TORONTO – Rogers Communications says claims by Bell Canada and Telus that the two wireless competitors and collaborators aren’t sharing spectrum are false. In fact, Telus is using Bell’s spectrum in Toronto for Long Term Evolution (LTE) services, according to Ken Engelhart, senior vice-president of regulatory at Rogers.
Earlier this month, Telus began advertising a 75 Mbps LTE service in Toronto. According to Engelhart, it would be impossible for Telus to provide an LTE service with those kinds of speeds in the 10 MHz of bandwidth it holds in Toronto. It would need 20 MHz to do it. Besides, he adds, based on drive testing, Telus hasn’t even turned up its 10 MHz block, so therefore Telus is using Bell spectrum in Toronto.
“The Bell 20 MHz is turned up and the Bell 20 MHz is certainly capable of delivering a 75 Mbps service, so Telus customers in Toronto are completely being served for LTE using Bell spectrum. If that’s not spectrum sharing I don’t know what is,” Engelhart tells Cartt.ca in an interview.
In an article on Cartt.ca earlier this week, Telus said it isn’t sharing spectrum with Bell. “We each control our own spectrum and we’re using our own spectrum to support our radio access network,” said Michael Hennessy, senior vice-president of regulatory and government affairs at Telus.
Rogers says the reason the Bell and Telus LTE spectrum sharing issue is so important relates to Telus’ support for a 10 MHz cap in the upcoming 700 MHz auction. Since Bell and Telus are sharing spectrum, neither requires an individual 20 MHz block of spectrum. They can simply each acquire 10 MHz and then pool the two for each to use. Telus advocated that position with Cartt.ca in a story here.
This would put Rogers at a disadvantage compared to Bell and Telus, says Engelhart, because an LTE network in 10 MHz spectrum isn’t any faster than an HSPA+ network.
“Telus is saying let’s help the new entrants, let’s have a cap of 10 MHz. They’re doing that because they’re trying to disadvantage Rogers relative to Bellus. They’re saying that if we all get 10 MHz that’s great. It’s great for them because they bolt their 10 MHz onto Bell’s 10 MHz and now they’ve got a 20 MHz block and it advantages them over Rogers,” he explains.
Spectrum pooling is an issue that needs consideration, says Engelhart because it’s likely that Bell and Telus will eventually pool their LTE spectrum just as they did for their respective HSPA+ networks. He used a camping analogy to explain the difference between sharing and pooling. Sharing would see the two companies have separate tents that each could share, while pooling would be where Bell and Telus combined their tents into one large one.
There is a big advantage to spectrum pooling, Engelhart says.
Asked if this is against Industry Canada regulations from the AWS auction, Engelhart says it’s not 100% clear. “The rules only said that you can’t have an agreement on post-auction market structure, [so] Industry Canada must have decided that jointly building a network is not an agreement on post-auction market structure. But there has never been a public process so I’m only speculating,” he says.
The Rogers executive won’t go as far to say that Bell and Telus shouldn’t be allowed to bid separately in the upcoming 700 MHz spectrum auction because the rules for the auction have yet to be set. In previous spectrum auctions, regulations around affiliate or associated entities limited participation in the auction to only one party of the affiliated or associated entity.
Industry Canada is expected to release its proposed auction rules any day (or any month, the rumours have been rife for some time), and once those become available there will be another round of comments. Engelhart says this second round submissions will involves issues such as the associated entities rule and will seek comments on whether they are still good, should be strengthened, changed or abolished.
“We will give our views to Industry Canada when they have that process. If they have a wide open auction, which is what we’re advocating, that question will never even arise,” he explains. “So we really have to wait and see what they do for the auction, what that process looks like and Rogers will develop its position then.”
