Bell free to charge 75 cents for DA calls; CRTC turns down review and vary appeal

The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) isn't holding out hope that an appeal to the federal Cabinet would succeed in overturning a March 15 CRTC decision that upholds Bell Canada's right to charge for all directory assistance numbers, even when a number can't be found. When asked how her group may respond to the dismissed appeal, PIAC's legal counsel, Philippa Lawson, told Network Letter, "We're not sure yet". Launching a follow-up appeal to Cabinet is always an option, but she points out that the government prefers dealing with broad policy issues, rather than micromanaging federally regulated industries. Dealing with this issue proved to be a difficult and divisive issue for the commission. As reported in the March 8 issue of Network Letter the appeal lost by the narrowest of margins (7-6). It also generated greater than usual dissent among the commissioners. "In the commission's view, the benefits of charging for unsuccessful DA requests outweigh the fact that infrequently, some users of DA may be charged when the not-found listing is due to an error by Bell," the CRTC states in Telecom Order 99-741. The decision goes on to claim that charging for a listing not found "will have a positive effect on the efficiency of DA service encouraging customers to supply accurate information when making DA requests." Five of the six commissioners who voted in favour of the appeal filed dissenting opinions. Barbara Cram noted that she had changed her mind since the original finding. "I agreed in large part with the decision," she writes. "In retrospect, it appears to me that the entire decision was predicated upon two premises: that the directory assistance service was reasonably accurate and that directory assistance was unprofitable to Bell. It now appears both of those premises are in doubt." PIAC maintained that Bell's accuracy rate was 76 per cent; Bell countered that it was over 90 per cent. But Cram notes that Bell skewed the results by deleting from the sample any errors that were not made by the operator. The commissioner says the perspective must be that of the consumer, not the telco. "We are then left with less than 90% accuracy for Directory Assistance," she wrote. "This is not reasonably accurate." The majority of Cram's colleagues set the accuracy rate at 93.8 per cent.In his dissent, Stuart Langford refers to a study of operator services done jointly by Bell and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers union. The survey was deemed confidential by the two parties, but the CEP did tell the CRTC the division was profitable. Langford also cites an article in the Montreal newspaper Le Devoir in which Bell CEO Jean Monty was quoted as saying DA was profitable, but only marginally so. Langford concedes the possibility that Le Devoir had quoted Monty out of context or that the CEP/Bell study is incorrect, or had been misquoted by PIAC. "All of these explanations may apply but what is key to this review and variance application is that we have no way of knowing whether they do or not," he writes. "We do not know because Bell has not provided us with sufficient information on the record to make a determination." Andrew Cardozo went back to the original issue of 99-741, arguing DA expenses could be absorbed by the telco as a reasonable cost of doing business. David McKendry and Martha Wilson supported Langford's arguments, and didn't elaborate further on why they voted against the majority.

Bell free to charge 75 cents for DA calls; CRTC turns down review and vary appeal

News | March 27, 2000

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