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Toutefois, la publication susmentionnée est un compte rendu textuel des délibérations et, en tant que tel, est transcrite dans l'une ou l'autre des deux langues officielles, compte tenu de la langue utilisée par le participant à l'audience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

              TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS BEFORE

             THE CANADIAN RADIO‑TELEVISION AND

               TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION

 

 

 

 

             TRANSCRIPTION DES AUDIENCES DEVANT

              LE CONSEIL DE LA RADIODIFFUSION

           ET DES TÉLÉCOMMUNICATIONS CANADIENNES

 

 

                          SUBJECT:

 

 

 

Review of price cap framework /

Examen du cadre de plafonnement des prix

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HELD AT:                              TENUE À:

 

Conference Centre                     Centre de conférences

Outaouais Room                        Salle Outaouais

140 Promenade du Portage              140, Promenade du Portage

Gatineau, Quebec                      Gatineau (Québec)

 

October 11, 2006                      Le 11 octobre 2006

 


 

 

 

 

Transcripts

 

In order to meet the requirements of the Official Languages

Act, transcripts of proceedings before the Commission will be

bilingual as to their covers, the listing of the CRTC members

and staff attending the public hearings, and the Table of

Contents.

 

However, the aforementioned publication is the recorded

verbatim transcript and, as such, is taped and transcribed in

either of the official languages, depending on the language

spoken by the participant at the public hearing.

 

 

 

 

Transcription

 

Afin de rencontrer les exigences de la Loi sur les langues

officielles, les procès‑verbaux pour le Conseil seront

bilingues en ce qui a trait à la page couverture, la liste des

membres et du personnel du CRTC participant à l'audience

publique ainsi que la table des matières.

 

Toutefois, la publication susmentionnée est un compte rendu

textuel des délibérations et, en tant que tel, est enregistrée

et transcrite dans l'une ou l'autre des deux langues

officielles, compte tenu de la langue utilisée par le

participant à l'audience publique.


               Canadian Radio‑television and

               Telecommunications Commission

 

            Conseil de la radiodiffusion et des

               télécommunications canadiennes

 

 

                 Transcript / Transcription

 

 

 

 

              Review of price cap framework /

          Examen du cadre de plafonnement des prix

 

 

 

 

 

BEFORE / DEVANT:

 

Richard French                    Chairperson / Président

Helen del Val                     Commissioner / Conseillère

Elizabeth Duncan                  Commissioner / Conseillère

Andrée Noël                       Commissioner / Conseillère

Stuart Langford                   Commissioner / Conseiller

 

 

 

 

ALSO PRESENT / AUSSI PRÉSENTS:

 

Marielle Giroux-Girard            Secretary / Secrétaire

Bob Noakes                        Staff Team Leader /

Chef d'équipe du personnel

Stephen Millington                Legal Counsel /

Rachelle Frenette                 Conseillers juridiques

 

 

 

 

HELD AT:                          TENUE À:

 

Conference Centre                 Centre de conférences

Outaouais Room                    Salle Outaouais

140 Promenade du Portage          140, Promenade du Portage

Gatineau, Quebec                  Gatineau (Québec)

 

October 11, 2006                  Le 11 octobre 2006

 


                           - iv -

 

           TABLE DES MATIÈRES / TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

                                                 PAGE / PARA

 

PREVIOUSLY AFFIRMED:  PAUL ROWE                   304 / 2044

PREVIOUSLY AFFIRMED:  SCOTT ANDREW COLLYER

PREVIOUSLY AFFIRMED:  MIRKO BIBIC

PREVIOUSLY AFFIRMED:  GEORGE HARITON

PREVIOUSLY AFFIRMED:  PETER DILWORTH

PREVIOUSLY AFFIRMED:  DAVID PETER KRAUSE

 

Cross-examination by The Consumer Groups (Cont.)  306 / 2059

Questions by the Commission                       343 / 2276

 

 

AFFIRMED:  RICK STEPHEN                           377 / 2535

AFFIRMED:  MIKE ANDERSON

AFFIRMED:  BRYCE SCHURR

 

Questions by the Commission                       378 / 2546

 

 

AFFIRMED:  JANET YALE                             424 / 2843

AFFIRMED:  WILLIE GRIEVE

AFFIRMED:  STEPHEN SCHMIDT

 

Examination-in-chief by Telus                     424 / 2845

Cross-examination by the Competitors              426 / 2871

Cross-examination by BCOAPO                       445 / 2994

 

AFFIRMED:  PAUL HANSEN                            453 / 3066

 

Cross-examination by BCOAPO (Cont.)               453 / 3068

Cross-examination by The Consumer Groups          497 / 3396

Questions by the Commission                       546 / 3731

 


                           - v -

 

               EXHIBITS / PIÈCES JUSTICATIVES

 

 

No.                                              PAGE / PARA

 

TELUS-2       Énoncé préliminaire de Société     569 / 3869

TELUS Communications, daté le

10 octobre 2006.

 

CRTC-1        Response to Interrogatory          569 / 3870

Bell(CRTC)26Jun01-1202 PC,

Abridged, 2 pages.

 

CRTC-2        Response to Interrogatory          569 / 3871

(Conf.)       Aliant(CRTC)26Jun01-1202 PC,

Supplemental, 3 pages.

 

CRTC-3        Response to Interrogatory          570 / 3872

(Conf.)       SASKTEL(CRTC)26Jun01-1202 PCR,

CONFIDENTIAL, 2 pages.

 

 

 


                           - vi -

 

                 UNDERTAKINGS / ENGAGEMENTS

 

 

No.                                              PAGE / PARA

 

Consumer      The Companies to provide           316 / 2119

Groups‑1      Dr. Roycroft's analysis of

productivity associated with DSL

service re: estimated using Bell

cost data.

 

CRTC‑1        Aliant & SaskTel to provide        363 / 2436

Clarification of the penetration

rates for Sasktel and Aliant's

Call Display feature, either as

part of a bundle or whether taken

on a service-by-service basis.

 

CRTC‑2        Aliant & SaskTel to provide        364 / 2436

Information regarding the

penetration rates for Sasktel

and Aliant's Answer feature,

either as part of a bundle or

whether taken on a

service-by-service basis.

 

CRTC‑3        Bell Canada to provide Data        374 / 2516

regarding demand for the 7

discretionary services listed in

CRTC exhibit no. 1 for the period

1998 to 2002.

 

CRTC‑4        Aliant to provide Data regarding   379 / 2560

demand for the discretionary

services listed in CRTC

confidential exhibit no. 2 for the

period 1998 to 2002

 

CRTC‑5        SaskTel to provide Data regarding  380 / 2566

demand for the discretionary

services listed in CRTC

confidential exhibit no. 3 for the

period 2000 to 2002

 

BCOAPO‑1      Telus to provide the percentage of 491 / 3349

exchanges that would be uncapped

pursuant to Telus' proposed

competitive presence test for BC

and Alberta respectively.

 


                          - vii -

 

                 UNDERTAKINGS / ENGAGEMENTS

 

 

No.                                              PAGE / PARA

 

CRTC-6        The Companies to provide           571 / 3879

Percentage of subscriber to the

companies' local primary exchange

service who subscribe to at least

one optional feature.

 

 

 

 


                 Gatineau, Quebec / Gatineau (Québec)

‑‑‑ Upon resuming on Wednesday, October 11, 2006

    at 0902 / L'audience reprend le mercredi

    11 octobre 2006 à 0902

2041             THE CHAIRPERSON:  Order, please.  A l'ordre, s'il vous plaît.

2042             Madam la secrétaire...?

2043             LA SECRÉTAIRE:  Bonjour, monsieur le Président.  Bonjour tout le monde.

2044             We will now pursue with counsel Janigan on behalf of Consumer Groups to finish his cross‑examination.

PREVIOUSLY AFFIRMED:  PAUL ROWE

PREVIOUSLY AFFIRMED:  SCOTT ANDREW COLLYER

PREVIOUSLY AFFIRMED:  MIRKO BIBIC

PREVIOUSLY AFFIRMED:  GEORGE HARITON

PREVIOUSLY AFFIRMED:  PETER DILWORTH

PREVIOUSLY AFFIRMED:  DAVID PETER KRAUSE


2045             MR. BIBIC:  Mr. Chairman, as Mr. Janigan gets set up there, before we start, if I may, I would request a few minutes to discuss an announcement that BCE and Bell Canada made this morning.  We don't believe that it affects this hearing or our proposal, but as a courtesy to the Panel and the participants, if you would allow me five minutes to go through it, I think it would be helpful.

2046             THE CHAIRPERSON:  Please do, Mr. Bibic.

2047             MR. BIBIC:  Thank you.

2048             As many of you undoubtedly already know from the news reports this morning, Bell Canada and BCE made a couple of announcements.

2049             First, we announced that BCE will be wound down and they will no longer be a holding company operation.

2050             Second, we announced that Bell Canada would be converted into an income trust, called the Bell Canada Income Fund.  Essentially, BCE, Bell Canada and various subsidiaries will be amalgamated.

2051             Bell Canada will continue to be the name, and BCE shares are to be exchanged on a one‑for‑one basis for trust units.

2052             We expect closing to take place in the first quarter of 2007.

2053             Third, Bell Aliant announced an intention to purchase all the units of Bell Nordique that it doesn't already own, and the hope of Bell Aliant would be to consolidate the Bell Aliant and the Bell Nordique operations and operate the two together as a single trust.


2054             Fourth, and very important, the fundamental business operations of Bell Canada and Bell Aliant will remain unchanged in all respects.

2055             Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

2056             THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you, Mr. Bibic.

2057             There may well be questions but they are all out of scope.

‑‑‑ Laughter / Rires

2058             THE CHAIRPERSON:  Mr. Janigan.

CROSS‑EXAMINATION / CONTRE‑INTERROGATOIRE (Cont.)

2059             MR. JANIGAN:  I just have a few questions to finish off our cross.

2060             When we concluded yesterday we were discussing the potential structure of a price cap formula and what might be a component that may be plugged in for an X factor.

2061             First of all, to be fair, Bell hasn't proposed itself an X factor, only that prices in the capped services shouldn't rise.

2062             Is that correct?

2063             MR. HARITON:  That is correct, Mr. Janigan.


2064             MR. JANIGAN:  And we were discussing how we might assess such a future productivity number, particularly with reference to the analysis that was contained in CRTC Interrogatory 1102 to The Companies.

2065             MR. HARITON:  That is correct.

2066             MR. JANIGAN:  For the purpose of such an exercise, as I understand from the evidence and from your answers yesterday, The Companies oppose looking at additional productivity or revenue enhancement brought about by the use of the capped PES and generated in unregulated services.

2067             MR. HARITON:  I think there was a little bit of possibly miscommunication at the end of the day yesterday, so let me try to clarify, if I can.

2068             I think, having looked at Dr. Raycroft's evidence, I picked the example of DSL and PES as perhaps an example of what you are getting at.

2069             Would I be correct in that?

2070             MR. JANIGAN:  Yes, that would be right.

2071             MR. HARITON:  Just as an example, of course.

2072             MR. JANIGAN:  Yes.

2073             MR. HARITON:  Let me trace that one through and perhaps that would help.


2074             Yes, indeed, the same access would be used for PES and DSL, in that DSL will ride on the same loop as has been provided for PES.

2075             That is the general situation.  There will be a few cases where you might have some dry loops specifically for DSL.  But the vast majority of cases are PES and then DSL riding on it.

2076             I think your position is that when a customer takes both PES and DSL, surely he should get a break on PES because, after all, you are using that underlying access for DSL, recognizing that both services will help to recover the cost of that access.

2077             That is true that when a customer does take DSL and PES on the same line there would be not cost allocation, because I don't believe in cost allocation, but there certainly would be a help in recovering costs.

2078             The flip side, of course, is that when a customer takes primary exchange service only ‑‑ I'm sorry I am talking in acronyms; PES means primary exchange service ‑‑ then that customer still gets an entire access but with no other service to help defray the cost of the access.  So you still have to provide an inter access.


2079             So in a rational competitive world what will happen is that if a customer is taking both PES and DSL, there would be a discount on the price of PES.  Indeed, this is what you see in bundles.

2080             So if a customer takes a bundle of PES and DSL, chances are there will be a discount.

2081             Certainly Bell offers discounts.  I know that the cable companies explicitly offer discounts.  If you take stand‑alone telephony from them ‑‑ which you can; they all offer it ‑‑ you will get one price.  If you take that stand‑alone telephone combined with other services like, for example, high speed Internet, you will get a different price.

2082             So that is a discount, and the discount grows with the number of services you take because the cost is shared.

2083             That is true for bundles.

2084             However, all of that does not detract from the fact that for stand‑alone PES, the entire loop is still necessary and the customer who is taking only PES should, in my mind, still pay the entire cost of the loop in his PES price.

2085             I had interpreted my job here to work out an X factor for stand‑alone PES service; i.e., we are looking at the regulation and capping of PES service, with the caveat that The Companies' position is that there shouldn't be an X.  But put that aside.


2086             In that case, for those customers there are no economies of scope from having DSL and PES on the same loop, simply because they are not taking both services.  They are taking only one service.  As a result, the X factor that applies to the stand‑alone should not make the adjustment that you are suggesting.

2087             If we were developing an X for bundles, bundles of DSL and PES, then indeed I would come up with a different X and the X would take that into account.  Indeed, I would expect the entire revenues for the bundle to cover the entire cost of the bundle.

2088             Just a final note on that, Mr. Janigan, I think.  I think we may be mislead by the fact that in the past and, indeed, even today we have a uniform pricing rule which in theory says PES is PES and will be priced the same for all customers within a band.

2089             In fact, PES is not PES everywhere the same.  If PES is bundled together with DSL, it will have different cost characteristics, and you may well ‑‑ in fact you should, the competitive market says you should ‑‑ price it differently.


2090             So, that is an example of where the uniform pricing rule may be a barrier to doing the right thing.  In fact, it is not because the Commission allows bundling, which effectively allows a different price.

2091             I hope that is helpful.  I don't know if that answers your question.

2092             MR. JANIGAN:  You have addressed the matter from the standpoint of the customer level.

2093             I was more looking at it from the standpoint of the macro level, that effectively the use of the PES exchange is generating additional revenue, additional opportunities for revenue for the company somewhere.  Those revenues or opportunities are not captured in looking at what the productivity should be of the PES exchange ‑‑ or the productivity dividend of the PES exchange going forward.

2094             As I understand it, that is essentially the position, that those kinds of opportunities should not be considered when we craft an X factor for the PES, accepting the fact that you don't believe there should be an X factor.

2095             MR. HARITON:  Just to agree with you, I think ‑‑ let me see if I do agree with you.

‑‑‑ Laughter


2096             MR. HARITON:  If you are looking at customers who purchase bundles of services, the price for the bundles in a competitive market will pick up the wider benefits of having a bundle, which include possibly help in recovering common costs.

