GATINEAU – According to a new submission to the CRTC, Vidéotron has misrepresented talks that have taken place in order for it to possibly become a third-party ISP on the network of Cablevision du Nord, a division of Bell Canada.
In a reply to the Commission filed in response to Vidéotron’s recent Part 1 complaint, which we outlined here, Cablevision has a far different story to tell about what’s going on when it comes to Vidéotron’s apparent efforts to become a TV and broadband competitor in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region of Quebec.
“First, Cablevision’s TPIA service is not a service that the Commission has ordered us to offer,” reads the Cablevision submission to the CRTC, in French. “On the contrary, it is a service that we voluntarily introduced in 2004 and that we recently proposed to withdraw, facts that Vidéotron omits entirely from mentioning in its application.”
The CRTC has not yet ruled on Cablevision’s desire to end a TPIA offer in the region.
As a small cable carrier (even one affiliated with Bell), Cablevision is not officially required to offer TPIA to competitors, says the Cablevision document, but it was set up anyway as a commitment by Bell division Télébec when it bought Cablevision back in 2001. In 15 years since Cablevision’s TPIA launch, Télébec has been its only user.
Second, “to the extent that the Commission agrees with our request to withdraw from TPIA, it does not seem appropriate for us to begin an interconnection process with Vidéotron.”
“Third, Vidéotron has made it clear it is dissatisfied with the terms and prices governing our TPIA service,” adds the Cablevision reply. Vidéotron has also made requests to change the technical operation of the service, so “it is therefore not clear that Vidéotron has a real interest in subscribing to our TPIA service in its current form,” says Cablevision.
“Finally, even if we were to allow Vidéotron to subscribe to our current TPIA service (which we strongly oppose), there would still be details to be finalized before proceeding, regardless of whether Vidéotron claims that ‘there is nothing more to discuss’ between the parties,” reads the Cablevision submission, quoting Vidéotron’s July 12th filing.
“Indeed, the report on the design and costs of the interconnection in Val-d’Or and Rouyn-Noranda that Vidéotron says they have endorsed provides for a 10 Gbps interconnection, while Vidéotron only wants one Gbps. In addition, Vidéotron did not provide us with a growth plan for its subscribers or a public address bank, although this is information required by our tariff.”
“Forcing Cablevision to continue to provide TPIA service to support a large incumbent company like Vidéotron is entirely contrary to the requirements of investment and facility-based competition.” – Cablevision
Cablevision’s reply also notes that it doesn’t seem right for a large, profitable, facilities-based provider like Vidéotron to ride on another’s network and that it should just build its own facilities if it wants to compete in northwestern Quebec.
“Forcing Cablevision to continue to provide TPIA service to support a large incumbent company like Vidéotron is entirely contrary to the requirements of investment and facility-based competition,” says the Cablevision submission, in French. “Such a decision would signal to small suppliers that the Commission is ready to allow large companies, benefiting from economies of scale, to crush them from the facilities that these small suppliers have struggled to build.”
Late Wednesday afternoon Vidéotron issued a new press release saying it will not be giving up on this complaint to the CRTC and that it wants to bring competition to places like Rouyn-Noranda and Val-d’Or.
“For too long, Abitibi-Témiscamingue has been poorly served in telecommunications because of a market where competition is weak or non-existent,” said Vidéotron CEO Jean- François Pruneau, in a French press release. “I am disappointed to see that once again, Bell is protecting its revenues by limiting competition by all means at its disposal rather than accepting healthy competition for residents and traders in the region.”
