CCTS mandate, mandatory membership, under debate at CRTC

GATINEAU—The mandate of the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS) should be expanded to cover all broadcasting and telecommunications services, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) told the CRTC at a public hearing Monday. “ have grave problems with the present ‘scope’ of the CCTS mandate. This is clear from the latest annual report: 9,320 attempted complaints from consumers were rejected. That’s a huge number,” PIAC counsel John Lawford said, speaking on behalf of PIAC, the Consumer’s Association of Canada (CAC) and Canada Without Poverty (CWP). Monday was the first day of a public CRTC hearing reviewing the CCTS’ structure and mandate. The CCTS was created in December 2007 through an order-in-council to resolve consumer complaints about contract terms, billing disputes, credit management and unauthorized transfers of service for unregulated telecom services including telephone, mobile wireless and Internet. But PIAC said Monday that the commission should expand the complaint commissioner’s scope to cover regulated services. “Simply because a customer’s price is regulated does not mean they will not be double-billed, or improperly billed for regulated charges. Nor will they all experience perfect service,” Lawford said. Lawford added that the complaints commissioner should also cover cable, satellite and Internet protocol television (IPTV) services. “As platform convergence becomes a reality, the rational choice is to include all transmissions: be they ‘telecommunications’ or ‘broadcasting,’” Lawford said. PIAC said the CCTS should also broaden the consumer issues it covers to include customer service, pricing and policies. “We see no rational basis for the exclusion of these customer service failings from CCTS’ scope, at least those that impede a customer from resolving a just complaint,” Lawford said. In addition to increasing the agency’s scope, PIAC also suggested increasing its power to impose monetary damages from $5,000 to $10,000. But Peter Menzies, CRTC regional commissioner for Alberta and the Northwest Territories, questioned whether increasing the CCTS’s scope may make service providers “less enthusiastic” about the agency. Right now, the complaints commissioner bills providers for its services. Bell Canada told the commission in July the CCTS is an unnecessary body, and that market forces are sufficient to motivate companies to resolve consumer disputes. But Lawford said providers increasingly bundle their services and it is frustrating for consumers to be told by the CCTS that it can help for some complaints and not others. Right now, service providers with annual revenues of more than $10 million are required to be CCTS members. One of the points of contention at the hearing is whether membership should be mandatory and if so for which players. Lawford argued all service providers should be required to be members. “All consumers should benefit from the CCTS. There should not be a group of second-class customers deprived of the rapid, free resolution of complaints that others are able to access,” he said. “It is also … quite unfair to the established wireless providers. Some of them have pointed out, as did the commission in decision 2007-130, that the order-in-council to create the consumer agency spoke of all telecommunications service providers, not some, not just the big ones.” Although Bell and Bell Aliant previously argued against the CCTS’s role, the companies changed their position Monday, saying they support the agency. The companies told the commission they wouldn’t change the CCTS’s scope of service. The only change they would make to the CCTS is extend mandatory membership to all telecom providers. “Universal mandatory membership makes good sense and good public policy,” William Abbott, Bell's senior counsel for regulatory law, said. “There is no valid reason for consumers to have different rights and recourse based solely on the size of their .” CRTC national commissioner Marc Patrone asked Suzanne Morin, Bell Canada’s assistant general counsel and privacy chief, whether the company would consider leaving the CCTS if membership was moved to a voluntary model, but she said she would not speculate on that possibility. In a brief interview following the hearing, Lawford said moving to voluntary membership would most likely mean the demise of the CCTS. “If there was no requirement for mandatory membership above $10 million, the cable industry would be the first out the door and it would take less than a year certainly to lose all of them, I think,” he said. “You’d be left only with the telephone providers who would then have pressure to leave because all of the costs of the CCTS would be on them. And they would also say that they have no more symmetry between them and the cable industry.” Shaw Communications Inc. told the CRTC in July that the commission does not have the authority to make CCTS membership mandatory. CCTS commissioner Howard Maker told the commission Monday that voluntary membership would create uncertainty for the CCTS. “Our ability to operate is dependent on the funding provided, in particular, by the largest ,” he said. “The withdrawal of one or two of these could have a material impact not only upon the overall funding available to the organization, but also on the funding burden for the remaining members, potentially leading to further membership losses.” Maker said the CCTS is still evaluating the level of resources it needs to meet growing consumer interest in the ombudsman service. Maker added that voluntary membership could jeopardize the CCTS’ independence and that service providers could threaten to withdraw as members as a point of leverage. But the CCTS said Monday its stakeholders, mainly large telecom players, have been unable to reach a consensus on whether membership should be mandatory. Should the CRTC decide to move forward with voluntary membership, Maker said requiring all telecom service providers to join would pose a dilemma for the CCTS. Full membership would mean broader consumer protection, he said, but it would also mean a heavier burden on the complaints commissioner’s resources. “If the commission intends to expand CCTS membership, it should do so in a manner that ensures that CCTS resources are not diverted from the agency’s core functions and, in particular, that the process does not cause complaint handling to be delayed,” he said. Maker added that about 3.5 per cent of the calls or emails the agency received in 2009-2010 involved a non-participating service provider. In the past, industry players have argued that the costs associated with joining the CCTS could prevent smaller players from becoming members, but Maker said becoming a member would cost a small service provider $1,000 under the existing billing model, and that a service charge of about $130 would be applied every trimester. The hearing continues Tuesday in Gatineau. kfournier@thewirereport.ca --- CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story attributed a quotation to Suzanne Morin, Bell Canada’s assistant general counsel and privacy chief. The quotation came from William Abbott, Bell's senior counsel for regulatory law.

CCTS mandate, mandatory membership, under debate at CRTC

News | November 29, 2010

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