2097             If you are looking at a stand‑alone service, it is not clear that you want to start looking at productivity in other parts of the company to share in, and this goes back to a discussion yesterday on the proper incentives and motivation.

2098             But just to give you an example, if you were to say, for example, as was argued very strongly in the eighties and to some extent the nineties, hey, well, you know, that local loop is being used for local service and for long distance service at the same time, surely, surely, surely we should have some kind of cost allocation between the two, or if not a cost allocation, which is obviously wrong, some kind of sharing from the long distance to the local.


2099             You would say, well, fine, in times when long distance is growing quickly, that would help give you a lower price for local, but what about the times when long distance may be falling off, perhaps because of the spread of e‑mail which substitutes for fax, for whatever reason, and all of a sudden the volume of long distance and the productivity of long distance is dropping, would that justify an increase in the price of local service?  The local service customer really has nothing to do with that drop, the person who is taking just local.

2100             In fact, in a competitive market, if you were to try to do that kind of thing, somebody would come along and say, I am going to be a local service provider only, I am not going to have to bring in the losses in long distance and have local help set them off.  So, you couldn't recover those costs anyway.

2101             So, any sharing would be one way, and that doesn't sound quite right.

2102             I do want to add one more thing.  I know I have been going on at length and I will try to keep this very short.

2103             Even if you add DSL to the PES service, it is not clear to me that you actually do improve the productivity all that much.  We did take a look at Dr. Roycroft's study and the numbers he has.  In fact, he calculated productivity without DSL and productivity with DSL for the entire companies, for a number of U.S. companies, subtracted the D2 and got the impact of DSL.


2104             The input values that he was suggesting in his studies seemed to me to be quite low.  He was looking at numbers like around $218 worth of extra capital for DSL in 1999, going to something like $118 in 2003.

2105             I went out and got what numbers I could for Bell, converted them to U.S. dollars, and the numbers are running from $1300 in 1999, about $1100 in 2000, about $890 in 2001, $675 in 2002, and about $520 in 2003.

2106             The operating expenses are harder to get at historically because we have records of plant.  We don't have as good records of operating expenses, unless Mr. Dilworth has something I don't know about.

2107             But Dr. Roycroft included $1.50 per month operating expenses in his study for DSL, which I calculate to be $18 a year.  The numbers I have seen for ILECs tend to run anywhere between $200 and $300.  So that even if you add $100 in for operating expenses, you will find that that is quite a lot more input than Dr. Roycroft has got.


2108             Productivity is really calculated as output divided by input, and if you substitute numbers for Canadian telcos in U.S. dollars into Dr. Roycroft's studies, keeping everything else constant, I think you find that the productivity impact of DSL just about goes away.  But I am sure that Dr. Roycroft and one of our counsel will have a discussion later on, so I won't pursue that.

2109             MR. DILWORTH:  I was just going to add to something that Mr. Hariton had said.

2110             The productivity opportunities that we have across the company are not all equal.  We have a much greater opportunity to drive productivity in our growth businesses, where we are investing much more quickly in infrastructure, and therefore able to take advantage of the technological advancements from the new infrastructure.

2111             When we are growing, it is much easier to find labour productivity because you can even get that by just not hiring as fast or maybe not hiring at all.  But when you are stagnant or you are shrinking, you know you then need to start taking people out of the business.

2112             So, when we do look at the cost reductions, for example, Mr. Janigan, that you and I looked at yesterday, we do see a lot of that opportunity is found in the growth engines.  In fact, I can just confirm that the analysis we have done does capture the benefits of those cost reductions.

2113             MR. JANIGAN:  You have taken me down a path I wasn't ready yet to go, but I just want to pursue that while we are on the topic.


2114             Mr. Hariton, you have indicated that you have done an analysis of the input values and come up with other numbers that suggest higher input values.  As I understand it, there may be a table or evidence might be prepared for Dr. Roycroft to respond to?

2115             MR. HARITON:  I could certainly prepare a table fairly quickly.

2116             MR. JANIGAN:  That would be useful if that could be obtained and Dr. Roycroft might be able to address that in his testimony.

2117             MR. HARITON:  Yes, I think that is fair.  We will get a table to you as quickly as we can.

2118             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.  Do you want an undertaking number on that?

2119             MR. MILLINGTON:  Yes.  We would want copies for everybody as well related to all the parties.

UNDERTAKING Consumer Groups‑1:  The Companies to provide Dr. Roycroft's analysis of productivity associated with DSL service re: estimated using Bell cost data.

2120             MR. HARITON:  Yes, I understand that.  We will make as many as necessary.


2121             MR. JANIGAN:  Let's leave aside the issue of what amount, if any, the DSL adds to the overall productivity estimate and go back to the principle itself.

2122             Back in the bad old days of rate of return regulation, as I understand when a regulated service generated a revenue that was outside of the  service that it was delivering, that revenue was included in the revenue requirement of the regulated company.  Am I correct?

2123             MR. HARITON:  That is certainly true, Mr. Janigan.

2124             MR. JANIGAN:  When we moved to price caps, the concern was first of all to break the link between prices and costs, and to give the regulated company the incentive to become more productive and more efficient, but also to find a way in which the ratepayers themselves could share in some fashion in the productivity or efficiency gains of the company during the period of the price gap.  Would that be correct?


2125             MR. HARITON:  The theory of the price cap framework was to set a productivity target for the regulated companies, and if the company was able to get a better productivity than that, it would keep it.  If not, the shareholders would eat it.

2126             By implication, the amount of the productivity target would go to the consumers.

2127             MR. JANIGAN:  Effectively, when the first price cap was set, what we attempted to do was to estimate in some fashion what kind of productivity or efficiency gains could be obtained by the company and, in so doing, set the price cap that contained an X factor that contemplated such productivity or efficiency gains?

2128             MR. HARITON:  We did our best, all of us.

2129             MR. JANIGAN:  The residential primary exchange service market, I would submit, is a key vehicle for delivering new services such as DSL, as well as providing effectively the driver through the customer relationship that enables you to deliver and market the new products and services that you have.  Would you agree with that?

2130             MR. HARITON:  Let me take that in two steps.


2131             The first one is I think you said the vehicle, the manner in which to deliver services.  I think that in the future, and the not too distant future, we will be seeing service providers of all kinds step away from an integrated service top to bottom.  What they will be doing, I believe, subject to check from my marketing friends, is they will be selling a platform, an access platform, which is just mere access, plus a bunch of applications which will be running on top of that platform, and different customers will be able to choose different packages of the access portion plus the application.

2132             So, if you want voice, you will get a voice application; if you want e‑mail, you get an e‑mail application; if you want something else, you will get that application, and presumably the number of applications you get and other factors will govern the price you pay.

2133             The access will be the vehicle, not the PES.

2134             MR. JANIGAN:  But the PES and the customer relationships developed from PES basically have provided you the basis for effectively marketing and delivering services in the future?


2135             MR. HARITON:  The PES itself, I think ‑‑ I might get shot for this ‑‑ is not a legacy service, but it's a service which perhaps is not a service of the future.  What we are going to see increasingly is, as I say, a migration to this new way of structuring services, so that the way forward is going to be that you will buy or any customer ‑‑ I don't mean to single out you, Mr. Janigan ‑‑ we will be buying access as an access service, and we will be paying for access as that service, and PES will be nothing but an application riding on that service.

2136             I am sure there will still be special bundles of access and voice for those people who need it, who want it, but I don't think that is going to be the way it is going to be.

2137             On the other one, and you made an important point, on the relationship between the customer and the carrier, it is true that relationships are important.  Relationships don't have to be through PES.  Relationships can be through a number of other services that a customer is already taking.  The obvious one is, for example, if they are taking cable service, there is a customer relationship there which can be used to market other stuff, but it doesn't have to be.

2138             I remember a few years ago my credit card company, I believe it was CIBC, used the fact that I had a credit card to market long distance services to me.  They were willing to give me a special deal combined with the credit card and so on.


2139             So, any customer relationship in the jargon can be leveraged, can be used, to help sell other products to the customer.  It doesn't have to be PES; it can be something else.

2140             MR. JANIGAN:  But surely the customer relationship developed through the years of providing local service that the companies have had is a much more important component than your credit card marketing long distance services to you?

2141             MR. HARITON:  If your suggestion is that I don't love my credit card company, you are probably right.

‑‑‑ Laughter

2142             MR. HARITON:  But that said, I think that was probably true for many, many years.  I think that the world is changing.  There used to be a sense of loyalty to one supplier.  You used to go to the neighbourhood grocery store and that's where you bought your groceries.  People shop around a lot more now.

2143             I think that is true for most parts of consumer expenses.  I suspect it is true for telecom.  People shop around now.  They don't just stick with the one.


2144             I am speaking of something which could be better addressed by my marketing friends, and I don't know if they have anything to add.

2145             MR. COLLYER:  Actually, I think you are doing quite well, Mr. Hariton.

‑‑‑ Laughter

2146             MR. HARITON:  Maybe they will give me a job, Mr. Chairman.

2147             MR. JANIGAN:  I just have one small question on your adjustments once again.  We were talking about it in interrogatory 1102.

2148             I notice that you have made an adjustment for anticipated line losses caused by reduction in use.  I wonder how reasonable it is to make those kinds of line losses adjustments on the one hand, which are driven in part, I would assume, by the VOIP offerings of the company itself on DSL on the one hand, and then of course exclude potential revenues or productivity enhancements that are coming from the use of the primary exchange service on the other.

2149             MR. DILWORTH:  The line losses that we will sustain over the next couple of years, the vast majority of those are coming from losses to cable companies.  There is some substitution to other technologies, but not significant losses due to our own offerings.


2150             MR. JANIGAN:  Voice over Internet, no?  There is more voice over Internet offered on lines accessed from Bell or the companies; is that what you are saying?

2151             MR. DILWORTH:  Pardon me?

2152             MR. JANIGAN:  It is entirely cable?

2153             MR. DILWORTH:  The vast majority of it will be cable.

2154             MR. JANIGAN:  And not from losses to other offerings by the companies or by firms that are using the companies?

2155             MR. DILWORTH:  The impact of the average working fill adjustment that we have made, what we have done is looked at the total lines that we are going to continue to have, including business and Centrex and other lines.  So, it is a look at our total network, lines that we have included here, and we have captured the impact on our cost from the reduction in average working fill, and that impacts on our costs.

2156             MR. JANIGAN:  Thank you.  I want to ‑‑

2157             MR. HARITON:  Just to clarify one little point, just to make sure, if a customer takes Bell Sympatico DSL and uses Vonage over it, that is not a line loss.


2158             MR. JANIGAN:  I want to talk about overall design of the price cap and its effectiveness.

2159             We have had now experience with two price caps, and I guess an extension of the second price cap.  I realize in this hearing that financial results or earnings are a sin that cannot be named, but it seems apparent that the companies have been able to meet their financing requirements and their legal requirements for service with reasonable ease under the entire course of the price cap.  Am I correct on that?

2160             MR. BIBIC:  I certainly wouldn't agree that we have been able to do it with relative ease, as you put it, Mr. Janigan.  I think there is quite a business dilemma that the companies and all incumbents, I suspect, have to go through, where multiple platforms, legacy platforms have to be managed at very high costs in a time of significant line loss, as well as investing in new growth platform.

2161             That's certainly not an easy task to manage declining legacy platforms, investing growth platforms, all in an environment where competitors are coming in and taking a lot of share.

2162             MR. JANIGAN:  Well, I didn't mean to discourage the abilities of the companies in that regard.


2163             Perhaps if we eliminate the clause with relative ease, you certainly met ‑‑ have been able to meet the financing requirements and the legal requirements for service that are imposed upon you by the various statutes.

2164             MR. BIBIC:  As far as the legal requirements are concerned, we clearly have no choice but to meet what requirements are imposed on us and you have to manage as best you can.

2165             Certainly if you look at the financial performance and growth in some quarters, there may be a debate with you, but we do the best we can and in the growth businesses we are, you know, executing and on our strategy and getting there.

2166             MR. JANIGAN:  There has been a reasonable amount of discussion on the evidence and to be fair not so much on the company's evidence, but primarily in Telus evidence of the perils of setting the bar too high and in a price cap arrangement.

2167             Can I ask you, how do we know if a price cap has been set too low or the bar has been set too low or too lenient towards the companies?

2168             What's the evidence that we should be looking to that would tell us that?

‑‑‑ Pause / Pause


2169             MR. HARITON:  I don't think there is a magic answer, Mr. Janigan.

2170             What you have to do is you have to look at ‑‑ the best you can do is look at the productivity that is being achieved and when you examine your X, you can look at the historic record of what the productivity has been and then you extrapolate and hope that you get a proper forecast of what it's going to be.

2171             Now, over and above that, if you can foresee with some certainty that certain events are going to happen that are clearly going to affect productivity and that are clearly going to be material, then I think it's proper to put them in.

2172             But at the end of the day, the way to know whether the bar has been set too low or too high is to look at the productivity that has been achieved and that's the best base I can think of.

2173             MR. JANIGAN:  The problem with that kind of analysis at this juncture, of course, is that the productivity is company‑wide whereas the regulated services are only a small portion of those.


2174             MR. HARITON:  Well, we do have a unit cost trends for this specific ‑‑ for at least one specific service, and we believe it's representative pretty well of the services that are being considered for an X, so that by looking at the history of the unit costs for that service, I think you do get a pretty good idea of what a reasonable productivity target would have been over the past period.

2175             MR. JANIGAN:  That captures primarily though inputs, does it not, and they won't capture all of the outputs that are associated with?

2176             MR. HARITON:  It will capture the outputs of those services because they are unit costs, so that obviously, as the service grows, the unit costs come down.

2177             It also captures economies of scope, as we mentioned yesterday, where other services are growing and as a result of, facilities like trunks, like switches which are used by both can then be sized more efficiently and so on.

2178             MR. JANIGAN:  Yes, to the extent ‑‑ sorry, I was just ‑‑

2179             MR. BIBIC:  I was just going to say that unlike as well in terms of getting it right so to speak, unlike Price Caps 1 and Price Caps 2, we have the advantage today of having competition in significant portions of incumbent territories which will serve to make sure that firms become as productive as possible in order to meet the competition.


2180             MR. JANIGAN:  I want to go back to Mr. Hariton's point, but I might as well pursue that while it's in my mind.

2181             What does that tell us about the design of the price cap in terms of whether or not it's too high or too low?

2182             MR. BIBIC:  That tells us that we should let competition determine ‑‑ make firms competition for us in terms to be productive without having to put a mechanistic X on top of the regime in cases where there is competition.

