CRTC to track wholesale quality of service in 2022

The CRTC is giving incumbent telecom companies that provide wholesale high speed internet access a year to implement a new quality of service (QoS) regime, which will require incumbents to track and report how well they provide service to wholesale customers. Two years after the CRTC decided it would need to implement a new QoS regime for wholesale internet providers, the CRTC on Dec. 22 approved items from the CRTC's Interconnection Steering Committee (CISC) April report. The new regulations will require incumbent providers to collect data on how quickly they responded to -- and the success rate of -- installation and repair appointments for customers of third-party wholesale internet service. The QoS regime, the commission explained in its decision, is designed to "primarily target aspects that have the greatest effect on competitors’ retail services, namely wholesale processes associated with installations and repairs." In setting out the rules for the new regime, the commission approved several rules that were determined on a consensus basis by the CISC's Business Process Working Group (BPWG). For rules in which there was disagreement within the BPWG -- which included both incumbent and competitor stakeholders -- the CRTC wrote that it "has made its determinations with a view to promoting competition and consumer interests, while also balancing the regulatory burden on wholesale HSA service providers." Starting in 2022, incumbents must track data on a month-by-month basis for installations and repairs, and report the data every quarter. When it comes to new installations, incumbent providers must meet a standard of a 90 per cent completion rate for a given month, based on a due date given to the wholesale provider by the competitor when the latter submits an order for service. The CRTC has also applied the same 90 per cent standard for repair appointments. "Repair appointments are considered met when the technician shows up within the scheduled time window, unless the technician and the agree to initiate the appointment earlier than the scheduled time window," the commission determined. Competitive internet service providers have long called for the implementation of a quality of service regime for wholesale internet access. In November, Competitive Network Operators of Canada (CNOC) president Matt Stein called for the implementation of the regime in a speech at the organization's 2020 ISP Summit. The regime, Stein said, would require incumbents to offer service to wholesale customers on “the same time scales by means of the same systems and processes with the same service levels” as the incumbents offer for their retail service. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, CNOC and TekSavvy Solutions Inc. sent a letter to the CRTC alleging that incumbents were changing or delaying their installation regimes for wholesale customers. "We are concerned,” the April letter read, “that in the rush to develop new processes to mitigate risk related to COVID-19, wholesale HSA service providers are unilaterally changing regulated processes or processes that are necessary to deliver regulated services.” While the Dec. 22 commission decision on the quality of service regime will also require incumbents to report the "average interval" in calendar days between the confirmation of an installation or repair appointment and the completion of the installation of repair, the regulator has not set a standard that has to be met. In its decision, the CRTC explained that competitors' "preference would be to include a standard consisting of a competitively meaningful target for scheduled installations," and that such a standard would allow the CRTC to "determine whether installation appointments are scheduled on a discriminatory basis." Wholesale providers, on the other hand, argued that "since are not measured at the moment and there exist vast size differences between competitors, the end-user preferences towards weekends, evenings and alignment with termination of service with their previous service provider, this means that there is simply not enough data to propose a meaningful standard." Large scale transfers of users or "mutually agreed to projects" are excluded from the reporting requirements. — Reporting by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

CRTC to track wholesale quality of service in 2022

News | January 4, 2021

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CRTC to track wholesale quality of service in 2022

News | January 4, 2021

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