By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – The CRTC said in a letter late last month that it has accepted a request by Quebecor and Rogers to hear the telecoms’ dispute over the price of access to Rogers’s wireless facilities.
The regulator received the request from the companies on April 6, which outlined that the parties could not resolve their dispute. They requested an expedited process.
As part of its price exploration, the CRTC is asking for all MVNO and off-tariff agreements to which both parties have agreed. Quebecor, on behalf of Videotron and Freedom, is being asked how much volume it is expecting to use of Rogers’s network.
The regulatory backstop is designed as a last resort, when the two parties cannot come to an agreement on the price of network access. The commission will field both companies’ offers, due Friday, and will choose one.
The CRTC ordered this week an amendment to its terms and conditions, which act as a guide for negotiating parties. Crucially, it requires that incumbents come to agreements with mobile virtual network operators on wireless access by August 7.
Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau has complained about the alleged slowness of the incumbents to come to agreements and praised on a conference call Thursday the regulator’s push to get force the players to get deals done.
Quebecor was denied earlier this year an arbitration hearing over access to the wireless network of Bell, which disputed the request.
