Bell and Telus are required to provide competitors, including each other, access to their fibre networks at mandated prices for the purpose of reselling internet plans to consumers.Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press
BCE Inc.’s BCE-T Bell Canada and Telus Corp. T-T are once again sparring over access to each other’s fibre networks, with each alleging that its rival has violated the federal telecom act and is acting to undermine competition.
The two telecoms have been engaged in a new round of disputes since at least last October, according to documents submitted to Canada’s telecom regulator.
It’s the latest set of arguments in a series of battles between the two telecom giants since a network-sharing policy, intended to improve competition and affordability, was finalized last summer.
As per the policy, Bell and Telus are required by the government to provide competitors, including each other, access to their fibre networks at mandated prices for the purpose of reselling internet plans to consumers.
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In a Jan. 20 application to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, Telus claimed that a week prior, Bell had unlawfully and “drastically degraded” Telus’s ability to sign up new customers, after threatening to do so in December. The details related to this alleged degradation were redacted.
Telus asked the CRTC to step in, saying the degradation “shows that Bell remains determined to harm Telus, and therefore competition and consumers, by any available means regardless of their legality.”
Specifically, Telus said the alleged degradation violated the Telecommunications Act in that it amounted to unjust discrimination by subjecting Telus to an unreasonable disadvantage. It also claimed Bell was breaking regulatory policy that stipulates Bell and Telus must each provide “workable” internet connection to companies hoping to resell internet to their customers.
But in its response filed on Jan. 26, Bell denied this interpretation, calling Telus “blatantly dishonest” and saying that its rival had “simply attempted to fabricate an artificial crisis.”
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Bell said it had provided Telus with all necessary functionality at all times and attributed the issue to a short-lived technical update. Bell claimed that after a “brief initial adjustment period” of “a day or so,” Telus’s volume of new orders had returned to normal levels.
But in a response filed Wednesday morning, Telus disputed Bell’s claim that the issue had been fully resolved, saying it was seeing continuing impacts.
Meanwhile, in its filings, Bell argued that Telus itself had not yet made available “even minimally workable systems” for Bell to start reselling Telus’s internet in Alberta and British Columbia, causing the company to essentially stop marketing that service. Last October, Bell said it planned to expand into Telus’s territory with wholesale internet, but has not yet officially launched those new plans.
Telus broke from its other large telecom peers in backing mandatory wholesale fibre access.Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press
“Unfortunately, Telus is disadvantaging these consumers by failing to provide a workable activation and installation process, which is impeding Bell’s ability to launch,” said Bell spokesperson David Marcille in a Wednesday e-mail.
In its Wednesday filing, Telus disputed Bell’s claims that it was hindering its expansion, and said that if Bell was encountering an issue, it could have brought an application before the CRTC, but did not.
It’s not the first regulatory spat between the companies. Last August, Bell alleged that Telus’s door-to-door sales representatives promoted illegal pirated television services. Telus attributed this to a small number of “rogue salespeople,” which it said it had disciplined, and instead accused Bell of “poaching” its customers by interfering with sales and installation processes.
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The continuing conflict underlines the challenges of enacting a divisive policy in a highly concentrated and technically complex industry such as telecommunications, where companies are backed by sophisticated legal teams. Bell and Telus are both aiming to pay down debt this year, but reduced immigration – meaning fewer potential customers – and lower wireless prices, in particular, have made it more difficult to grow the bottom line across the sector.
Wholesale fibre access was the most debated issue in telecom in recent years, with Telus breaking from its other large telecom peers in backing mandatory wholesale access. Bell, Rogers Communications Inc. and most other carriers were against the mandatory access.
The CRTC ruled in repeated decisions that giving telecoms, including incumbents, access to each other’s networks would generally benefit competition. However, the regulator has yet to finalize the mandatory fees that telecoms must pay to each other to access that service.