BCE Asks Canadian Government to Overturn CRTC Broadband Ruling

6:30 am on March 14, 2009 | Category: Business, Editorials, Internet, Regulation, Telecom Services

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Canada’s leading telecommunications carrier, BCE Inc., is asking Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his cabinet to reverse a CRTC ruling requiring the company to offer the same bandwidth speeds to wholesale ISP customers as it does to its own subscribers.

BCE argues that the December decision (which was reaffirmed by regulators on March 3) will cut into the revenues of top-tier carriers that own their own networks, discouraging future investment in next-generation broadband networks.

The CRTC ruling “alters the financial case for the $700 million we are investing in accelerating the deployment of our next-generation fiber over the next three years,” according to Kevin Crull, president of Bell Canada’s residential services division.

Preexisting regulations already require incumbent phone companies (including BCE) to rent network access to smaller internet service providers, so as to foster competition and keep the cost of basic internet service at a reasonable level. Applying such wide-reaching regulations to next-generation services, however, will likely suppress competition, discouraging carriers from becoming pioneers in the fiber-optic broadband business. In a truly competitive marketplace, service providers (big and small) need real incentives to out-innovate the competition.

Rather than borrowing billions of dollars in a futile attempt to “stimulate” the economy, the Conservative government should listen to productive companies like BCE, and remove regulatory barriers to innovation and economic growth.

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    1. Time for the big boys to move in from the states they have owned this game to long.Looks like it places itself up with the car makers bankers with the threats.And the rates for what they call a service come on!Or did they see it on TV and cook up their own way to get some cash from Harper.One must wonder.

      Comment by Glen — March 17, 2009 #

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    Edited by Jeremy Maddock