The simmering debate over Northern Canada’s telecommunications services heated up again this week as Northwestel Inc. asked the CRTC to re-examine parts of its most recent decision on the company’s services, and as the commission launched a planned inquiry into satellite “transport” services. In an application filed with the CRTC on Tuesday, Northwestel said the commission erred in its December decision on the company’s northern telecom services when it determined that the incumbent provider could not apply a “stand-alone surcharge” to remote northern...
One of the top issues for the CRTC's upcoming review of Northwestel Inc. and telecom services in the North will be how to better support newer technologies like advanced mobile services, said Paul Flaherty, Northwestel’s president. “Lots of people are going to talk about the interest of having more wireless and higher speed Internet and things like that,” Flaherty said in a phone interview last week. “But that doesn’t really fall under the regulation we have today, so are we going to expand the form of regulation?” In a decision in November 2011, the CRTC said it would take steps over two years to end Northwestel’s decades-old monopoly on...