OTTAWA – Rogers Communications and Videotron must go back to the drawing board for parts of their respective disaggregated wholesale broadband offerings after the CRTC said Wednesday that while some of their head-ends meet the criteria, others do not.
Telecom Decision 2016-379 comes after a proceeding to determine if Bell Canada, Cogeco Cable, Rogers and Videotron's proposed network configurations comprise of access facilities as laid out Telecom Regulatory Policy 2015-326 (the wholesale broadband ruling). That ruling determined that while wholesale broadband access would still be mandated, it would only be available in a disaggregated model going forward, meaning that no transport facilities would be built in.
As a result, the incumbent providers had to file proposed network configurations of a disaggreated service comprising of only access facilities. In Wednesday's decision, the Commission said that it was satisfied with the proposals from Bell and Cogeco, but signaled some problems for Rogers and Videotron.
Rogers failed to meet the criteria of access for one of its head-ends (out of 34) and Videotron had 28 head-ends (out of 50) that had transport facilities included, according to the decision. The two companies must now resubmit plans for the head-ends that didn’t meet the Commission’s criteria.
Videotron, arguing in defense of its proposed configuration, said that because 28 head-ends don’t have routing functionality, deploying a disaggregated service to all 50 head-ends would require more transport than is currently deployed for the 22 that do meet the Commission’s criteria.
The Commission responded that Cogeco was able to propose a disaggregated service that didn’t include transport, and therefore, Videotron can too.
The CRTC did acknowledge that such a level of disaggregation may require architectural changes and added costs, but said “the need for any such architectural changes would only be triggered upon a competitor request for disaggregated wholesale HSA service at one of the 28 head-ends not currently equipped with routing functionality and would only apply to the relevant head-end where a competitor has made a request for disaggregated wholesale HSA service.”
During the proceeding, the Canadian Network Operators Consortium (CNOC) argued that capacity increments (the capacity-based billing, or CBB, component of wholesale access) should be reduced from the current level of 100 Mbps to 1 Mbps to provide wholesale customers with added flexibility. Others didn’t agree.
Rogers said that it could deal with multiple requests for changes from its wholesale customers on a daily basis, and suggested that the Commission establish a new minimum increment of 50 Mbps. When throughput reaches 500 Mbps, the capacity increment would be 100 Mbps.
The Commission acknowledged that lowering the capacity increments would provide competitors with more flexibility and control over their costs and capacity. But it also recognized that moving that down to 1 Mbps could be problematic. The Regulator added that a competitor can request multiple capacity increments, but only be charged once.
“A 50 Mbps increment would be more appropriate,” continues the decision, “as it takes into account the continual growth in end-user bandwidth requirements as well as the cablecos' concerns regarding increasing administrative burden.”
It added that wholesale customers can only request capacity increment changes once per month.
The disaggregated wholesale broadband issue now heads to the tariff phase where providers will have to submit Phase II cost studies to support their proposed wholesale rates. It’s at this stage where Rogers and Videotron must submit their revised network configurations.