2183             So, part of the worry that you're expressing, in my view, about making sure we get it right goes away when competition determines or forces firms to be productive.  That was kind of the point that I was making.

2184             MR. JANIGAN:  As an argument it gets regulation in general rather than the components of the price cap?

2185             MR. BIBIC:  No, no.  It's an argument with respect to the applicability or advisability of having an X in this environment rather than.  I am not arguing for in this proceeding that there be no price caps generally.


2186             MR. JANIGAN:  By the state of competition you can adjudicate ‑‑ what I'm looking for is a test that tells me, hey! this price cap has been set too lenient for the company.  It should be set higher.

2187             The presence of competition one way or the other is not going to assist in that analysis.

2188             MR. BIBIC:  I hear what you're saying and presuming that there should be an X and, therefore, how do we know we get it right, fair enough.

2189             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.  Now back to Mr. Hariton, your point concerning the way in which economies of scope affect the analysis.  That effect is confined to the reduction of costs associated with having a multiplicity of services using the cap service.

2190             MR. HARITON:  That's correct, and that's certainly what economies of scope would lead to.  They would lead to lower costs because you've got multiple services using serial trunks.

2191             MR. JANIGAN:  Sorry.  I just want to get to this question.  But it wouldn't capture the revenues associated with those additional services or take into consideration the revenues because they are outside of the regular ‑‑


2192             MR. HARITON:  That's correct and I think that that is appropriate because if you do start counting, say, your revenues for other services, you might have, I don't know, a price war in mobility.  I know that's a purely hypothetical one, but ‑‑ you're not helping.

‑‑‑ Laughter / Rires

2193             You might have a price war in mobility and so, if you have a decrease in revenues for all those minutes that are using those trunks, inter‑office trunks, would you then say, okay, well then the price of local service has to go up to compensate?

2194             I mean, I think it leads you to these anomalies, not to say incongruous results.

2195             So that if you are going to regulate a set of services, you should really look at the performance of that set of services to the degree you can.

2196             Now, the performance of that set of services will definitely be impacted on what else is going on in your company and that's the kind of thing you should capture.


2197             But the other ‑‑ like revenues, are not really part of the calculation, I don't think because the revenues in the other parts of the company can be affected for all sorts of reasons.

2198             MR. JANIGAN:  I want to turn to ‑‑ briefly to your Objective Section and in particular, one element of that Objective Section, which I am hopeful we may actually agree upon.

2199             On page 17 and if you have your finger there, would you also turn to page 48 as well, which is the elimination under the referral account, and I'm going to look at your comments with respect to the objective of balancing the interests of the three main stakeholders.

2200             I take it the companies would agree that the idea that you price services to incent entry is a bad idea ‑‑ the competitive entry?

2201             MR. BIBIC:  Which particular objective are you referring to?

2202             MR. JANIGAN:  Well, I think what I am referring to hear is your comments with respect to that the Objection B :


"The balancing interest of the three main stakeholders in telecommunications market appears to contemplate that the prices of the companies should be regulated in a manner which protects the interests of the competitors."

2203             Thereby, you set a higher price in order to enable competitors to enter the market and establish themselves.

2204             You don't think that's a good regulatory objective, right?

2205             MR. BIBIC:  Well, there, certainly I agree with what we wrote in paragraph 50.  There is more to paragraph 50 than simply that dimension, there's pricing for competitor services, unbundling of network elements, things like that.

2206             MR. JANIGAN:  Yes.

2207             MR. BIBIC:  If you include ‑‑ if you take in that broader context, yes.

2208             MR. JANIGAN:  But, as a general principle, when a regulator goes to set rates, it shouldn't set rates on the ability of the competitors to get under those rates?


2209             MR. BIBIC:  Certainly in terms of the entry we have today we certainly don't think that the entrants today, the cable companies, need any protection and, to the extent an entity needed the protection of a price umbrella, I would argue that perhaps they shouldn't be entering in the first place given their inefficiency.

2210             MR. JANIGAN:  If I could ask, Mr. Hariton, what are the perils associated with setting a price for services which are based on the ability of competitors to meet or get under that price, from a regulatory or market sense?

2211             MR. HARITON:  Well, as a general theoretical proposition, if you set prices which are equal to the competitors' costs or price ‑‑ the ability of competitors to price, what you will do is you will basically block the incumbent from giving as good a price as he or she could to the customers and you're basically depriving customers of some benefits.

2212             But let me just say that this is a consequence of putting in a regulation which perhaps should not be there.

2213             What you should do, obviously, is you should let market forces play out and if market forces ‑‑ there are market imperfections, you have to solve market imperfections ‑‑ but the preference is, obviously, to let market forces play.

2214             MR. JANIGAN:  In other words, whether or not the competitors can meet a particular price shouldn't be a consideration when you set a regulated price.  Would you agree with that?


2215             MR. HARITON:  Well, I don't think you should set ‑‑ it is a consideration in that setting regulated prices is a tricky business and there's always a danger of setting them too high or too low or something, so that unless you absolutely have to set a regulated price, perhaps you shouldn't.

2216             MR. JANIGAN:  Well, let's assume we are at that juncture when we have to set a regulated price.  When you set that regulated price should you say, well, effectively the way we calculate the price that should be assessed here or should be charged here, it should be "x".

2217             MR. HARITON:  Mm‑hmm.

2218             MR. JANIGAN:  But if we charge "x" that will be too low to allow competitors to enter.  Is that an appropriate consideration?

2219             MR. HARITON:  It's a consideration that has been used in the past.

2220             MR. JANIGAN:  In your view, in your personal view, do you think that is an appropriate consideration?

2221             MR. HARITON:  My personal view is we should have markets that lead to efficiency and that means that we should allow market forces to set prices as much as we can.


2222             Now, you're saying, okay, take that away, Mr. Hariton, we think market forces can't do the job.  If market forces can't do the job, then the regulator must step in.

2223             MR. JANIGAN:  And in that circumstance when he steps in, the regulated price should be set on the basis ‑‑ should it be set on the basis of setting a price that the competitors ‑‑

2224             MR. HARITON:  No, the competitors' ability to enter or not enter should not be a consideration at that point.

2225             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.

2226             MR. HARITON:  Sorry, if that was your point.

2227             MR. JANIGAN:  That is the point.

2228             MR. HARITON:  I went on much too long.  I apologize.

2229             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.  On page 38 you have ‑‑ actually page 37, starts on page 37 and 38, it is kind of a ‑‑ I hate to characterize it as a strange little section, but it seems to be an anomalous section in your materials about services whose prices are below cost.


2230             And your proposal is, effectively, that where services are below cost that you be allowed to effectively not require the same regulation with respect to the price cap.

2231             Have I got that right, or can you summarize your proposal in this area?

2232             MR. BIBIC:  We're essentially saying that if there's a service that's below cost that's in a capped basket, we should have the flexibility to increase that price if we were to choose to do so to a level that is compensatory without having price cap constraints act as a disincentive to doing so.

2233             So, let me explain.  Obviously, we're running a business and it's not sound business practice to be offering services at non‑compensatory rates.  So, it would be reasonable to assume that in given circumstances we might want to seek to increase those rates to compensatory levels.

2234             The problem is that today the ‑‑ well, the mechanistic price cap rules act as a significant disincentive to that because if we ‑‑ if that given service is in a capped basket and we were to seek to increase those rates to compensatory levels, it would, of course, force us to reduce prices elsewhere to remain within the overall basket constraints.


2235             That would be causing market distortions, in our view, for the other services which would be driven down not by, you know, sound business practice, competition, et cetera, but merely because we're trying to raise rates for a service that is below cost to a compensatory level.

2236             So, in a nutshell, that's the foundation of our proposal to get that flexibility.

2237             MR. JANIGAN:  I guess if we are not going to go in and take a look at earnings and financial results in a general sense or the price cap, don't you find it a little odd that you want to dissect a little piece out of that and go in and rectify something that you feel is to the detriment of the company or ‑‑

2238             MR. BIBIC:  Not at all, Mr. Janigan.  I think what we're proposing in paragraph 123 is rather reasonable.


2239             We're not saying that we can do this at our own whim, we're saying if we identify a service that's below cost and there's a business imperative to increasing those services to compensatory levels, given that we would remain regulated, we will obviously approach the Commission, file a tariff, demonstrate that the rates are below cost and, upon the Commission being satisfied that that were the case, we would have the flexibility to do what needed to be done from a business perspective without the price cap constraints mechanistically stifling that.

2240             So, we would be demonstrating the cost.

2241             MR. JANIGAN:  Well, what about a circumstance where the intervenors believe that a service is wildly over earning; should we be able to go in and ask that the books be opened and the price for the service be adjusted accordingly?

2242             MR. BIBIC:  I would argue with you that that's out of scope.  We're talking about pricing regulation and not earnings regulation.

2243             MR. JANIGAN:  Well, it is out of scope when the number is going down ‑‑ or when the number is going up, but it is in scope when the number is going down.

2244             I mean, isn't that what you are saying?

2245             MR. BIBIC:  Not at all.  This is about pricing and pricing in relationship to costs which we would be establishing in accordance with well‑established phase 2 costing principles in any given circumstance.


2246             MR. JANIGAN:  But haven't we established that already with the implementation of the price cap?  Why do we go back and attempt to ‑‑ we have broken the link between prices and costs, why do we want to go back and re‑establish that; apart from the fact that it is, you know, financially helpful to the companies?

2247             MR. BIBIC:  Well, I mean, it comes down to a quite simple proposition that we're running a business and it's not very wise to run a business offering services that are below cost, and that's really the reason for the request for flexibility.  There's nothing more to it than that.

2248             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.  My last point deals with your recommendation concerning the length of the price cap.

2249             And I am a little curious, given what you are requesting in this hearing and the fact that there is no financial or earnings true‑up that is associated with these price caps, that you would want as short a period as possible.

2250             It would seem to me that, given what you are requesting and given the nature of the review, that you might want as long a period as possible.  Certainly that is the position of TELUS in this matter, or appears to be.


2251             MR. BIBIC:  We believe ‑‑ you won't be surprised to hear me say this ‑‑ but we believe that, you know, the market has been in a state of flux for the last couple of years and will continue to be in that state for the next couple of years in terms of the vigorous entry, and in two years we might be in a better position, all of us in the industry, to determine what to say the competition is and whether or not we need pricing constraints like the ones we have today at all.

2252             Rather than impose regulatory rules in the form of traditional price caps that we are all accustomed to for a lengthy period of time, let's impose one for two years along the lines that we propose and see where we are with the state of competition in two years.

2253             That is the reasoning behind our proposal.

2254             MR. JANIGAN:  Yes.  Well, if your proposal is accepted, of course, if your uncapping proposal is accepted, all we are talking about virtually is the price cap applicable for about 15 percent of your customers.


2255             MR. BIBIC:  You are going back to the revenue number.  I'm not sure it is 15 percent of the customers.  I don't know what the number is on a customer basis, but certainly it is revenues.

2256             And it is not the case for Bell Aliant and it is not surprising, as I mentioned yesterday, that we see those numbers.

2257             I'm not sure what you are asking.  Are you suggesting or asking me if a longer period of time would be acceptable?

2258             MR. JANIGAN:  I guess what I am looking at is, first of all, your proposal is that we only cap basically a small minority of customers.

2259             Second, with the forbearance decision in place, if in fact competition develops as you predict, you are going to be out of regulation anyway.

2260             So why do we have a two‑year price cap?

2261             MR. BIBIC:  For those very same reasons.

2262             Given the competition is taking hold, has taken hold and competitors have indicated that it will take hold and they have no intention to go away, the issue is let's revisit this in two years and see if we need it at all.

2263             I'm still not clear whether or not you are suggesting it should be longer, or if you are asking our position on that.


2264             MR. JANIGAN:  In most circumstances, for example, if you have everything that you wanted, we are talking about a review of a cap that is involving an incredibly small number of customers.

2265             Ordinarily in that circumstance you would want to put in place a regulatory régime that you wouldn't have to go back and continually revisit or revisit in a two‑year timeframe.

‑‑‑ Pause

2266             MR. BIBIC:  I guess we are having a debate over whether or not a longer period of time would be advisable.

2267             Is that it?

2268             MR. JANIGAN:  That's correct.

2269             MR. BIBIC:  If that's the question, I would say if our proposal were to be accepted, I think we could accept a longer period of time, like four years, provided, however, that the Commission would permit ILECs to engage in structural adjustments as they may be necessary.

2270             I can't predict what would be necessary, but as they may be necessary without letting the rigid price cap rules which would be imposed now impede the ability to modify the business and adjust with the times and with competitive forces.


2271             So if our proposal is accepted and we have the flexibility to come back to the Commission and say look, we would want to engage in some kind of structural reform on the product offering side, for example, and have a bit of flexibility, a longer period of time would be okay.

2272             MR. JANIGAN:  Thank you, Mr. Chair.

2273             Thank you, panel.  Those are all of my questions.

2274             THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you, Mr. Janigan.

2275             Commissioner Langford.

2276             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  Thank you, Mr. Chair.

2277             I'm sure we all have questions and we will have some time after different intervenors have come in.  But just one point on paragraph 123 might be helpful to me anyway in preparing some questions for later.

2278             This is the notion that you were discussing with Mr. Janigan of services where the prices are below cost.


2279             I find it hard to grapple with that in the abstract.  The concept that you shouldn't be the Robin Hood of telephone carriers is not difficult to grapple with, or perhaps the Mother Theresa.  I'm not sure which would be a better analogy.

2280             Could you provide us with some examples, one or two or three; that at least we could look at it in a concrete way and if we have further questions we could prepare them in a little more pointed fashion.

2281             MR. ROWE:  Commissioner Langford, I can do that.

2282             Many of these services that we believe are below cost are in fact very old data services which are used by business customers; example, analog local private lines, those types of things.

2283             Clearly because of the end of life of these services, in fact Bell is having a more difficult time to actually provide quality of service for these.  The equipment itself is actually manufacturer discontinued.  In some cases the customer premise equipment can't even be purchased on the grey market.

2284             So in fact we are having to ensure that when a terminal comes out of service that we in fact grab hold of it and put it in a sacred place so that we can continue to give service to the customers that remain.


2285             These services are really continuously more and more difficult to maintain and that's why the costs are going up.

2286             In fact, because the prices are where they are, if we were to show customers what the true cost and price for that service is, they themselves would be starting to think about moving to some of the new services where clearly all companies are investing in those services and putting their focus in terms of quality of service, et cetera.

2287             It is really a way to show customers how to evolve their services in conjunction with where technology is going and with where the overall focus of the market is.

2288             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  But there is an application process now for withdrawing services like that or moving the prices up.

2289             Is it the effect on the overall basket situation that bothers you?


2290             MR. BIBIC:  Certainly there is a process for withdrawing services.  Some of these customers may not want to be withdrawn.  But the issue is if you were to raise the price, as I mentioned earlier, because the Commission has approved it, you have to take corresponding decreases which may not be advisable from a business perspective or which distorts the market outcome for those other services.

