Bell wants customers to cancel service, not competitors

A Bell Canada and Bell Aliant application requesting consumers be the ones charged with cancelling local and long distance service when switching to another provider is being panned by its largest competitor in Ontario. Rogers Communications Inc. says this is nothing more than a tactic by Bell to work less to win back customers. Rather having to initiate winback activities with a departed customer, under its proposed rule Bell simply has to wait for customers to call, says David Watt, VP of regulatory economics. “Every customer would immediately have to declare themselves to Bell and it makes a marketing and sales effort pretty easy,” he says. Under current rules, a customer wanting to switch local or local distance service simply has to call the new provider, which then initiates the transfer process. Bell wants the CRTC to change the rules prohibiting telecommunications service providers from initiating service transfers on behalf of customers. “Although they are portraying this as being pro-competitive, really what they’re suggesting is that they don’t want to have to go out and market and try and keep those customers, give them their best price, their best offers,” Watt tells Network Letter. “So certainly I don’t think there is anything pro-competitive about it. Surely you want them out there trying to give their best offers to everybody on a consistent basis and not sitting back waiting to react and dealing only with those people who have decided they’re very serious about switching.” Maintaining the current rules, according to Bell, is no longer justified as competition has rendered them useless and, as was stated by the 2006 Telecommunications Policy Review Panel (TPRP), “making offers and counter-offers to the same customers is the very essence of competition. The companies submit that the current transfer processes precludes the very practice envisioned by the TPRP, hinders competition, denies customers its benefits and is contrary to the Policy Direction. Bell and Bell Aliant say the Internet and video markets have thrived in this type of situation, so it stands to reason that the telephony market won’t be negatively affected. “The companies note that no such mandated authority for providers to cancel service exists with respect to Internet and video customer transfers and that the lack of such a process has not impeded competition in these markets,” reads the Part VII. “The companies submit that the authority to cancel telecommunications service on end-users' behalf is no longer warranted in this competitive sector.”

Bell wants customers to cancel service, not competitors

News | 02/23/2009 9:23 pm EST

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