PIAC supports TekSavvy and CNOC’s Petitions on Wholesale Rates

TekSavvy and CNOC, each filed petitions with the Governor-in-Council (GIC) to rescind the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s (CRTC) recent decision (Telecom Decision CRTC 2021-181) that reverses the wholesale rates regime for broadband Internet in Canada and to reinstate the previous wholesale rates decision, Telecom Order CRTC 2019-288 (TO 2019-288).

PIAC filed a submission, supporting both TekSavvy’s and CNOC’s petitions in their request to rescind TD 2021-181 and to reinstate the previous wholesale rates decision from 2019.

We made three main submissions:

• TD 2021-181 completely undermines the goals of the 2019 Policy Direction;
• the CRTC misapprehended the direction in the GIC’s previous determination on wholesale rates in 2020 (in 2020, the GIC dismissed the incumbents’ petitions, noting that the CRTC review and vary process was already “underway” but provided additional direction to the CRTC. It also insisted on the primacy and importance of the 2019 Policy Direction to the CRTC’s deliberation in addition to a reconsideration of effects on incumbent investment incentives. We argued that the CRTC took this “dismissal with a message” much too far, in the incumbents’ direction); and
• the CRTC’s decision in TD 2021-181 is arbitrary and capricious and risks further chaos (no proxy or alternative method was established for estimating the costs in this decision. We noted that the fact that competitors are still ‘hanging on’ does not imply or prove in any way that the interim 2016 rates were just and reasonable. Many competitors now face financial ruin without lower rates and a return of the overcharged rates from 2016-2019).

Read our full submission here