2291             So it is yes to your question.

2292             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  So if you are trying to induce people to switch ‑‑ essentially what this seems to be all about, if I understand Mr. Rowe ‑‑ to something more practical from your point of view, technologically practical, do you envisage still coming before us with a tariff application to raise those prices, just that it wouldn't impact on the overall basket?

2293             MR. BIBIC:  That is absolutely correct.

2294             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  Are there any residential prices on your list?  I am thinking of something that a going‑in price was set two price cap proceedings ago but somehow time has passed it by.

2295             MR. ROWE:  No, Commissioner, not to my understanding.

2296             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  This is strictly a business proposition in all ways.

2297             MR. BIBIC:  It is, yes.

2298             Paragraph 123 deals with business.

2299             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  Strictly business.


2300             MR. BIBIC:  You are starting to raise issues about contribution on the residential side, I suspect, which are more complex and complicated, and were not intended to be addressed by paragraph 123.

2301             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  I wasn't even going to ask, but I'm always grateful for volunteered information.

2302             Thank you very much.  That is my question, Mr. Chair.

2303             THE CHAIRPERSON:  Madam Secretary.

2304             THE SECRETARY:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

2305             I was notified by a few panels that they no longer intend to cross‑examine The Companies' witnesses.  They are l'Union des consommateurs, BCOAPO et al and City of Calgary.

2306             So we will now proceed with Commission counsel Frenette.

2307             Thank you.

2308             MS FRENETTE:  Thank you, Madam Secretary.

2309             Good morning, gentlemen.

2310             MR. BIBIC:  Good morning.

2311             MS FRENETTE:  My first question is fairly straightforward.


2312             You filed as part of your evidence a document entitled "Competitive Landscape".  I think it is filed as Appendix 1 to your submission.

2313             Who authored that particular report?

2314             MR. BIBIC:  It was authored by an individual in the Regulatory Affairs Department of Bell Canada, under my direction.

2315             MS FRENETTE:  Could we perhaps get a specific name?

2316             MR. BIBIC:  Well, there were a number of authors, but the principal author would be Mike MacInnis of Bell Canada.

2317             MS FRENETTE:  Thank you.

2318             I would turn to your section regarding the uncapping test for connectivity services and in particular page 32 of that evidence.

2319             MR. BIBIC:  Yes.

2320             MS FRENETTE:  At page 32 you outline your proposed test for uncapping local PSTN services.

2321             Is that right?

2322             MR. BIBIC:  Correct.

2323             MS FRENETTE:  I would like to get some clarification on this particular proposal.

2324             Based on yesterday's testimony, and particularly that of you, Mr. Bibic, I must admit I'm a bit confused now as to exactly what you are proposing.


2325             If I look at paragraph 99 of your submission ‑‑ and I will just read that particular paragraph ‑‑ you state:

"As in the case for IXPL and local exchange private line services, the appropriate test to determine whether The Companies' residential and business local exchange services in any exchange should be uncapped were the capacity of another provider of those services to offer those services in that same exchange."  (As read)

2326             You provided some clarification yesterday in your testimony as to what this capacity to provide these services means.

2327             If you have a copy of the transcript, I would like to point you to page 78 of the transcript.

2328             MR. BIBIC:  I have it.

2329             MS FRENETTE:  Line 577.

2330             MR. BIBIC:  Yes.


2331             MS FRENETTE:  If we could just go through this together, you say here ‑‑ and this is with reference to the uncapping test:

"MR. BIBIC:  Let me go through the elements of the test.  It's fairly important.

In your example, business primary exchange service of the incumbent would be uncapped in an exchange if the facilities‑based competitor were in that exchange offering service to customers in that exchange ‑‑ in your example, the customer is in a building ‑‑ and actually had at least one customer in the exchange."

2332             And then toward the bottom of the transcript, at line 581 ‑‑

2333             MR. BIBIC:  Yes.

2334             MS FRENETTE:  ‑‑ you say:


"That is the rationale behind our test and the three specific elements of the test:  the presence of the facility, offering of service and the securing of at least one customer."

2335             So are we in agreement, then, that the proposed company's uncapping test is premised on three elements:  the presence of a facility, the offering of the service and the securing of at least one customer?

2336             MR. BIBIC:  I should go through this again.  I didn't mean to cause confusion.

2337             As I said yesterday, it is fairly important.

2338             I would turn your attention to the previous page, page 77, starting at 571, where I say:

"For the purposes of the service in question.  So if it were a business primary exchange service, yes."

2339             I was talking primarily about business primary exchange services.

2340             Then if I turn your attention to paragraph 574, Mr. Koch confirmed that he was talking about local exchange services for the purposes of these questions.

2341             I took him to mean primary exchange service, and then I gave the test.


2342             Let me go through the test for each service.

2343             If we are talking about residential primary exchange service or the business equivalent, business primary exchange service, then our test is as I have outlined in paragraph 79, which is if a facilities‑based competitor has entered an exchange is offering service to a customer in that exchange and has a customer in that exchange, then we would be uncapped.

2344             That is for PES, business and residential.

2345             The paragraph you pointed me to this morning, at paragraph 99, is a reference to private line services.

2346             For private line services, our test is slightly different.  Let me take ‑‑

2347             MS FRENETTE:  I'm trying to catch up here.

2348             MR. BIBIC:  All right.

2349             MS FRENETTE:  So in paragraph 99 you are talking about private line or are you talking about local PSTN?

2350             MR. BIBIC:  No.  Paragraph 99, as you can read, says:


"As in the case for IXPL and local exchange private line services..."

2351             So paragraph 99 deals with local or/and inter‑exchange private line services.

2352             THE CHAIRPERSON:  Why wouldn't it say "as" then?

2353             MR. BIBIC:  In paragraphs 98 and 99 we are really talking about the concept of using the exchange across the board.

2354             So for all services, we say that the proper geographic area is the exchange.

2355             If I went through the test for each of the services, I think it would help.

2356             Please allow me to go through services and then you can ask questions.

2357             MS FRENETTE:  Sure, absolutely.

2358             MR. BIBIC:  So for business and residential primary exchange service, the test is as I have explained yesterday in the transcript.

2359             MS FRENETTE:  And for business and residential, the test is identical.

2360             MR. BIBIC:  Correct.

2361             MS FRENETTE:  Okay.

2362             MR. BIBIC:  For private line services, there is local private line services and inter‑exchange private line services.


2363             Let me start with local private line services.

2364             Again the geographic area would be the exchange, just like for primary exchange services.  What we are saying for local private line services is if there is one alternative provider of local private line services offering service at a particular bandwidth in an exchange, all ILEC bandwidth at equal or lesser bandwidths would be uncapped.

2365             For example, for local private line services if there is a competitor in an exchange offering DS3 or DS3 equivalent bandwidth within that exchange, then all private line services offered at DS3 or lower bandwidths within that exchange would be uncapped, both digital and analog.

2366             So for private line services, that would be the test.

2367             Chairman French, in terms of paragraph 99, where we say "as is the case for IXPL", the "as" refers to the fact that the alternative competitor would have capacity.


2368             In the case of primary exchange or business exchange services, we are saying that the competitor has a facility with the capacity to provide services to at least one customer and has that one customer.

2369             On the private line side, we are saying that the competitor has the capacity to offer equivalent bandwidth, and therefore all bandwidth of ours at that same capacity or lower should be uncapped.

2370             MS FRENETTE:  To reiterate, then, the test as it applies to local PSTN services and business PSTN services, would it be solely based on capacity, or would it also be based on the offering of the service and securing at least one customer?

2371             MR. BIBIC:  Correct.  It is the fact that there is a network in place in that exchange, offering service at least one customer, correct, as stated yesterday.

2372             MS FRENETTE:  Thank you.

2373             If I could then take you to Interrogatory Bell(CRTC) dated August 8th, 1203.

2374             I will give you some time to get to that particular interrogatory.

‑‑‑ Pause

2375             MS FRENETTE:  Are we there?

2376             MR. BIBIC:  I have it.


2377             MS FRENETTE:  In that particular interrogatory, you have identified for the Commission a series of exchanges that would pass your competitive presence test.  Those exchanges are listed in Attachment 1 of that interrogatory.

2378             MR. BIBIC:  Are you referring to the Bell Aliant version or the Bell Canada version?

2379             MS FRENETTE:  The Bell Canada version.

2380             MR. BIBIC:  You will have to give me a moment to catch up again.

2381             MS FRENETTE:  Sure.

‑‑‑ Pause

2382             MR. BIBIC:  I'm not with you.

2383             MS FRENETTE:  Great.  Could I take you to page 5 of 17 of that attachment.

2384             MR. COLLYER:  I think we have 5 of 7.

2385             Is it Sherbrooke at the top of the page?

2386             MS FRENETTE:  Yes.  I have 5 of 17.  I hope we are on the same page.

2387             MR. BIBIC:  Are you in Attachment 1 or Attachment 2?

2388             MS FRENETTE:  Attachment 1.

2389             MR. BIBIC:  Okay.  So Sherbrooke is at the top of the page and Papineauville at the bottom?

2390             MS FRENETTE:  That is right.

2391             MR. BIBIC:  Okay.


2392             MS FRENETTE:  If I could take you about 12 rows down, do you see Aylmer?

2393             It is just a local example I have chosen.

2394             MR. BIBIC:  I do.

2395             MS FRENETTE:  And then a couple of lines after that, there is Gatineau, the same region.

2396             MR. BIBIC:  I do.

2397             MS FRENETTE:  And you list as an alternate service provider Vidéotron.

2398             MR. BIBIC:  Correct.  We do.

2399             MS FRENETTE:  Are you aware of whether Vidéotron is actually providing service in those two exchanges for local telephony?

2400             MR. BIBIC:  Give me a moment to confer with my colleagues?

2401             MS FRENETTE:  Sure.

‑‑‑ Pause

2402             MR. BIBIC:  We put this information together based on the best information we had available.  Primarily what we did, for the purposes of constructing this table, was to examine competitor websites and registrations they filed with the Commission declaring themselves as CLECs in particular exchanges.


2403             So, it's on the basis of those two data points that we came up with this.

2404             So, this is based on the best information available to us from Videotron websites and their registrations with the CRTC.

2405             MS. FRENETTE :  So, would you agree with me that if in actually Videotron isn't offering local telephony service at this time, that it wouldn't be an exchange that would satisfy your uncapping test?

2406             MR. BIBIC:  I would absolutely agree with you and that's the reason we propose the mechanism that I discussed with Mr. Koch yesterday, which is the best way to get this information is to have the competitors themselves quarterly inform 213, indicating whether or not they're in an exchange, but I agree with you.   

2407             MS. FRENETTE :  Thank you.

‑‑‑ Pause / Pause

2408             MS. FRENETTE :  I would now like to touch upon briefly this section of your submission entitled "Discretionary Services" and I believe it's found at page 40 of your evidence.

2409             MR. BIBIC:  Yes.


2410             MS. FRENETTE :  Here, if I understand your proposal correctly, you would be proposing to create a new basket consisting of discretionary services?

2411             MR. BIBIC:  We would be proposing to uncap discretionary services.

2412             MS. FRENETTE :  It would be part of a distinct basket though?

2413             MR. BIBIC:  I mean, I don't think ‑‑ I think baskets are kind of irrelevant when you're uncapping them.

2414             MS. FRENETTE :  Okay.

2415             MR. BIBIC:  So, in essence, the reason I hesitate and I answered the first time the way I did is because if they're uncapped, there is no need, in our view, for a distinct basket for them.

2416             MS. FRENETTE :  Fair enough.  So, let me just rephrase my question then.

2417             You've provided the Commission with a list of discretionary services that would be uncapped?

2418             MR. BIBIC:  Correct.  We've provided a list of those we feel should be uncapped.

2419             MS. FRENETTE :  Thank you.  And again, at page 40 of your submission, I would like to go through with you paragraph 137 where you discussed the rationale for uncapping these particular services.


 And I think it's useful perhaps just to go over it together.  You state :

"Discretionary services are quite different from connectivity services though they are found useful by some customers to meet their communication needs.  They are not fundamentally important in the way that connectivity services are.

One would expect that a service that is seen as economically or socially important to individuals would be purchased by the vast majority of potential customers.  This has been the observation, for instance, in the case of basic pads for many decades.

The situation is quite different for discretionary services."

2420             And then you go on to discuss various penetration rates for various discretionary services.

So, if I am not characterizing your rationale correctly, please correct me.


2421             If I understand your position correctly then, it's that discretionary services are quite different from connectivity services.  They are not fundamentally important services and this notion of "fundamentally important" is reflected in the penetration rates of these services.

2422             Is that correct?

2423             MR. BIBIC:  Yes, by and large and I would just add that, in a way, if there is a view that there should be regulation of essential services, which I think we can ‑‑ most people would feel that connectivity services might be.

2424             If there is a view to regulate essential services for the reason that they are essential, we don't feel that it's the same situation for discretionary services in the sense that they are not of the same social and economic importance to justify the same type of regulation for the citizenry as a whole.

2425             MS. FRENETTE :  Okay.  If we could just perhaps then discuss the penetration rates that you've outlined in your submission, there is a few footnotes here at page 41 that I would like to get a little bit of clarification on.


2426             At footnote 88, you indicate ‑‑ and this is with respect to Bell Canada service only ‑‑ that the call display and call answer features are the most popular with penetration rates exceeding 40 per cent.

2427             And would I be correct in assuming that these penetration rates reflect the total take‑up of these services either as part of a bundle or on a stand‑alone basis?

2428             MR. COLLYER:  Yes, that's correct.

2429             MS. FRENETTE :  Thank you.  And then, if we go back to the top of page 41, there is a sentence that references footnote 89.  Here, you indicate that :

"The penetration rates for discretionary services amongst the customers of Sasktel and former Aliant are typically low as well."

2430             And you reference that statement with the footnote 89 where you indicate that call display is the exception, having a penetration rate of 60 per cent.

2431             And perhaps just to clarify on the record, is this 60 per cent penetration rate application to both Sasktel and Aliant?


2432             MR. BIBIC:  Subject to check, I believe that it is for both.

2433             MS. FRENETTE :  Thank you.  And could I also perhaps get a sense of the penetration rate for the call‑answer feature for both Sasktel and Aliant, given that Bell Canada has provided the Commission with some information on the penetration rate for that particular feature?

2434             MR. BIBIC:  I'll inquire to see if it's available and if it is, we will provide it.

2435             MS. FRENETTE :  Thank you.  And just so that we can perhaps firm this up in an undertaking, if the representative from Sasktel and Aliant could ensure that the information provided to the Commission also provides some clarification as to whether or not those penetration rates reflect both the bundling and the stand‑alone take up for these services.

