine months ago
Videotron added 8,000 wireless lines in the past 3 months and that is operating as a reseller in Quebec alone. Contrast those numbers with Bell adding just 13,000 nationwide.
Videotron’s bundles have the effect of growing the market for TV – I have noted before that Quebec traditionally had the lowest penetration of cable services – the bundled offerings thereby improve the capital efficiency of plant in the ground with more customers generating more revenue associated with already deployed cable.
A new coalition has formed to advocate for more competition in Canada wireless services.
The Coalition for Wireless Competition, launched by Videotron, MTS Allstream and Mipps (associated with Primus Canada), plans to encourage Canadian consumers and businesses to tell the government they want more competition in wireless services in Canada.
Currently, three companies control the entire Canadian market and that has led to higher prices, and less advanced technologies than are common in Europe, the U.S. and Asia
People who live in Saskatchewan and Manitoba may question if Bell, TELUS and Rogers really control the entire Canadian Market. I don’t get to see the TV ads in Winnipeg often to know how different the pricing is with a member of this coalition as the ILEC wireless provider. I did see from the MTS website that they have a $125 data plan for 500MB – which is an attractive rate by Canadian standards. Any US style big buckets?
According to the Statistics Canada numbers I showed on Tuesday, Manitoba is dragging down the national average for cellular penetration in households. Why is that?
The issue of wireless competition in Canada will be the focus of a panel moderated by Terence Corcoran of the Financial Post at The 2007 Canadian Telecom Summit on June 13. The panel features Robert Depatie of Videotron, John Watson of TELUS, Lawson Hunter from Bell and Dave Dobbin of Toronto Hydro Telecom.
Last week, I wrote that MTS Allstream filed a letter with the CRTC asking for it to enforce its orders for the ILECs to provide various wholesale access services associated with DSL and ethernet. At the time, I promised to key an eye on the file.
I received an email this morning with a copy of a letter that registered those 6 Orders with the Federal Court by Fasken Martineau on behalf of Rogers.
Section 63(1) of the Telecommunications Act provides that a decision of the Commission may be made an order of the Federal Court and enforced in the same manner as an order of that court.
Now let’s see if the ILECs move to file wholesale tariffs in accordance with those orders, first issued on January 25. The original CRTC Orders required that tariffs be filed 25 days later.
Competitor quality of service (CQOS) metrics have taken on greater significance as a key to unlocking the gates to forbearance from regulation of local phone services.
As a result, the CRTC launched a proceeding a few weeks ago to examine whether any exceptions should apply to a rigid interpretation of fulfillment of the CQOS standards. Exceptions like strikes, fires, natural disasters, lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
Over the past week or so, the CRTC issued rulings on the applicability of certain exceptions for paying service quality rebates – at a retail level. Specifically, TELUS had asked for, and has now received, waivers on customer service outages in BC dating back to late 2003: a particularly bad forest fire season in the summer, flooding in the fall, and a major (10,000 copper pair) cable cut. A matching decision was issued to address flooding in Alberta in 2005.
Last week, the CRTC reversed itself on earlier determinations with Bell Aliant and has now ruled that its 2005 labour dispute also qualified for an exemption from consideration for the purposes of the rebate plan.
Besides the possible implications for the CQoS considerations, there are two other interesting observations.
The first is a statement that
The Commission will, in the near future, initiate a public proceeding to consider whether, for the purposes of consideration of exclusions from the calculation of rate rebates for failure to meet prescribed retail and competitor Q of S standards, natural disasters, acts of terrorism and labour disruptions should be considered as adverse events without the necessity of making that determination on a case-by-case basis.
The other observation is the dissenting opinion on the TELUS rulings filed by Vice Chair Richard French with concurrence from Commissioners Arpin and Noel. The essence of their dissent is that there is questionable value in issuing insignificant rebates to the entire current customer base, up to 4 years after the service disruptions.
The retail rebate plan needs an overhaul and the scope of the upcoming public notice should allow an examination of the concerns expressed in the dissenting opinions.
Rather than using the current rebate plan, we see an urgent need for that C-5 consumer agency.
