Telus criticizes CRTC deregulation ruling for Fort McMurray

Those who thought new CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein might show a little more compassion for the incumbent telephone companies in their fight for local service forbearance got a rude awakening yesterday. While the commission ruled that Telus Corp. had met the market share loss threshold to gain forbearance in Fort McMurray AB, price deregulation won't come until the company meets the competitor quality of service (CQoS) requirements as set out in Telecom Decision 2006-15. Janet Yale, executive VP of corporate affairs, panned the ruling for not taking into consideration the uniqueness of the Fort McMurray market. "I thought we had made a good case with respect to why the commission should not only think about market share loss differently but competitor quality of service differently when it came to Fort McMurray, because our competitors don't rely on our network there," she tells Network Letter in an interview. Yale accepts the CRTC's concern about giving competitors fair access to infrastructure, but says this should have played a small part in this decision. "What we said was, given all of the other proceedings underway, that Fort McMurray deserves different treatment because of how quickly we lost customers," she explains. "When we filed in October 2006, we had already lost 25% of our customers to competitors, notwithstanding that competition had only started seven months before that. And so, we believed that was evidence of a vigorously competitive marketplace." Bell Canada, the country's largest telephone company, lent its support to Telus, criticizing the decision. "Today's announcement by the CRTC is not forbearance," Lawson Hunter, executive VP and chief corporate officer, said in a statement. "Rather, it confirms that the CRTC's original framework for local forbearance, established in April 2006, is fundamentally flawed and cannot lead to timely, meaningful forbearance in any market."Despite the loss at the CRTC, the situation for Telus and the other incumbent telephone companies could change on April 6 - the deadline for the government to make a decision regarding its proposed order to adopt a new local forbearance regime which has less stringent CQoS requirements. This would make it easier for incumbent telephone companies to attain local service forbearance. Network Letter will have more fall out and high priase for the CRTC ruling on Friday.

Telus criticizes CRTC deregulation ruling for Fort McMurray

News | 03/29/2007 10:16 am EDT

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