2436             MR. BIBIC:  We can certainly do that, yes.


UNDERTAKING CRTC‑1:  Aliant & SaskTel to provide Clarification of the penetration rates for Sasktel and Aliant's Call Display feature, either as part of a bundle or whether taken on a service‑by‑service basis.

UNDERTAKING CRTC‑2:  Aliant & SaskTel to provide Information regarding the penetration rates for Sasktel and Aliant's Answer feature, either as part of a bundle or whether taken on a service‑by‑service basis.

2437             MS. FRENETTE :  Thank you.  Let's take a look at the penetration rates then from another perspective.

2438             You've indicated that the penetration rates for discretionary services tend to show that these services aren't fundamentally important in the way that connectivity services are.

2439             Is that correct?

2440             MR. BIBIC:  That's correct and that's ‑‑ I mean I think that's displayed in part as well by the chain rates that we see for these types of services, what penetration rate and chain rate.

2441             MS. FRENETTE :  Okay.  If I could then just refer you to Appendix 2 of your evidence where you list the services which you were proposed be uncapped because they're discretionary.

2442             MR. BIBIC:  We have it.


2443             MS. FRENETTE :  Okay.  If we go over some of these services, for example, just ‑‑ we'll take Bell Canada because it's the first one on the page ‑‑ there is a series of services that are listed here and if I look down about seven lines down, there is tariff item 85, Operator Services.  Do you see that?

2444             MR. COLLYER:  Yes.

2445             MS. FRENETTE :  This is a per‑use charge, isn't it?

2446             MR. COLLYER:  Yes, it is.

2447             MS. FRENETTE :  Okay.  And then, a few more lines down, probably three quarters of the way down, there is a service called "Diagnostic Testing Charge".  Do you see that?

2448             MR. COLLYER:  Tariff 4215, yes.

2449             MS. FRENETTE :  Yes.  And this again is a per‑use charge?

2450             MR. COLLYER:  That is correct, yes.


2451             MS. FRENETTE :  Okay.  When I look at the services that are listed by Bell Canada, I see that there is actually quite a number of services that are based on a per‑use charge and so I guess the difficulty that I'm having with the whole analysis based on penetration rates, is that these per‑use charges, it's very difficult to assess the importance of these services because you can't really examine them, based on penetration.

2452             So, is there any measure that the Commission could use to assess whether or not these types of services are, in fact, fundamentally important or are not fundamentally important?

2453             MR. BIBIC:  There is a number of measures.  Let's then go back to the ‑‑

2454             First, they are not essential connectivity services, which is the main point we were making, which leads to kind of public policy submission that they don't need to be regulated the same way.  So, that's one.

2455             Two, it would be the revenue.  Certainly I suspect that the revenues from ‑‑ that we generate from these services which could be examined through price cap filings would show the fact that they are not as fundamentally important as connectivity services.

2456             Customers wouldn't have to actually use them if they didn't feel that they derived a value from them, given the particular price at any point in time.


2457             So, then there is a penetration rate for some of these and a chain rate, so it's a combination of all those factors, but that the over‑arching rationale is that they are not connectivity services and hence, of such an essential nature as what we would typically perceive is connectivity to be.

2458             MS. FRENETTE :  Just one moment.

‑‑‑ Pause

2459             MR. COLLYER:  Excuse me.  Actually, just with respect to item No. 85, operator services, just in discussing here, actually we've been looking at this quite closely with respect to another project that we've got, and going back from 2003 through until this year we've seen actually a greater than 10 per cent decline on a year‑over‑year basis of the use of these services.

2460             I'm not sure if you're familiar with this tariff item that actually refers to directory assistance primarily.

2461             MS FRENETTE:  Mm‑hmm.

2462             MR. COLLYER:  And, as I'm sure you're aware, there are, you know, a multitude of substitutes with respect to directory assistance, whether it's, you know, other directories and alternate directory suppliers or, you know, most importantly on‑line services.


2463             So, it's in a very, very strong decline right now.

2464             MS FRENETTE:  So, we could use, for example, usage as a measure of the importance of these services, I guess, based on a certain lapse of time?

2465             MR. COLLYER:  We could.  I think the Commission already has available to them through the price cap filings the revenues and I think you also know the price history on the services.  So, it would be quite easy for you all to derive the usage.

2466             MR. BIBIC:  Just to be clear, I mean, we don't propose a specific test to determine whether they're discretionary other than they're not essential and here's an illustrative list of things we feel are not essential.

2467             So, other than that, we actually hadn't proposed a bright‑line test based on penetration or churn or revenue or elasticity, for example, just to ‑‑ from our perspective.

2468             MS FRENETTE:  Understood.

2469             MR. BIBIC:  I understand the nature of the questions.

2470             MS FRENETTE:  Okay.  If we could then perhaps jump back to your main submission at page 43 and, again, this deals with discretionary services.


2471             And we deal here, I guess, with the discipline by market conditions that are at play for these particular services.

2472             And at paragraph 149 you say:

"That for discretionary services, the issue of customer choice is quite different than in the case of services like basic exchange service.  For discretionary services, if the service is unsatisfactory, the customer can choose not to purchase it."  (As read)

2473             Is that correct?  You stand by that?

2474             MR. BIBIC:  That is correct.

2475             MS FRENETTE:  And I am assuming that a customer can be dissatisfied with a service by reason of the fact that the service is priced too high, for example?

2476             MR. BIBIC:  That might be one of the reasons for their dissatisfaction, yes.

2477             MS FRENETTE:  And even in non‑competitive markets, they could exercise that choice by simply not taking the service, if it is priced too high?


2478             MR. BIBIC:  That is correct.  And, of course, in areas where there are choices they can exercise the ultimate choice which is to walk over to the competitor, which would be another factor that I don't think should be ignored.

2479             As well, I mean, many cases, just from a marketing perspective, prices for individual stand‑alone discretionary services may increase but there is always bundles that are available that offer attractive pricing packages at any given point in time.

2480             And I also would add that the nature of and the very essence of treating discretionary services differently than basic services has been accepted in the cable environment where discretionary broadcasting services are always treated differently from a regulatory perspective in that environment.

2481             MS FRENETTE:  Okay.  And there was an interesting discussion that took place between yourself and Mr. Janigan yesterday and I'd like to perhaps point you to page 282 of the transcript.

2482             MR. BIBIC:  I have it.

2483             MS FRENETTE:  Line 1899.

2484             MR. BIBIC:  Yes.

2485             MS FRENETTE:  Mr. Janigan says:


"The overall take‑up of these services doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't important to people that take them up."  (As read)

2486             Mr. Bibic, you respond:

"Those people who take them perceive a value at the particular price.  If the price were lowered, perhaps more people would subscribe to them; if the prices were increased, few people would subscribe to them."  (As read)

2487             And I'd like to perhaps examine that hypothesis with you.

2488             If I could get you to turn to an exhibit which I circulated to you yesterday afternoon, it is response to interrogatory Bell(CRTC)26Jun01‑1202, and this was a response provided by Bell in the context of the Commission's previous price cap proceeding back in 2001 and I believe that Madam Secretary has assigned it an exhibit, CRTC Exhibit No. 1.

2489             Do you have that document?

2490             MR. BIBIC:  I do.


2491             MS FRENETTE:  And at page 2 of that particular document you provided the Commission with seven individual optional services which generated the most revenues for the Company in the year 2000.  Is that right?

2492             MR. BIBIC:  That is correct.

2493             MS FRENETTE:  And those rates in 2000 were compared to the rates that were in effect for these seven services in 1998?

2494             MR. BIBIC:  That is correct.

2495             MS FRENETTE:  And so if we look at the first service listed, which is Call Answer, the rate in 1998 was $5 and then in 2000 it was $7; right?

2496             MR. BIBIC:  That's correct.

2497             MS FRENETTE:  That is a 40 per cent increase in two years; is that right?

2498             MR. BIBIC:  I believe that's right.

2499             MS FRENETTE:  And then if we look at the last three services on the list, you have got Call Return, Call Forwarding, Call Screen, the rates for all of these three services in 1998 were $3; is that correct?

2500             MR. BIBIC:  They were.

2501             MS FRENETTE:  And then in 2001 they were $5; is that correct?

2502             MR. BIBIC:  They were.


2503             MS FRENETTE:  So, that seems to be a 66 per cent increase over three years; is that right?

2504             MR. BIBIC:  Correct.

2505             MS FRENETTE:  So, I guess what is missing from this picture though is the demand for these services in response to your price increases over the years 1998 to 2001.

2506             So, if it is possible, I'd like to get you to undertake to provide the Commission with data regarding the demand for these seven discretionary services for the period 1998 to 2002.

2507             Is that something that you could provide with the Commission?

‑‑‑ Pause

2508             MR. BIBIC:  Just to clarify, over which time period would you like the demand?

2509             MS FRENETTE:  From 1998 to 2002.  And the reason why I have asked for 2002 is that I am assuming that perhaps the sensitivity for the demand of these prices might have manifested itself a few months after the price increase.


2510             MR. COLLYER:  Firstly, it might be a little bit difficult for us to actually get to that data.  I mean, we'll certainly try but I think probably ‑‑ well, I guess a point of clarification with respect to your list here because what you're quoting here are the à la carte prices, the stand‑alone prices for the seven features, and certainly concurrent to the price changes that we made on these a la carte basis we also had bundled prices that were introduced in the market or already were in market.

2511             So, from I guess a demand perspective, are you looking specifically for the a la carte demand, or what I will refer to as the exploded demand, which is the demand as a la carte and also in a bundle?

2512             MS FRENETTE:  Well, perhaps it would be interesting information to get information on both of those data points and then we could perhaps also get information on the pricing of the bundles and then we could make the appropriate links.

2513             MR. BIBIC:  Subject to the information ‑‑ the demand information being available for ‑‑ going back to 1998 to 2002.

2514             MS FRENETTE:  Absolutely.

2515             MR. BIBIC:  Okay, yes.

2516             MS FRENETTE:  Thank you.


UNDERTAKING CRTC‑3:  Bell Canada to provide Data regarding demand for the 7 discretionary services listed in CRTC exhibit no. 1 for the period 1998 to 2002.

2517             MR. MILLINGTON:  And, Mr. Chairman, I'll just clarify.  I presume all of these undertakings, to the extent that any of them are confidential, will be provided to the Commission in confidence.

2518             THE CHAIRMAN:  Yes.  It is my expectation, Madam Counsellor, that we may have claims of confidentiality for this material and this doesn't create a problem; as I understand it?

2519             MS FRENETTE:  I'd suspect that much of the information is confidential and we would view the documents and then assess whether or not they are confidential.

2520             But that would be ‑‑ I suspect that that would be the case.

2521             And my next series of questions are directed to representatives of Aliant and Sasktel.  I don't know if there are particular people who could respond to those questions.

2522             MR. HENRY:  There are.

2523             MR. STEPHEN:  They are here.


2524             MS FRENETTE:  So, I circulated earlier this morning a confidential exhibit, I think it is filed as CRTC Exhibit No. 2, and my question is directed to Aliant.

2525             MR. STEPHEN:  Yes.

2526             MS FRENETTE:  And do you agree that this particular ‑‑ and it is confidential, so I will be careful in the way I phrase my questions.

2527             Do you agree with me that this particular document provides information regarding the rates that were charged by Aliant for certain discretionary services during the period 1998 to 2001?

2528             MR. STEPHEN:  That's what the interrogatory states.  So, I would ‑‑ other than going back and verifying this data, I would accept it as is.

2529             THE CHAIRMAN:  The speaker is Mr. Stephen of Bell Aliant.

2530             MR. STEPHEN:  Sorry, I should have introduced myself.

2531             MR. HENRY:  Would you prefer that they move to the front, or is this...

2532             MS FRENETTE:  Actually, yes, and I would like it if they could actually be sworn in as well.

2533             MR. HENRY:  Certainly.  Do you want to put Mr. Stephen here or he can sit over here, whichever is necessary.


2534             THE CHAIRPERSON:  We will put Mr. Stephen at the counsel table.  He has always wanted to give it a shot.

2535             MR. HENRY:  It doesn't have any symbolic significance whatsoever.

AFFIRMED:  RICK STEPHEN

2536             THE CHAIRPERSON:  We might as well do the SaskTel person at the same time.

2537             MR. HENRY:  Would you introduce yourself, please, representative of SaskTel?

2538             MR. ANDERSON:  Mike Anderson.

2539             MR. HENRY:  You are going to be sworn as well.  That is going the be fun.

2540             Your name, sir, please?

2541             MR. SCHURR:  Bryce Schurr

2542             MR. HENRY:  From?

2543             MR. SCHURR:  SaskTel

2544             MR. HENRY:  I think we are going to have to swear the two of you, if I understand correctly.

2545             THE SECRETARY:  Yes, please, gentlemen.  I will swear the two of you at the same time.

AFFIRMED:  MIKE ANDERSON

AFFIRMED:  BRYCE SCHURR


2546             MS FRENETTE:  Let's start over again.  There is a confidential exhibit that I circulated to Alliant this morning.  It is labelled CRTC Exhibit 2.  Do you agree with me that this provides information regarding the rates that were charged by Alliant for certain discretionary services between 1998 and 2001?

2547             MR. STEPHEN:  That is what the exhibit shows, yes.

2548             MS FRENETTE:  These rates outlined in that particular response are accurate?

2549             MR. STEPHEN:  There would have been price changes before the end of the first price cap period that would not have been reflected in these.  Some of these would have been ‑‑ the 1998 prices probably were right, but 2001 and 2002 there were price changes.  I don't know that they are reflected here.

2550             MS FRENETTE:  Perhaps you could clarify because, and this isn't confidential, you only list it as current and perhaps if we could get some specification as to the date in which the interrogatory was produced and the current reflects what year precisely?


2551             MR. STEPHEN:  I am assuming that it would have been current as of the date of the interrogatory response, which would have been June 26, 2001.

2552             MS FRENETTE:  So, June 26, 2001, those prices would have been reflective of the current pricing situation as of June 26, 2001?

2553             MR. STEPHEN:  I would expect that to be the case.

2554             MS FRENETTE:  Subject to check?

2555             MR. STEPHEN:  Subject to check.

2556             MS FRENETTE:  Could I also get you to provide the Commission with some data regarding the demand for these particular services, both on a stand‑alone basis and as part of a bundle for the period 1998 to 2002?

2557             MR. STEPHEN:  I will undertake to see what we can calculate.  I must caution, though, that going back prior to 2001 will be difficult in that these companies no longer exist, nor would their records exist.

