Cablecos take issue with CRTC’s customer transfer rules as TV wars pick up

The CRTC's proposed new guidelines intended to ensure “seamless transitions” for customers switching TV providers are not practical in buildings with multiple dwellings like condos, townhomes and apartments, Rogers Communications Inc. has told the commission in a submission. The CRTC has proposed new regulations designed to allow consumers to switch TV providers with the ease of a single phone call. The new broadcast distribution rules—which are related to a decision in a March about customer transfers between companies providing telephone, wireless, or TV services—would require companies to accept cancellation requests made by customers or a competing provider on a customer’s behalf. The proposed regulations would also require service providers to “coordinate with each other to cancel and replace programming services with a view to avoiding any service disruption” and ensure the switch happens, in most cases, within two days of the initial cancellation request. In written comments on the proposed new framework filed with the CRTC last week, Rogers, Canada's largest cable TV provider, said the commission's approach may not be practical, or even possible, if it seeks to avoid service disruptions altogether. The problem is that, in “multiple unit dwellings,” many incumbent providers own or control access to the wiring inside the buildings, Rogers says. It wrote that the commission's requirement to avoid service disruptions would mean technicians from each provider must be on site at the same time. “If the new provider's technician was late due to any unforeseen circumstance, the existing provider's technician would have to wait at the MUD before proceeding with the inside wire transfer,” Rogers wrote in its submission. The company suggested that the commission require providers to coordinate to minimize service disruptions as opposed to avoid them altogether. The commission's call for comments on the new regulatory changes comes as the battle for TV subscribers—particularly between IPTV and traditional cable—heats up across Canada. Rogers and Quebecor Media Inc.'s Videotron Ltée. are competing with BCE Inc.'s Fibe TV fibre-to-the-node IPTV service in Ontario and Quebec and in Western Canada Telus Communications Co.'s Optik TV fibre service is drawing subscribers from cableco Shaw Communications Inc. In its submission, Rogers wrote that, under a series of arrangements it worked out with competing broadcast distributors “over ten years ago,” the company makes its inside wiring available to former customers' new providers between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. on the second day after the customer requests the change. “This process works well,” Rogers wrote in its submission. “Hundreds of customer transfer requests are processed by Rogers’ customer service group (CSG) each day with very little difficulty. Customers have been very satisfied with the process.” Shaw wrote in a submission to the CRTC that requiring broadcast distributors to coordinate with one another would place a burden on the former provider. “If a BDU cancels a customer’s service within the required two business days, it should not be held responsible for the action of the other BDU in replacing the customer’s service,” Shaw wrote. Shaw asked the commission to remove any mention of the need for competing companies to coordinate. Telus also filed a submission in which it repeated earlier accusations that Shaw had deliberately delayed disconnecting former customers looking to change to Telus’ Optik TV. Telus asked that incumbents be required to notify new service providers once a disconnection order had been carried out and that the CRTC establish a standard reporting form that companies use to exchange information pertaining to cancellations. “The process for handling cancellation requests must be much more stringent,” Telus wrote. BCE subsidiaries Bell Canada and Bell Aliant asked the commission to impose a higher standard of cooperation by requiring companies to “adopt commercially reasonable steps necessary to coordinate with each other to cancel and replace” programming services seamlessly. nkyonka@thewirereport.ca

Cablecos take issue with CRTC’s customer transfer rules as TV wars pick up

Broadcast | November 22, 2011

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