CRTC wholesale access rates review
Your unique chance to have a say on independent telecom competition in Canada!
Campaign by the CRTC
Everyone needs fast, affordable and reliable telecommunications services. It's necessary to participate in today's economy and society. However for far too long, Canada's large telecom incumbent providers such as Bell, Rogers, TELUS, Cogeco and Videotron have maintained their stronghold and make it unduly challenging for smaller independent providers to offer affordable services by grossly inflating their mandated wholesale last mile access rates.
Wholesale last mile access rates play an integral role in our telecom industry by ensuring that independent providers are able to offer an adequate level of competition in the telecom marketplace by providing cost effective services to the majority of the Canadian population.
With a recent string of independent ISP acquisitions over the past year by incumbent providers including Bell with EBOX & Distributel, Videotron with Vmedia, TELUS with Start.ca & Altima and Cogeco with Oxio, urgent action is required to avoid the remaining independent providers from exiting the marketplace. This is why to help address the current crisis, the CRTC's new leadership has announced a formal consultation process (2023-56) to reassess the wholesale system on an expedited timeline and attempt to provide immediate relief for smaller providers.
As a measure to provide intrim relief, the CRTC is imposing an immediate 10% reduction on certain wholesale rates. However, as the rate reduction strictly applies to capacity based fees and does not include last mile wholesale access rates, the overall effective rate reduction is actually less than 2% which is insignificant. This is why it is important to let the CRTC know that at the very least, the 10% reduction should include all wholesale rates in order to yield a meaningful impact.
The CRTC is allowing all Canadians to have their voice heard in two phases, by April 24, 2023 for their interim expedited relief adjustments and by June 22nd, 2023 for the final review.