OTTAWA – Reactions were quick after the Federal Court’s Friday announcement to grant a temporary stay of the CRTC’s third party internet access rates decision.
On September 13, the cable companies (Rogers, Shaw, Cogeco, Vidéotron and Eastlink) filed a leave to appeal CRTC Telecom Order 2019-288, which lowered the rates independent ISPs must pay to access incumbent networks and forced those incumbents to reimburse the independents hundreds of millions of retroactive fees. They also requested an interim stay of the CRTC Order, request that was granted on September 27.
“We’re disappointed that the big incumbents continue to dispute what is a very considered, studied CRTC decision to correct inflated wholesale rates down to more reasonable levels,” said Andy Kaplan-Myrth, VP, regulatory and carrier affairs at TekSavvy. “The CRTC’s final rates decision comes after four years, after the incumbents ignored the CRTC’s rules to exaggerate their costs, which in turn drove up costs for competitors and kept retail prices high for consumers for years.
“Meanwhile, Canadians can’t keep waiting for competition to deliver lower prices, which is why TekSavvy will move forward with our new lower pricing that we announced on September 13, 2019. TekSavvy provided price reductions and package upgrades for hundreds of thousands of customers following the CRTC’s final rates decision, and those changes have already been implemented for our customers,” he added.
For its part, Canadian Network Operators Consortium (CNOC) issued the following statement: “CNOC is disappointed to see that the court decided to issue an interim stay, but it’s important to recognize that this is just an interim stay. We expect this will last some number of weeks, before CNOC and others get a chance to debate a potential full stay of the CRTC decision, “wrote Matt Stein, CNOC chair and CEO of Distributel.
“The CRTC spent years working through the intricate details of this situation and concluded on a final basis that they got it right. CNOC continues to be disappointed, but not surprised, that the big phone and big cable companies continue their attempts to find a new forum for debate. The incumbent’s own submissions to the court speak to the real impact of the CRTC decision that they fear: they will have to lower Internet prices to Canadians in response to a competitive market.”
Stein continued: “Specific to Distributel, during the interim stay period we are not changing anything in our plans, but will need to consider closely any further stay action, if it comes to that.”
