MONTREAL – During Quebecor’s third quarter conference call with financial analysts last week Videotron president and CEO Jean-François Pruneau shed some light on the company’s motivation behind its decision to stop offering its highest broadband speeds at retail and wholesale.
Last month, as we reported, Videotron wrote the CRTC to remove its offered wholesale tariffs on its 1 Gig service, indicating it would stop offering it to wholesalers and therefore also had to stop offering it to their retail customers, too.
At the time, Videotron refused to comment on its motivation although many speculated it was directly tied to the CRTC’s TPIA decision.
When Maher Yaghi, analyst at Desjardins Securities, asked Pruneau (pictured) how he handicapped the regulatory environment this year compared to previous years, and if he is more worried about how thing are taking shape in Ottawa on that front, Pruneau answered that “what keeps me at night is regulations because I don’t control it.
“In terms of some decisions taken by the CRTC, we will fight as hard as we can,” he added.
“We are disciplined investors and if the return is impacted by some regulatory decisions, we will have to take some decisions. And in fact, I can tell you that we have already taken some decisions. We announced to the CRTC and the resellers and all retail customers that we are withdrawing the 1 Gig service… because it requires investments and with the new regime, we cannot afford it.”
“It is probably the first, the most material one that we’ve taken so far it will be followed by others,” he concluded.