2558             So, it really goes to whether or not there is still material around on demand.

2559             MS FRENETTE:  Fair enough.  To the extent that the information is available.

2560             MR. STEPHEN:  I will do that.


UNDERTAKING CRTC‑4:  Aliant to provide Data regarding demand for the discretionary services listed in CRTC confidential exhibit no. 2 for the period 1998 to 2002.

2561             MS FRENETTE:  Thank you.

2562             The same question to the representative of SaskTel.  I have distributed a confidential exhibit labelled CRTC Exhibit 3.  Would you agree with me that this also provides information regarding the rates that were charged by SaskTel for certain discretionary services from 1998 to 2001?

2563             MR. SCHURR:  The information provided there is for June 2000 and July 2000.  SaskTel did not come under CRTC regulation prior to that so we had no reason to report the 1998.

2564             MS FRENETTE:  Fair enough, you are right.

2565             Could I get you to provide the Commission with some data regarding the demand for these services for 2000 and 2001?

2566             MR. ANDERSON:  We will certainly try.


UNDERTAKING CRTC‑5:  SaskTel to provide Data regarding demand for the discretionary services listed in CRTC confidential exhibit no. 3 for the period 2000 to 2002.

2567             MS FRENETTE:  Thank you.

2568             Those are my questions, Mr. Chairman.  I believe that Mr. Millington also has a few questions.

2569             I am sorry, Mr. Chairman, I have been informed by Mr. Macri that there is one additional question they would like to pose.

2570             THE CHAIRPERSON:  You have been informed by Mr. Millington that you want to pose another question?

2571             MS FRENETTE:  By Mr. Macri that I want to pose another question.

2572             THE CHAIRPERSON:  Now you know how it feels to be a Commissioner or member of the Commission.

2573             MS FRENETTE:  This question is directed to Mr. Bibic.  If I could turn you to the transcript at page 276.

2574             MR. BIBIC:  Which page?

2575             MS FRENETTE:  276.

2576             MR. BIBIC:  I am there.

2577             MS FRENETTE:  Here in the transcript you said, and we are again dealing with discretionary services for Bell Canada.


"...in no case does any individual discretionary future approach 50 percent of our local exchange service base.  In other words, less than 50 ‑‑ in all cases for Bell Canada, less than 50 percent of our local exchange service subscribers subscribe to one of these services and sometimes it is in the single digits."

2578             Here you discuss the penetration rates for individual discretionary services, but I would also be interested in finding out if the total base of subscribers to basic local exchange service ‑‑ of that total base of subscriber, what percentage takes the bare bones basic local exchange service versus the percentage of subscribers that takes at least one optional service?

2579             MR. BIBIC:  Just so I understand the question, the number of residential local exchange service subscribers who take just local exchange service, is that it?

2580             MS FRENETTE:  Yes, and reflected in terms of a percentage.


2581             MR. BIBIC:  In fact we have it here, but it is confidential.  So we will provide it to you confidentially.

2582             MS FRENETTE:  I lied, I actually have one more question, and this one is directed to Mr. Collyer.

2583             If I could turn to your statement at page 275 of yesterday's transcript.

2584             MR. COLLYER:  Yes, I am there.

2585             MS FRENETTE:  This is a conversation that you had with Mr. Janigan at line 1852.  Mr. Janigan says:

"Let me turn to your proposal to uncap rates for discretionary services, including local optional services.

   First of all, are any discretionary services sold on a stand‑alone basis that you are aware of?"

2586             You respond:

"To rephrase your question, could you buy call display absent anything else?"

2587             Mr. Janigan says yes.  Then you respond:


"No, you cannot."

2588             I believe that you only answered Mr. Janigan's question with respect to call display service.  So, I would like to take you to your appendix 2, which lists again all of the discretionary services, and if I could get you to undertake of those discretionary services which ones are available on a stand‑alone basis or which ones are available from an alternate supplier on a stand‑alone basis?

2589             MR. COLLYER:  I think there is maybe a misunderstanding either on my part on Mr. Janigan's question or in my reply.

2590             What I understood the question to be was could you take an optional service, absent having a line versus on a stand‑alone basis.  So that is the context in which I answered the question.

2591             MS FRENETTE:  I see.  Would it be possible to get some information regarding the services that you can get absent having your line?  For example, if you had a primary line with an alternate provider, which of these discretionary services could you take?

2592             MR. COLLYER:  I think the answer is none.

2593             MS FRENETTE:  None?


2594             MR. COLLYER:  I mean, subject to check.

2595             MS FRENETTE:  And those are my questions.  Thank you.

2596             MR. MILLINGTON:  Good morning, Mr. Bibic.

2597             MR. BIBIC:  Good morning.

2598             MR. MILLINGTON:  Could I direct you to page 22 of your evidence.  I have a very short clarification question.  It is halfway through paragraph 59.  It continues on to page 22.

2599             MR. BIBIC:  Yes, Mr. Millington.

2600             MR. MILLINGTON:  The sentence that starts towards the end of the paragraph, and I will just read it:

"The companies recommend instead that the proposals outlined below be put in place for a two‑year period.  At the end of this period, given the further changes, the industry will undoubtedly experience the continued relevance of the pricing rules imposed by the decision in this proceeding can be reevaluated."  (As read)


2601             Then you carry on in the next paragraph:

"In the company's view, the pricing constraints in the company's proposal would be too inflexible in the price regulation period if the price regulation period were in excess of two years."  (As read)

2602             Is it Bell's position that this current price cap regime should only last two years, and in which case, when would the proceeding take place for the further price cap period, if there were one?  Is it two plus one, a reevaluation taken on in the third year, or are you suggesting here that we would have a further proceeding to deal with the end of this price cap period within two years?

2603             THE CHAIRPERSON:  You must respond in the context of your latest part 7 on telecom fees.

‑‑‑ Laughter

2604             MR. BIBIC:  I would like to give that some thought actually, if I could get back to you, because I see your point.  I have to give that a bit more thought, otherwise we would be in a proceeding quite rapidly, as I think is your point.


2605             MR. MILLINGTON:  Yes, that is the point.  Thanks.

2606             MR. BIBIC:  But I would, Mr. Millington, just go back to the question I answered ‑‑ a similar question was asked of me by Mr. Janigan in terms of could we live with a longer period of time, and I did suggest that we could if our proposal were accepted and there was flexibility, to approach the Commission for flexibility as required, if that ever occurred.

2607             MR. MILLINGTON:  But assuming that you don't get everything you ask for.

2608             MR. BIBIC:  Fair enough.  Then I will get back to you on your specific question.

2609             MR. MILLINGTON:  You have the transcript from yesterday?

2610             MR. BIBIC:  I do.

2611             MR. MILLINGTON:  Could you turn to page 116, please?

2612             MR. BIBIC:  I am there.


2613             MR. MILLINGTON:  At line 10, paragraph 816, you start a discussion with Commissioner Langford with respect to the regulatory environment in the U.K., and you specifically refer to Ofcom.  You say that Ofcom has been successful at balancing significant market power on the one hand with concerns about overbearing regulation on the other hand, their words.

2614             Would you agree, then, that the regulatory regime in Canada is very different from the regulatory regime in the U.K.?

2615             MR. BIBIC:  That is a very general question.  I think there are differences in the regulatory regimes.

2616             The point I was making was about the way the analytical framework used to address similar issues to the issues we have here in Canada and are dealing with here in this proceeding, and I mean the concepts that they were looking at and addressing over there this year in fact were not dissimilar to the ones we are addressing here.

2617             For example, in the context of retail price controls, which essentially means price caps, what should the pricing constraints be on an incumbent with, in this case, one in the U.K., which the regulator found had significant market power, and balancing market forces versus regulation in that context.  I mean, that is the same kind of inquiry we have to undertake here.


2618             The philosophy there was let's balance that SMP with a realization that regulation does have distortionary effects and does have impact on the marketplace.  It is in that context that I made this reference to Ofcom.

2619             MR. MILLINGTON:  But in working through that process, Ofcom has come up with a different solution, a different regulatory landscape than what currently exists in Canada?

2620             MR. BIBIC:  In what context do you mean that?  What specifically are you referring to?

2621             MR. MILLINGTON:  I think you have said that they aren't exactly the same and you are advocating that we should take some notice of what they have done over there in terms of how we should approach the regulatory issues before us here.  I think that was essentially the point that I ‑‑ I don't mean to drive down into a lot of specifics here, just generally speaking, that the way they have sorted the problems out would be a good thing for us to look at in terms of how we deal with some of the issues here.


2622             MR. BIBIC:  Right, and let's look at, for example, the market structure.  You have an incumbent with significant market power.  There is competition in the U.K.; nevertheless, it is not the kind of competition that I would view as robust as the competition we face here.  Most of the competition they have in the U.K. is from wholesale line rentals, which is essentially a wholesale PES service, if you will, and local unbundled loops and carrier pre‑selection.  They don't have the benefit of the full facilities‑based cable co‑entry that we do.

2623             Nevertheless, on the retail side, they came up with a regime that has no retail price cap.  In the July I think it is 19th, 2006 Ofcom decision, they clearly indicated that their decisions on the retail side had absolutely nothing to do and were made completely independent from the wholesale regime that they had put in place or were putting in place with respect to telecom services, given their market structure.

2624             So I take from that that, as you said, there are some principles and philosophies there that I think are applicable here and we could refer to in deciding what the most appropriate price cap regime would be for us here in Canada.


2625             MR. MILLINGTON:  Let's turn to your comments about the provision of wholesale and retail services in BT.  Would you also agree that the BT structure with respect to the provision of wholesale services and the provision of retail service is different from Bell Canada's structure with respect to the provision of wholesale and retail services?

2626             MR. BIBIC:  It may be, Mr. Millington, but again I would point you to that decision where Ofcom stated that the objectives of price controls in the retail markets are distinct from BT wholesale obligations and wholesale obligations are to be monitored and controlled separately.

2627             The rationale that Ofcom gave for that in a March consultation document, if you turn to page 24 at paragraph 4.20 ‑‑

2628             MR. MILLINGTON:  Which document are you referring to?

2629             MR. BIBIC:  I am referring to ‑‑ give me a moment.

‑‑‑ Pause

2630             MR. BIBIC:  There are two documents I am principally relying on.  One is the Ofcom consultation dated March 21st, 2006, where they put out for comment the issue of what the retail price controls should be.  That culminated in a decision dated July 19th, 2006, again from Ofcom.

2631             If you look at the March 21st consultation document at page 24, if you look at page 24, paragraph 4.20 ‑‑


2632             THE CHAIRPERSON:  Just for your information, Mr. Bibic, he has only the July 19th document.  He doesn't have the consultation document.

2633             MR. BIBIC:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

2634             So I will quote from paragraph 4.20 of the March consultation.  In response to the issue of whether or not retail price controls should be tied to the wholesale situation, Ofcom states:

"Ofcom believes that there is some merit in this argument.  However, there is also the danger that deregulation becomes perpetually delayed because there is always a new operational concern at the wholesale level.  Ofcom's preference is therefore to deal with the residual concerns regarding the performance of wholesale line rental via the commitments which BT has already made and, if necessary, by issuing directions rather than rolling over the price control."  (As read)


2635             That ultimately led to the July 19th decision, where Ofcom stated, as I mentioned earlier, that wholesale obligations are to be monitored and controlled separately and the objective of price controls in the retail markets are distinct from BT's wholesale obligations.

2636             MR. MILLINGTON:  So my points are relatively simple in the sense that the landscape is different in the U.K., the structure of BT's wholesale and retail provisioning, the way they run the business is different, and to the extent that yesterday you were talking about the BT model as a transitory step in your discussions with Commissioner Langford, would it be Bell Canada's position that they would accept the restructuring of Bell Canada with respect to the provision of wholesale and retail services to mirror the structure in BT for the provision of wholesale and retail services.

2637             MR. BIBIC:  No, we would not, Mr. Millington.  Again, the whole point is in the U.K., they've had to develop a wholesale line rental service for ‑‑ they've chosen to develop a wholesale line rental service to foster competition.


2638             They do not have the benefit of the market structure we have here in Canada, which is ubiquitous cable platform offering telephony as well as the unbundle loop providers that we've already had as well as the Voice over IP service providers we have.

2639             Now, they have that, the voice over IP in the U.K. as well, but they don't have the benefit of widespread cableco entry.  So, the answer to your question is "no".

2640             And again, as I point out, the decision on retail price controls didn't have to do with wholesale obligations imposed on BT.  That was quite clear in the July 19 2006 decision.

2641             So, I would say that the link that you're drawing is irrelevant in the U.K. and we wouldn't accept the condition that you've expressed in the question for reasons of the very different market structures.

2642             But then again, the regulatory philosophy was one of balancing significant market power on the one hand with the impacts of regulation on the retail side, and coming to a determination which I think could be quite instructive in Canada.

2643             MR. MILLINGTON:  Thank you very much.  Those are my questions.

2644             THE CHAIRMAN:  Commissioner del Val.

2645             COMMISSIONER del VAL:  Hi! Mr. Bibic.

2646             MR. BIBIC:  Good morning.


2647             COMMISSIONER del VAL:  I just need to ‑‑ I know you've gone through this a few times, but I just want to clarify that I understand correctly the distinction between the uncapping criteria for the residential PES and the local private line.

2648             So I think that I understand your uncapping test for residential and business PES of the three elements, which is one alternative provider; second element is an actual offering and the third is an actual customer?

2649             MR. BIBIC:  That is correct.

2650             COMMISSIONER del VAL:  Okay, right.  So then, for local private line I go to paragraph 99 of your evidence, which is one alternative provider having capacity to offer.  Paragraph 99.

2651             MR. BIBIC:  And the section on local private line actually starts at paragraph 94.

2652             COMMISSIONER del VAL:  Yes.  But can I boil it down to the uncapping test for the local private line?  Is it at least one alternate provider having capacity to offer?  Is that correct?

‑‑‑ Pause/ Pause


2653             MR. BIBIC:  So the issue with private line or the test for private line rather, is the presence of a provider offering private line services in an exchange.  So, that's the test.

2654             COMMISSIONER del VAL:  Okay.

2655             MR. BIBIC:  If they have a customer, then ‑‑ then the services offered at that bandwidth or lesser bandwidth, digital or analog, would be uncapped.

2656             COMMISSIONER del VAL:  Okay.  So the test for residential PES and local private line are the same?

2657             MR. BIBIC:  Except that there is one distinction, which is that for local exchange services whether they be residential or business, what you are uncapping is really the prices for that service itself, whereas on a private line side which you're uncapping the services being offered by that ‑‑ well, being offered by the competitor ‑‑ which are uncapping, if a competitor is in the exchange, which are uncapping for the high like or all private line services being offered at that bandwidth or any lower bandwidth.

2658             So, there is ‑‑ that's one, that's the major distinction.

2659             COMMISSIONER del VAL:  Okay.  But in either case, there has to be an actual offering and an actual customer, at least one actual customer?

