OTTAWA – The CRTC has been asked to step in to help resolve a standoff between Bell Canada and the City of Hamilton over a new municipal access agreement (MAA).
In an application to the Commission dated August 22, 2014 but made public recently, the Ontario city said that its previous MAA expired in 2012, and that it notified Bell a year prior to say that it would not renew that agreement as it “provides no mechanism or means of holding Bell to account for its failures to either perform at an acceptable level or comply with the City’s basic protocols and procedures.”
The city attached 69 examples of what it described as “instances of non-compliance and non-performance by Bell” over the last four years, which range from claims of Bell cutting roads and installing infrastructure without permits, to allegations that Bell or its contractors made unauthorized entries onto City construction projects without following regulated protocol, a move that its says exposes the city to “significant liability, risk and/or life safety issues”.
The city crafted and presented a new “next generation” municipal access agreement to Bell that it says is based on the CRTC’s own model MAA, released in November 2013, but claims that the telco has so far refused to agree to it.
When contacted by Cartt.ca, a Bell spokesperson said that the company was looking forward to settling the matter.
“Bell is investing significantly in new network technology across all its markets and Hamilton is an important part of that”, said Jacqueline Michelis in an emailed statement Wednesday. “We want to resolve the city’s concerns and look forward to doing so and moving forward.”
Noting that its application has implications for all municipalities and communications service providers, the city further asked the Commission that its proceeding be open for comments from a variety of interested parties through a full hearing. Bell’s deadline to respond to the application is February 12.
Listed as the ninth largest metropolitan area in Canada and the third largest in Ontario, Hamilton’s population is almost 520,000, according to the 2011 census.
