Telcos hope to negotiate access terms of Ledcor decision with municipalities

The Supreme Court of Canada’s decision not to hear the final appeal in the Ledcor case should close the books on the more than two-year-old case. Telecom companies now have a clear picture of the rules they need to follow to negotiate agreements with local governments, but the lobby group representing Canadian municipalities vows to carry on the fight in the political arena. Chris Peirce, senior VP regulatory and government affairs for Allstream Corp., heralds the court ruling. He looks forward to getting back to negotiations with municipalities, talks that had been put on hold until the Ledcor case concluded. "We have taken the position that agreements that may have been entered into before the CRTC expressed its jurisdiction and how it saw matters in the Ledcor decision need to be opened up and made consistent with Ledcor," he tells Network Letter. "You can’t have a situation where some telecom providers are forced to pay what amounts to economic rent, while others are reimbursing the city for causal costs, which is what we think comes out of the Ledcor decision as being what cities are entitled to." At the beginning of the month, the court dismissed a leave to appeal filed by the City of Calgary and several other plaintiffs (NL Update, Sept. 8/03) over the controversial Ledcor case, which restricted the amounts and the categories that could be claimed, originally set out in Decision 2001-23. This brings an end to the judicial proceedings that started more than two years ago (NL, Jan. 29/01). The day after the court ruling, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) vowed to use the political process to overturn the decision. "We will take our fight to the federal government," FCM president Yves Ducharme said in a news release. "Municipal governments must have full authority to manage their public lands, and municipal taxpayers should not be subsidizing private enterprise." The FCM has long argued that local governments should manage the uses of rights-of-way, including the location of telecom and broadcast facilities, and that they should be able to recover all costs of occupancy. The federation wants the government to change the restrictive provisions in the 2001 ruling. "We’re challenging the Parliament of Canada to do the right thing," Ducharme’s statement continued. "Right now our communities are losing tens of millions of dollars every year in foregone revenue and additional costs." Peirce finds any change to the 2001 ruling unnecessary. "The CRTC has been clear now on what that regulatory framework is in terms of what municipalities can ask for in return for access to municipal property," he notes. "And so to the extent that municipalities do not see eye-to-eye with us on those issues then, as the Telecommunications Act provides, we’ll be taking that matter to the CRTC." Allstream, under its former name of AT&T Canada Corp., was one of the most active in attempting to impose the Ledcor provisions on municipal agreements. It currently has a Part VII application before the commission attempting to resolve an access issue with the City of Edmonton. "We have filed an application with the CRTC dealing with Edmonton because Edmonton had filed an action in the courts in Alberta, which we are defending," Peirce explains. "We’re saying it’s the CRTC that has jurisdiction in this matter. Frankly I think that we are hopeful of arriving ultimately at an agreement with Edmonton but we are not there yet." The CLEC was able to resolve some aspects of the Edmonton dispute (NL, Aug. 27/02). Similar fights with municipalities in British Columbia have been settled. But a longstanding battle with the City of Toronto is still working its way through the CRTC system (NL, Dec. 18/01).

Telcos hope to negotiate access terms of Ledcor decision with municipalities

News | 09/16/2003 4:00 am EDT

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