‑‑‑ Pause / Pause


2660             MR. BIBIC:  Yes, they would need a customer.

2661             MS. FRENETTE :  Okay.  So, actual presence, which is the one alternate provider; second element, actual offering; third element, one actual customer?

2662             MR. BIBIC:  Correct.

2663             MS. FRENETTE :  For both of those?

2664             MR. BIBIC:  Correct.

2665             MS. FRENETTE :  Right.  Thank you.

2666             THE CHAIRMAN:  I would like to thank the panel very much for your patience and ‑‑ I'm sorry, excuse me, Commissioner Langford.  I thought you were encouraging me to have a break, Mr. Langford, but that's not the case.  Please ask your questions.

2667             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  If you want a break, I'm willing to wait, I am very patient.

2668             Just a couple of clean‑up questions and I appreciate that it has been a long day and a half for you, so I'll just try to stick with some facts and then perhaps a little speculation on Mr. Collyer's part before we finish.

2669             The facts would deal, Mr. Collyer, with the questions put to you yesterday regarding pay phones and the response that you gave.


2670             MR. BIBIC:  That would be Mr. Rowe, Commissioner Langford.

2671             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  You are right and I am wrong and that's a first.

‑‑‑ Laughter / Rires

2672             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  Okay.  Coming back down to earth now, yes, Mr. Rowe's response which was on page 289, pages 289‑290 of yesterday's transcript.  I don't think you need to go to it, but you can if you would like and I'll wait for you.

2673             Essentially, Mr. Rowe, you broke down, if I may use the jargon, the "losers" in the pay phone world and the "winners" and you've said that ‑‑ at line 21 on page 289 :

"All these factors together really put us in the position where roughly 40 per cent of our pay phones are not generating enough revenue to actually fund their own replacement cost."

2674             And then, you were asked by Mr. Janigan: what about the other 60 per cent, and you replied at the top of page 290:

"Clearly, they are above that level."


2675             I was wondering whether there is any relationship between the pay phones that are doing well ‑‑ if I can put it that way, the 60 per cent ‑‑ and those that aren't, the 40 per cent, is there any relationship in the way they are configured?  And I am thinking of whether they take cash, cash or cards or just cards alone?

2676             MR. ROWE:  At this point, I don't have that information available.  Right now, we haven't done analysis to that level.

2677             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  Have you got a breakdown now of how many phones you have out there, how many pay phones altold and how many could fall into those three categories?

2678             MR. ROWE:  Subject to check, I believe that would be available.

2679             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  Could you get that for us?  I think that would be helpful.

2680             MR. ROWE:  Yes, we'll do that.

2681             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  And if you do have any information, I don't want the sherpas back at headquarters to lose another night sleep on this, but if you have information readily available on my first question, I would be grateful for that, but I don't want you to go to a lot of trouble for it.


2682             If you do have easily available breakdowns as to which types of phones fall under which category, that might be helpful as well.

2683             MR. ROWE:  We will do that as well.

2684             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  Thank you very much.

2685             I want to move now to that question of ‑‑ very quickly to the question of uncapped services and de‑average services and I want to start with the uncapped.

2686             And I've reached the conclusion, and you can correct me, Mr. Bibic, if I'm wrong, but having listened to your answers yesterday to various questioners, I've reached the conclusion that your position on why you want services to be uncapped seems almost to be philosophical?

2687             And you speak about how in the different places how you expect prices will go down and that there will be no need to have the freedom to raise them and yet, uncapping really all that provides you with is the ability to raise prices.


2688             Would I be right in saying that you're looking at it in ‑‑ I think you referred to the Telus transitional type of attitude, that really this is a philosophical argument that you are making, that in fact you are asking for a tool that you don't contemplate using?

2689             MR. BIBIC:  There is an element to that as well, yes.

2690             However, I mean, it could be that services become re‑defined, more value is provided with respect to a service which may result in a different pricing structure for which we'd want to take advantage of the flexibility while continuing to offer, for example, stand‑alone Primary Exchange Service.

2691             There may be, on the business side for example ‑‑ and Mr. Rowe may want to talk to this ‑‑ customer migration strategies with respect to legacy services that people aren't using.  So, there's that element as well.

2692             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  But that is covered by the prices falling below cost discussion that we had a little earlier; isn't it, that particular example?

2693             MR. BIBIC:  Well, there are some services ‑‑ there are some ‑‑ in large part, yes.

2694             Give me one moment, please.

‑‑‑ Pause


2695             MR. ROWE:  It's not entirely covered.  There are services which clearly are above cost and, in fact, fall into the same end‑of‑life category.  Some of the ISTN‑based data services have a direct substitute in the Internet or the IP private line space and those will evolve the same way.

2696             And, so, that's where flexibility is useful as we help customers make decisions about the value proposition of those various services.

2697             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  So, if I could sum up where I think we are so far, there is a philosophical element to this, time to unleash the market forces and pull back on regulatory oversight, there is a need perhaps in business, even where prices are above cost, to start to have a transition there to newer technological methods of delivering services.

2698             What about on the residential side?  You spoke yesterday, Mr. Bibic, on a number of occasions about prices trending downward.

2699             Is there any need to have this uncapping right, this uncapped feature that you are asking for on the residential side?

2700             MR. BIBIC:  I could give you an example without going to any particular service.


2701             For example, if a service on the residential side, a new service were to be developed in an environment where clearly there would be no incumbency advantage in the sense that we developed the service ‑‑ anybody could have developed the service in this day and age ‑‑ we may want to offer that service initially at an introductory price to stimulate demand, to stimulate penetration.

2702             Then under today's current rules the service would be captured by the basket of constraints which would limit our ability over time as we've gone through the limited introductory period to raise the price to a more appropriate market level.

2703             Under today's regime there's now a disincentive to doing that because that price increase after the limited introductory price offer would have to be balanced with corresponding decreases elsewhere in an environment where market forces could determine ‑‑ or ought to be determining what the pricing level should be for those other services.  Today's rigid system acts as a disincentive to those kinds of offers.

2704             Another example is, Mr. Hariton was speculating about, you know, the development of things like an access service without necessarily taking away what we commonly view today as stand‑alone Primary Exchange Service.


2705             You know, how you accommodate those types of, you know, innovative service or pricing structures in the context of today's constraints is not at all clear to me.  Actually, I suggest that it's difficult to do so.

2706             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  On your first example we do have promotion ‑‑ the ability to offer promotions now.  We do have the ability now, unless Staff corrects me, but I believe we do have the ability to have introductory prices on new services to test the market on them before a final tariff is set.

2707             So, you know, I am not suggesting it wouldn't make life a little easier in certain very specific perhaps unforeseen circumstances, but I just wonder whether perhaps it isn't too big a tool, too large a tool for the actual needs.

2708             And maybe the best way would be to go to Mr. Collyer and say ‑‑ and to ask you, Mr. Collyer, in the residential marketing world, how do you foresee using this power?

2709             If we were to accept your proposal ‑‑ and we will leave the averaging aside for a moment ‑‑ how would you use, in marketing services, in selling services the fact that now they were uncapped on the residential side?


2710             MR. BIBIC:  Mr. Commissioner Langford, I'll turn it over to Mr. Collyer in just one second.  I just want to clarify an issue.

2711             I gave you a response about the new service and you came back with, well, you have promotional flexibility.

2712             That's not entirely the point.  The point is we may come in, as I did mention, you know, a lower ‑‑ a relatively lower introductory offer to stimulate demand, but the point as well with a new service is that we just don't know what the market dynamics for that service will be, what the customer reaction to that service will be.

2713             So, it may not be a question of just a promotion, it may be a question of coming in with a price point and realizing it's the wrong price point and it could be a different price.  And in the case that the different price is ‑‑ or the market takes us to a higher price for that new service, then there would be, you know, the corresponding requirement to take a decrease.

2714             So, it's not just about promotions, although I did answer in the context solely of promotions.

2715             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  But you can also come in with an introductory price for a new service and then adjust it later.


2716             MR. BIBIC:  You can, and there are certain limitations to that about win‑back, six‑month‑on‑and‑off, those kind of restrictions.

2717             The point is, you know, in any other industry when a new service comes on the marketplace, you experiment, you experiment with the service attributes, you experiment with the pricing, operators have flexibility.  And I'm talking about new services now.

2718             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  Hmm.

2719             MR. BIBIC:  Anybody can develop them.  Today it's clear that the regulatory rules do impose constraints which, in some respects, and I would suggest many in respects, impede the ability to engage in that type of experimentation.

2720             So, this is just an example in response to your question.


2721             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  Well, also ‑‑ Mr. Collyer, if you could be patient and try to remember my question, which I don't think was that complicated ‑‑ but what if then we modified your proposal along the lines of what you are now referring to, to capture; in other words, instead of saying everything, all existing services will be uncapped; what if we said, well, we take your point that the downward trend is the way of the future, competitive market forces will push things down not up, but we are sensitive to your needs to operate in a competitive market and we would then give you what you are asking for here, what Mr. Hariton ‑‑ enough to capture Mr. Hariton's notion of new accessing and enough to capture your idea of new services but no more?

2722             MR. BIBIC:  You are the decision‑makers and it's up to you to decide.  If you believe that there's virtue in regulation for the sake of regulation, despite the presence of market forces, it's open to you to do things like that.

2723             I now come back to my regulatory philosophy ‑‑

2724             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  Yes.

2725             MR. BIBIC:  ‑‑ component of my answer.  I happen to believe that where there is competition, competition will dictate where prices will go.

2726             That's how the markets work for a whole bunch of services that consumers buy every day and view, I would submit to you, as just as essential as telephony services.

2727             So, I mean, it's certainly open to you to do that.


2728             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  Well, you see, to me it is not a matter of sort of Aristotle versus Plato here, it is not conflicting philosophies I am dealing with here.

2729             I am looking for a response to your actual needs and I am looking, in a way, to meet the requirement of balancing everyone's needs.

2730             So, we want to give you as much flexibility as you require.  We also want to protect vulnerable consumers out there, if they require protection.

2731             So, it is not really a regulatory philosophy in the sense that I'm doctrinaire free market or I'm doctrinaire regulatory, it is a regulatory philosophy which is trying to embrace one of the underpinnings of this whole procedure, and I ask you why we would go farther than we need to go when we might ‑‑ to give you a tool you may not need, and it doesn't sound like you will need, when we may leave some consumers more vulnerable than we need do.


2732             Why would we do it?  It is not a question of a regulatory desire to hang on for ever, it is a question to try and do both of our jobs as mandated, to give you the freedom you need, but only what you need and not to give you more freedom so that there may be a risk out there that some vulnerable consumer will suffer.

2733             MR. BIBIC:  I apologize for going around in circles with you, Commissioner Langford, but, respectfully, what I am hearing in your statement is I think we should hang on to regulation just in case.

2734             You mention vulnerable consumers.  In my view, that vulnerability may be manifested in areas where there aren't competitive market forces, and we feel that we have addressed that in our proposal.  We are imposing caps with respect to those consumers.

2735             So on that issue, I think we don't have much difference between us.

2736             As far as the other areas, if you are concerned about vulnerability, that is what competition will take care of, as it does when you go buy milk at the grocery store.  Milk at the grocery store is not priced the same way in every single grocery store in every single province in every single city, although there is always a danger with analogies.  I realize that.

2737             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  I know.  There are food banks out there as well.

2738             MR. BIBIC:  Well, I don't think there is regulation of milk.


2739             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  Not at the retail level perhaps but certainly at the wholesale level.

2740             Anyway, we did wheat yesterday.  Let's not do milk today.

2741             We are accused of wanting to regulate too much, and that will certainly put that accusation over the top.

2742             Let me go to you, Mr. Collyer, if I may.

2743             You have heard some conflicting philosophies here, perhaps.  How are you going to use this on the residential side if we grant the full freedom of an uncapped environment that your proposal is making?

2744             MR. COLLYER:  I think, from a consumer perspective anyway, primarily we would be looking at this in the eyes of new product introduction.  I think you might recall a service that we launched some years ago called Simply One, which was a marriage of a wireline service, call forwarding, voicemail and a wireless service.

2745             It was a hard‑wired offer that actually is a tariff filing and still exists today.


2746             I would say, in particular with the flexibility and different service packages that we have seen on the wireless side that is unregulated, not having that flexibility on the wireline side certainly hampers us in providing prices that are sensitive to market.

2747             Looking ahead, I think we can see a world where things like voicemail, voicemail‑to‑email, some of the voice‑over IP functionality that we are currently seeing today is coming into play where we may want to actually drive adoption to those services with an introductory price and then look at pricing sensitive to how customers actually value these products.

2748             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  So you come in at price A and, if it seems popular, push the envelope a little.  Push it up a little to see if people will stick with it.

2749             Is that basically what you are saying?

2750             MR. COLLYER:  Not exactly.

2751             I think what we have to be mindful of is the fact that in particular with convergent products, new product introduction, we aren't always going to get it right.


2752             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  We aren't always going to get it what?  Sorry.

2753             MR. COLLYER:  We aren't always going to get it right in terms of matching price and customer value with product.

2754             In my ten‑year history with Bell, we have launched a fair number of lead balloons.  We have launched some great services as well.  Each of them, when we brought them to launch, obviously we had the intention that this was going to be the greatest thing, and sometimes that didn't quite work out.

2755             Really what we are looking for is the flexibility; not to say that we would exercise it, but the flexibility to adjust prices to how customers value the product.

2756             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  Can I ask you then the same question that I put to Mr. Bibic.

2757             I will take the point that you are not necessarily answering here on behalf of your entire panel and your entire enterprise ‑‑ I am not quite sure what it is at this point ‑‑ but you are answering only as a marketing person.  You are giving me some marketing advice here, a marketing position.

2758             I want you to feel free to answer this in an informational way.


2759             Are you saying then that really you only need this for new products; that if we were to limit it in some way, philosophical positions aside, that you could live with that?

2760             You don't need it for existing products because you see a downward trend there as well?

2761             MR. COLLYER:  I think from the existing products' perspective, we are obviously asking for the same flexibility, the only reason being that I think competition will actually take us to a place where customers may actually value the products and services that they have quite differently tomorrow than what they do today.

2762             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  So you might want to twig a few existing prices up while offering a new price at a lower price in some ‑‑


2763             MR. COLLYER:  Exactly.  I think some of the stuff that we have done with respect to the introduction of the "Flexibility 4" bundle this year, which was approved, points to that, where obviously we are marketers in the interest of getting the consumer to buy product and if we can provide bulk product pricing at an attractive price, obviously it is in our interest to move the consumer up the value chain and help provide them with the features and attributes and benefits that actually match their needs.

2764             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  So the notion of a downward trend is overall; that there may be blips and certain products.  Albeit the trend overall is downward, certain products, even existing products, might go up in price if they were uncapped.

