By Ahmad Hathout
Bell CEO Mirko Bibic said Tuesday that the telco is anticipating that the CRTC will mandate access to incumbents’ fibre facilities, and the outstanding questions about that access will determine what types of difficult business decisions it will have to make.
Bibic was speaking at Scotiabank’s TMT conference when he was asked about regulatory assumptions the telco makes that affect how it approaches business decisions.
In response, Bibic targeted the regulator’s November decision to temporarily provide competitors access to the bundled middle and last mile fibre facilities of Bell and Telus in Ontario and Quebec until it concludes its wholesale internet proceeding — the hearing of which concluded last month.
“We’re running the business based on the rules we have,” Bibic told Scotiabank telecom analyst Maher Yaghi. “I mean the rules are about to change on May 7th with the interim decision coming into place in terms of the new tariffs. But looking forward, what we’ve planned for in terms of 2024 and beyond, is that there will access to our fibre networks.
“I think it would be foolish to think that there will be an outcome that says there will be no fibre access,” he added. “The key questions, though, are: Who gets access? Where? If there will be any form of grace period [in part so costs can be recovered] before access is granted in a new fibre community, and then price.
“If the decisions are negative or decidedly negative on all of those questions — so only access in the east versus access nationally or everybody gets access to everyone’s networks, then you’d have to ask yourself, why would we build more and more fibre aggressively if we can ride on cable networks where we don’t have fibre.”
Bell, which is disproportionately affected by the CRTC’s decision since Telus only has a small pocket of fibre facilities in Quebec, has argued before the commission that any mandated fibre access regime should be national in scope.
In the hours after the November decision, Bell said it was cutting back on its planned spend on fibre by over $1 billion.
Some large players were concerned that if the CRTC was to mandate bundled access to middle and last mile fibre facilities before the conclusion of the wholesale internet framework proceeding, it was unlikely to reverse course as competitors riding on the networks would be in the midst of entrenching themselves with market share gains.
Anticipating regulatory decisions is something Bell has talked about on previous conference calls to state that it is not being caught off guard. Bibic repeated Tuesday that these “difficult choices” — like a decision last month to cut 4,800 jobs and sell radio stations — need to be made in light of what he previously called “unsupportive” government policies.
“If the [wholesale access] price is lower than what we see today, we’re going to run our business differently,” Bibic said. “We will make further difficult choices along the lines of the difficult choices we announced in February and difficult decisions we made right after that interim November decision from the CRTC.”
Bell appealed the CRTC’s interim fibre decision to the Federal Court of Appeal, which said last month that it will hear the telco’s arguments but will not order an immediate suspension of the decision until it makes a determination on the matter. Bell failed to show that it would suffer irreparable harm if it wasn’t granted a stay of the decision.
Some competitors announced during the CRTC’s wholesale internet hearing that they will be taking advantage of the interim framework.
Screenshot of Bell CEO Mirko Bibic at Scotiabank conference Tuesday.
