MONTREAL – Bell Canada today announced it is prepared to respond quickly to service providers seeking access to its poles and other communications support structures.
“By establishing common priorities and working closely with partners like Hydro-Québec and suppliers including engineering firms specializing in aerial structures, the measures Bell is implementing have already significantly accelerated the issuance of permits for many service providers and sped up deployment of several key projects,” reads today’s press release.
“Bell has put everything in place to enable Internet service providers to connect as many Quebecers as possible to high-speed Internet as quickly as possible,” said Karine Moses, Bell’s vice chair, Québec, in the release. “I am very proud of the Bell team’s collaboration with Hydro-Québec and our other partners to build a task force to meet the expected demand for access in the coming months. This is a huge project for Québec and Bell is ready to make a very significant contribution to its success.”
Over the past year, reads the release, Bell has deployed an action plan to simplify access to support infrastructure for telecommunications providers in Québec, particularly those receiving government subsidies to bring high-speed Internet to underserved or unserved populations, including:
- Co-creation of a coordination table with Bell, Hydro-Québec, Telus, and the Ministry of Economic Development, Innovation and Export Trade, with a primary objective to ensure faster access to poles for all service providers while ensuring compliance with all safety standards.
- New measures to simplify common engineering standards, streamlining the process for pole access requests.
- Changes to the permit evaluation process allowing licensees to carry out their own structural surveys and work once their engineers have confirmed that safety standards are met. The vast majority of licensees are using the new process and benefiting from accelerated treatment of their requests.
- Creation of a Centre of Excellence to share best practices with service providers, improve communications through a dedicated technical and decision-making resource person assigned to projects, and provide a toll-free 1-800 line for assistance.
“The measures put in place by Bell as well as our discussions with all the partners have allowed for major progress over the last few months in order to reduce the delays in obtaining authorizations to install on Bell structures,” said Robert Desmarais, general manager of the Brome-Missisquoi Regional County Municipality and Local Development Centre. “Thanks to this increased collaboration, the Brome-Missisquoi rural territory will be one of the first to be fully covered with fibre optics in Québec within a year.”
“The relaxation of several specific steps in the permit application process was pilot tested from October 2020 to January 2021, for both Bell Canada and Hydro-Québec structures,” explained a release from the provincial government. “These new accelerated processes were formalized at the start of 2021 and are accessible to all beneficiaries of public funding programs for the deployment of HSI services who request them and accept the terms and conditions.”
Competing carriers in Quebec are reacting cautiously. “Bell’s announcement demonstrates the relevance of the steps we have taken over the past few months to expose their unfair practices,” said a statement from Videotron. “While we understand that Bell will be speeding up its treatment process, we believe that all these measures should apply to all access requests and not only to requests linked to government subsidized projects.”
“We’re encouraged by the announcement and look forward to seeing how it all plays out in actual practice,” added Jay Thomson, CEO of the Canadian Communications Systems Alliance, which has a number of members in Quebec.
