The CRTC has found that TBayTel discriminated against a competitor, but it also determined that its actions were not ‘unjust discrimination’ under the Telecom Act.

The case involved roaming arrangements between TBayTel and Superior Wireless and the decisions by both companies to compete in each other’s base markets.

The finding of discrimination was based on the fact that TBayTel treated the customers of Superior Wireless differently from the way it treats roaming customers of other carriers.

However, in its determination that there was no ‘unjust’ discrimination, the Commission considered the degree of competition in wireless services:

The CRTC found that Superior’s customers have alternatives available to them to mitigate the impact of TBayTel’s discriminatory actions.

Will the CRTC apply the same principles in assessing Network Neutrality complaints?

Vonage (Symbol VG) had its debut on the markets yesterday and promptly lost nearly 15% of its value.

I’ll let market analysts and other folks (like Mark Evans) sort out the implications for the access independent VoIP market, what it means for internet stocks, the root of Vonage’s problems and all else that is ailing in the world.

It just seems to me that when a company has its stock jump from $10 to $50 on opening day, that the company got ripped off and the brokers’ friends stole made money that should rightfully have been in the company treasury. If the stock pops, I think it means the underwriters undervalued the company.

The fact that Vonage stock went down means that the company maximized its return. That should stimulate some debate – our lines are open and your comments are welcome.

We’ll be hearing Vonage founder Jeff Citron delivering the opening keynote at The Canadian Telecom Summit on June 12.

The CRTC issued a Decision on Friday in a relatively small proceeding that is noteworthy only because the process was 4 and a half years old. That’s right.

Rogers filed its original complaint in November 2001. Arguments went back and forth through January 2002. It took the Commission 9 months before it got around to realizing that it needed more information from the ILECs, so it addressed interrogatories to them in October 2002 and responses were received within a month.

Then the file disappeared.

Rogers had complained that the rates it paid for wireless interconnection in the territories of small ILECs was too high. Rogers had been prepared for delays, so it asked for the CRTC to make any rate reductions retroactive to January 2002. The CRTC denied this portion of the Rogers request, stating:

In effect, the CRTC is saying that local rates have been subsidized by Rogers overpayments for the past 3 years. Perhaps Rogers should have pressed the CRTC from the outset to make the rates interim, from the time of the original complaint.

Still, it is unclear to me why Rogers’ shareholders and subscribers have had to pay excess amounts to the small ILECs because this file went into hiding for more than 3 years.

Very few sentences get me going more than the words ‘Please hold the line, your call is important to us.’

Sure.

Let’s face it. If my call really was important to them, the company would hire more people to answer my call and not have to route me through an IVR.

Instead, many companies are implementing human-like interactive voice systems that seem better suited to frustrate the hell out of their customers, rather than speed their call to the right person.

Enter Get Human: www.gethuman.com is a site with an inventory of bypass codes to get around the IVR jail that traps so many of us. Will it do any good? Not likely, but it probably helped the website’s founder, Paul English, avoid some anger management therapy sessions.

Telecom industry: take note. There is frustration building out there.

And we’re on this topic, tell me why I have to enter my phone number and my language selection more than once?

Michael Urlocker had an interesting comment on my holiday weekend posting. He suggests that Skype is the competition for phone service and then asks if Skype is disruptive or destructive.

It is instructive to go back 25 years, when the post office was seen as competition by the telecom industry. After all, people made phone calls for Mother’s Day as a substitute for sending cards. The new telecopier capability, now called fax, was seen as the ultimate substitute for mail.

Telecom services are facing other behavioural shifts as a new generation communicates with a range of tools that simply didn’t exist before.

Sharing music or other files, instant messaging (with or without voice), mobility: These are all parts of the multi-disciplinary analysis to sort out the sources of competition over the next few years.