Internet re-regulation true motive of IMCAIP filing, Bell charges in latest filings

The Bell conglomerate is firing back at a group of independent Internet service providers who accuse it of undercutting its prices for high-speed connectivity. The telecom giant accuses the ISPs of wanting to re-establish regulation of the industry. Last summer, the Independent Members of the Canadian Association of Internet Providers (IMCAIP), a division of the Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP), filed a Part VII application with the CRTC, claiming Bell Canada, Bell Nexxia and Bell ActiMedia were engaged in predatory pricing and sharing confidential customer information. IMCAIP has asked that Bell Canada be directed to file tariffs for retail services. "They’re looking for what we’re calling sort of a non-forbearance because part of what they want is a requirement for us to file a tariff for our retail Internet access service, which the commission has considered several times and has found is inappropriate," David Elder, Bell’s assistant general counsel, tells Network Letter. "They looked, in fact, at the Internet access market as one of the more dynamically competitive telecommunications markets in Canada." That first point is one of the few that Bell and the service providers agree on. "IMCAIP does not dispute this argument," the group writes in a Nov. 5 submission to the commission. "In fact, IMCAIP’s revised Part VII application makes specific reference to section 34 of the Telecommunications Act in support of its request that Bell Canada be directed to file tariffs for its residential DSL services." In its response to the Part VII filing, Bell denies all allegations brought against it by the ISPs, and attacks the companies for their methodology. "IMCAIP has advanced no evidence to support its case and has all but ignored the criteria employed by the commission in determining whether to apply tariff regulation to particular markets," the telco writes. "IMCAIP’s approach to relevant markets and the status of competition is selective and undisciplined." The ISPs write: "While IMCAIP may not have used all of the specific ‘headings’ or terminology that is used by the commission in that decision in order to demonstrate that the respondents’ DSL services should not be forborne from regulation, it is wholly inaccurate to suggest that IMCAIP has not addressed each of the elements of the test. A review of the evidence that IMCAIP has placed on the record of this proceeding demonstrates that IMCAIP has indeed met this test." Dispute over timetable The Bell affiliates also seek to limit the amount of material from IMCAIP that the CRTC may consider. "The companies submit that the clear intent of the commission’s allowance for revisions to the original application was to allow for any changes necessitated by interrogatory responses, not to provide IMCAIP with an opportunity to attempt to bolster its arguments and provide new evidence," chief regulatory officer Sheridan Scott writes. "Accordingly, the companies submit that all material in IMCAIP’s 22 October 2001 filing that goes beyond the scope of the commission’s directions on procedure should be disregarded in their entirety." The Internet providers reject that argument, saying the CRTC gave them two dates to provide additional information: Oct. 18 and Oct. 22. They also note that Bell Canada had earlier been granted approval to file its comments three weeks after the original deadline. "Since IMCAIP was given the opportunity in the commission’s October 5, 2001 letter to supplement its initial submission in light of the responses to these interrogatories, IMCAIP exercised its right to do so and filed its amended application with the commission on October 22, 2001," CAIP president Jay Thomson writes. "Based on the foregoing, it should be evident that IMCAIP did not file its amended submission ‘four days later than the specified due date’ as alleged by Bell Canada." Bell denies that Bell Nexxia is sharing information from its wholesale customers with its retail arm, and notes that its Carrier Services Group (CSG) agreement prevents such dissemination."IMCAIP continues to refuse to acknowledge that Bell Nexxia has a CSG," the telco tells the CRTC. "Indeed, it does, and has been actively serving wholesale customers, including IMCAIP members, through a CSG for some time." "By way of response, IMCAIP notes that it did not ‘know all along’ that independent ISPs were being served through a CSG," the Internet firms reply. "In fact, given the lax treatment that has been accorded to date by Nexxia in relation to ISP confidential customer information, it came as a complete surprise to IMCAIP that Nexxia had established a CSG in order to interface with its ISP customers." Bell is perplexed by the ISPs’ desire to split the Internet market into various sections. The telco believes all Internet service, whether through dial-up, DSL or cable, should be considered as one entity."We think the Internet access market is a single market," Elder explains. "And even if you want to carve it up into dial-up and high-speed, which we don’t advocate, it makes no sense to further carve it up into a separate DSL market and a separate cable access market, because the market doesn’t operate that way. We think that the average consumer, if they’re interested in high-speed service, are going to look at the cable modem technology and the DSL technology as alternatives." IMCAIP counters that, from a network provisioning view, low- and high-speed services are configured differently. These differences create unique characteristics such as DSL’s "always on" feature which makes use of unused bandwidth in copper loops. Dial-up uses voice-band in the loops and prevents the user from making tele-phone calls while access to the Internet is being deployed. Bell had suggested the recent CRTC report on competition shows that the commission considers dial-up and high-speed as one market (NL, Oct. 10/01). IMCAIP disputes that claim. "If this were the case, then the commission would have provided separate breakdowns or descriptions in its report for each of the different segments of the long distance market that were established by the commission in Decision 94-19 for this particular market. In actual fact, the commission did not provide this type of segmentation for the long distance market in its Report to the Governor in Council. Moreover, insofar as the Internet services market is concerned, the commission actually did present separate statistics for the high-speed market on a province-by-province basis." How many are involved? The Internet providers sidestepped one complaint raised by Bell. The telco asked CAIP which of its specific members funded the application and what others are supporting the filing. In its reply, IMCAIP merely submitted a full membership list. "This does not mean that all, or even a significant portion of these companies support the application, or even feel particularly aggrieved," Scott writes. "Further, the companies note that Bell Nexxia has more – seemingly contented – wholesale customers than IMCAIP has members." Her colleague Elder agrees. "Nexxia has quite a few wholesale customers from whom we’re not hearing a lot of complaints and who don’t have a big difficulty with this," he says. "And we suspect that there’s a fairly small and quite vocal minority of Internet service providers that are pushing this agenda."

Internet re-regulation true motive of IMCAIP filing, Bell charges in latest filings

News | 11/19/2001 5:00 am EST

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