OTTAWA – An independent ISP and a big cable company are both lauding Wednesday’s CRTC’s wholesale wireline decision as a win-win.
TekSavvy Solutions hailed the ruling, saying that if implemented properly, it will allow independent competitors to take their game to the next level. Rogers Communications, on the other hand, said that the ruling levels the playing field between cablecos and the incumbent telcos.
Telecom Regulatory Policy 2015-326 determined that access to the ILECs last mile fibre facilities is an essential service and mandated access to competitors. It also ushers in a disaggregated wholesale high speed access (HSA) model which is expected to be fully established in about 18 months. The phase out of the existing aggregated model will take about three years.
Guy Laurence, president and CEO of Rogers, noted during that company’s second quarter earnings conference call on Thursday that not exempting the telcos’ fibre-to-the home from the new wholesale HAS regime puts cable companies on even footing with the phone companies. He also said that he expects that network investments won't be affected by the decision.
“Assuming the CRTC gets the cost models right, we see little risk that the overall regime will hinder continued network investments by incumbent providers”, he said. “Over time, it also seems that the decision will require re-sellers to invest more in infrastructure, which is a fairer sharing of the required costs and is more consistent with a facilities-based competition model.”
Providing access to the ILECs fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP) facilities is a big win for competitors, which had argued during last November’s public hearing that they needed access to FTTP in order to compete with the big players. Independent ISPs will also be able to take control of the transport part of their network, the so-called middle-mile. Rather than having to connect to a single aggregated point of interconnection, competitors may now build their networks closer to the incumbent providers’ central offices or headends.
The independent ISPs did, however, express concern about the three-year phase out of the aggregated wholesale HSA model. TekSavvy noted that this “will challenge the economic case for providing service in areas where we do not have an concentration of customers.”
Despite that, TekSavvy expressed its satisfaction with the decision.
"The CRTC heard what we were saying, raised the bar, and has challenged us to take our consumer game to the next level," said TekSavvy CEO Marc Gaudrault, in a statement. "We're up for it, and will be closely monitoring how this new scheme is implemented."
When contacted by Cartt.ca, Bell Canada said that it was still studying the decision and wasn’t yet ready to offer any comments. Telus Corp. did not reply to a request for an interview by press time.