2765             MR. COLLYER:  I think there are individual product life cycles.  If we are talking about residential primary exchange service, I think we can all admit that it is on the decline.  But within that there are sub‑sets of PES, in particular, optional features and services that are growing.

2766             Certainly we will continue to innovate and invest in PES to provide new service offerings.

2767             MR. ROWE:  Commissioner Langford, could I just comment for business.  I won't go through the same new product story and we talked about the end of life story.

2768             I think the other element in the business market is that having customers commit to contracted terms is quite a common approach to use that allows customers to lower prices.


2769             We do believe in the business market that prices are going down, but it is surprising the number of business customers who in fact do not take contracted terms.

2770             One of the elements that we use in our marketing plans, because the longer term benefit to the company is to have customers on contracted plans where they can lower their price, is to use pricing on individual non‑contracted elements to show customers that lower prices are available in other ways and we in fact market that way.

2771             So that is an example of how the uncapped pricing flexibility in fact gives us a tool to use to show customers the way to lower prices.

2772             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  I'm sorry, I don't get it.  I thought uncapping, the only thing it allowed you to do was raise prices.

2773             MR. ROWE:  What we would do is a price increase in a particular area would signal customers that they need to start looking at alternative ways to lower their costs.  They phone into our call centre and that is an opportunity for us to be able to market the alternative strategy to them.

2774             In fact, we find that to be an effective way of improving the overall portfolio.


2775             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  I guess if you raise the price of milk, people start drinking orange juice.  There's no doubt about it.

2776             Okay, that's clear.

2777             Mr. Collyer, it is key to me to understand this.  Could we look at de‑averaging.

2778             If prices were de‑averaged today, what would you do with that tool in your marketing toolbox?

2779             MR. COLLYER:  I think what we would start to do ‑‑ I mean, the marketing trend is to get to one‑to‑one marketing.  Obviously with the customer base that we have at Bell Canada, we won't achieve that.

2780             Certainly what we would look at doing is look at specific segments or groupings of customers and provide customized programs to them.

2781             I think I mentioned yesterday examples with respect to students, families with kids, families with teenagers, bundled offerings, that sort of thing, where we would actually look at providing pricing arrangements to various groups of consumers.

2782             I think a very interesting one that we are seeing quite a lot of activity in ‑‑ and again, I mentioned it yesterday with Mr. Engelhart ‑‑ is greenfield and new home construction where we have quite a significant amount of competition.


2783             I got an offer presented to me yesterday, which was two months free of voice video and Internet, which was left as a leave‑behind flyer when a customer took possession of their home.

2784             Obviously we would like to have the ability to compete on that level as well.

2785             MR. BIBIC:  There was an article in yesterday's Globe and Mail, page B4, which is titled "Rogers Cranks Up Phone Push".  For example, it talks about Rogers reaching out to operators of large apartment buildings in Toronto to include the phone service in the rent or to offer tenants a special phone package.

2786             So that is an example of geographic rate de‑averaging that Rogers engages in.  It is not something that we could do.

2787             Another example is Rogers' plans to start letting its landline phone customers call other Rogers' landline or wireless users across the country for free.

2788             These chaps are innovating.  Despite in some respects Mr. Hariton was suggesting they could innovate more, they are innovating.  And that is the result of the competitive process.

2789             So those are examples.


2790             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  From your experience, Mr. Collyer ‑‑ let me back up for a minute.

2791             I think the public is probably comfortable with the notions of students getting a special rate on the bus, seniors getting a special rate at the movie theatre.  There seem to be kind of special rates that have existed for time out of mind for certain categories.

2792             But you did say that the goal is to go to one‑on‑one type of marketing.

2793             Don't you think there would be a pushback?

2794             If Mr. Jones at No. 1 Greeenfield Crescent finds out that Mr. Smith at No. 3 Greenfield Crescent is getting a better price than him, won't he push back?  Won't he demand the same price?

2795             Can you really do one‑off marketing like that without getting a considerable pushback from the public?

2796             MR. COLLYER:  I think in our unregulated businesses, that occurs today already with respect to various acquisition offers that we may have, various contracted offers that we may have.


2797             Mr. Rowe gives an example of the difference of someone who is buying Centrex service on a month‑to‑month basis or a minimum commitment period of a month versus a one, three or five‑year contract.

2798             I think certainly in a telecommunications space, the customer mindset is already there.  In some elements of our business we ourselves are already there.

2799             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  But you are making a comparison between Mr. Rowe's world, which is the business world.  And everyone expects, I think, that the Royal Bank will get a better price than Joe's Pizzeria per line.

2800             What about residences?  Are you suggesting that people will be at ease with that kind of an environment where Mr. Jones gets a price, Mrs. Smith gets another price, and so on down the line?

2801             MR. COLLYER:  I think I said yesterday after lunch, in response to Mr. Engelhart, that this is already occurring in our video wireless and Internet businesses.

2802             So I think by natural extension, customers are ready to accept it in the voice space.  And to be quite honest, our competitors are showing the customers the way already, because they themselves are doing this on a day‑to‑day basis.


2803             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  Well, you have read ads and you have given me examples of stories talking about general trends.  I get the impression from these ‑‑ although I am no expert on the marketing of cable companies, I get the impression that these offers are made to the public at large, not to individuals.

2804             MR. BIBIC:  Mr. Langford, I guess we can ask the cable companies when it is their turn.  But judging from this article, the cable companies in their infinite wisdom have judged that the public will not rise up against the fact that Mr. Apartment Dweller may pay a different rate than Mr. Home Owner.

2805             So these aren't general examples.  This seems to be quite a specific offer.

2806             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  Well, we will get a chance to ask them.

2807             You have answered my questions and I am very grateful.  Thank you, gentlemen.

2808             MR. SCHURR:  Mr. Chairman, not to delay your desire for a break, but I have a question for Ms Frenette, if I may.

2809             THE CHAIRPERSON:  Why not.  It will be very refreshing.

‑‑‑ Laughter / Rires


2810             MR. SCHURR:  As I understood the undertaking that you gave Bell Canada, you were looking for demand on a stand‑alone basis and on a bundled basis?

2811             MS FRENETTE:  That is correct.

2812             MR. SCHURR:  Are you seeking the same from SaskTel?

2813             MS FRENETTE:  That is correct.

2814             MR. SCHURR:  I also prevaricated.  I have one more question.

2815             I believe you asked for rates as well as demand?

2816             MS FRENETTE:  The rates as they are reflected in a bundle, because I believe we already have the rates on a stand‑alone basis.

2817             MR. SCHURR:  I meant historic rates.

2818             MS FRENETTE:  Yes, that is correct, for the identical years.

2819             So, for example, in SaskTel's situation it would be for the years 2000 to 2002, those historical rates.

2820             MR. SCHURR:  Excuse me.

‑‑‑ Pause

2821             MR. SCHURR:  If we can locate the demand back to 1988, we will provide you the rates.

2822             MS FRENETTE:  That will be very helpful; thank you.


2823             THE CHAIRPERSON:  I would like to thank the panel for their patience and their very much appreciated efforts to make the issues clear and their points of view clear.

2824             It has been a useful day and a half, and we thank you.

2825             MR. BIBIC:  Thank you.

2826             THE CHAIRPERSON:  I think we will rise to ‑‑ I know my colleagues are going to say we owe ourselves 15 minutes plus an hour and a half.  So let's say at 1:15 we could see each other again.

2827             My colleagues want to know if during that period they can eat lunch, and I've told them they can.

2828             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  We discipline ourselves, as well as the industry.

‑‑‑ Upon recessing at 1126 / Suspension à 1126

‑‑‑ Upon resuming at 1313 / Reprise à 1313

2829             THE CHAIRMAN:  Order, please.  À l'ordre, s'il vous plaît.

2830             Madame la secrétaire, est‑ce que vous faites une annonce ou est‑ce qu'on procède?  On procède?


2831             LA SECRÉTAIRE:  Oui.  On va procéder avec counsel Janigan, sorry, Michael Ryan who is supposed to introduce the panel for Telus Policy.  Thank you very much.

2832             THE CHAIRMAN:  Mr. Ryan.

2833             MR. RYAN:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

2834             Mr. Chairman, first of all, I would remind the panel that Telus filed an Opening Statement at the beginning of the proceeding and that Opening Statement has been marked as Telus Exhibit No. 1.

2835             In our letter of the 5th of October to the Commission, we indicated that we proposed to present three panels for cross‑examination during this phase of the proceeding and you have the first of those three panels already before you now.

2836             That panel we've referred to as the Policy Panel and it will be available to answer questions in relation to Telus' evidence as filed on the 10th of July and Interrogatory Responses as they relate to policy matters and the full details of the proposed arrangement are set out in the letter of October 5 that I've just referred to.


2837             Sitting on the panel closest to the Commission is Janet Yale who is the Executive Vice President Corporate Affairs of the company.  On her right is Willie Grieve who is the Vice President Telecom Policy and Regulatory Affairs, and on his right is Stephen Schmidt who is Director Regulatory Policy and Senior Regulatory Legal Counsel.

2838             The C.Vs. of each of these people were filed along with our letter of October 5.

2839             They will be assisted in the backup position by Hal Reirson and by Pat Labadia(ph) who are both Senior Regulatory Advisers at Telus.

2840             The panel is ready to be sworn, Mr. Chairman.

2841             LE PRÉSIDENT:  Madame la secrétaire.

2842             THE SECRETARY:  Thank you very much.  I will ask the witnesses to stand up, please.  I will do an affirmation by group.

2843             For the records, please introduce yourself, state your name.

AFFIRMED:  JANET YALE

AFFIRMED:  WILLIE GRIEVE

AFFIRMED:  STEPHEN SCHMIDT

2844             THE SECRETARY:  Thank you very much.

EXAMINATION‑IN‑CHIEF / INTERROGATOIRE‑EN‑CHEF

2845             MR. RYAN:  Ms Yale, do you have in front of you copy of the comments of Telus filed in this proceeding dated 10th July?

2846             MS. YALE:  Yes.


2847             MR. RYAN:  And of the company's Interrogatory Responses?

2848             MS. YALE:  Yes, I do.

2849             MR. RYAN:  And your C.V.?

2850             MS. YALE:  Yes, I do.

2851             MR. RYAN:  And I would ask you, Ms. Yale, with the exception of Appendix A to the comments which indicates on its face it was prepared by doctor Wiseman, were those comments prepared by you or under your direction?

2852             MS. YALE:  Yes, they were.

2853             MR. RYAN:  And with respect to the Interrogatory Responses, and excluding those that indicate on their face that they were answered either by doctor Wiseman or doctor Bernstein, were those Interrogatory Responses prepared by you or under your direction?

2854             MS. YALE:  Yes, they were.

2855             MR. RYAN:  And are the statements of fact contained in those documents that I've just referred to true, to the best of your knowledge?

2856             MS. YALE:  Yes.

2857             MR. RYAN:  And do they accurately present the views of the company?

2858             MS. YALE:  Yes, they do.


2859             MR. RYAN:  And your C.V., is that accurate?

2860             MS. YALE:  Yes.

2861             MR. RYAN:  Mr. Grieve, did you participate in the preparation of the portions of the comments and the Interrogatory Responses that I've just referred to?

2862             MR. GRIEVE:  Yes, I did.

2863             MR. RYAN:  And is your C.V. as filed with the Commission on October 5 accurate?

2864             MR. GRIEVE:  Yes, it is.

2865             MR. RYAN:  And Mr. Schmidt, did you participate in the preparation of the same portions of the comments in the Interrogatory Responses?

2866             MR. SCHMIDT:  Yes, I did.

2867             MR. RYAN:  And is your C.V. accurate?

2868             MR. SCHMIDT:  Yes.

2869             MR. RYAN:  Mr. Chairman, the panel is ready for cross‑examination.

2870             THE CHAIRMAN:  Mr. Engelhart, would you just introduce yourself and your panel again?

CROSS‑EXAMINATION / CONTRE‑INTERROGATOIRE

2871             MR. ENGELHART:  Thank you, Mr. Chair.

2872             Kent Engelhart, on behalf of the Competitors, and to my left is David McEwen and to my right I'm also assisted by David Watt.


2873             Good afternoon, panel.  I have a few questions about Section 4.2.3 of your evidence entitled "The prohibition on rate de‑averaging incurred as an economic entry and prevents ILEC cost recovery."

2874             Just by way of background to my first question, would you agree with me that you have a number of rate bands in your operating territory, primarily bands A, B, C and D.  That A is the dense metropolitan areas such as downtown Vancouver;  B is a most large urban areas;  C is smaller cities and D is most of the rest?

2875             Would you agree with that?

2876             MR. GRIEVE:  Yes, with one caveat and that is that in bands B, C and D, certainly in Alberta and most of British Columbia, I would not say that those are urban areas entirely 10 to 15 per cent of the loops are very very long loops way out on the Prairies for example and, therefore, there are considerable high costs in those particular exchanges that form part of that band.

2877             MR. ENGELHART:  I have heard you say that before, Mr. Grieve, and don't worry I am going to come to exactly that.


2878             So, if you're someone anticipating my next question, would you agree with me that those bands were formulated, approved by the Commission, but formulated by Telus to be largely cost homogeneous?

2879             MR. GRIEVE:  They were formulated by the Commission and Telus for the purposes of being largely homogeneous on average by exchange, but they were not broken down lower than the exchange level and TELUS' proposal was different.

2880             MR. ENGELHART:  Further to your comments a moment ago about the higher cost portions, in paragraph 99 you say:

"Competitors will target those areas of the cost band or exchange where margins are high."

2881             Can you explain, as I think you started to a moment ago, where those cost bands or exchanges are high?

2882             MR. GRIEVE:  We know that to the extent that there are margins they are higher in lower cost portions of exchanges, which is generally built‑up areas, formerly called base rate areas, and that is generally where the cable companies enter because that is generally where they serve.

2883             MR. ENGELHART:  I guess Shaw is the larger cable company in your operating territory?


2884             MR. GRIEVE:  That's correct.

2885             MR. ENGELHART:  So when Shaw enters or starts providing telephony, are you saying that they exclude a portion of their cable system and don't provide telephony service throughout an entire cable system?

2886             MR. GRIEVE:  They do indeed provide telephone service throughout the entire cable system, but the entire cable system doesn't always include many of the rural areas of which I spoke.

2887             MR. ENGELHART:  So when you say:

"Competitors will target those areas of the cost band or exchange where margins are high."

2888             You were referring to Shaw when you said that, or companies like Shaw?

2889             MR. GRIEVE:  That's right, companies with their own facilities.

2890             MR. ENGELHART:  You go on to say in the second sentence in paragraph 99:


"Once entrants have revealed the cost disparities within a rate band or exchange by their entry decisions, incumbents should be permitted to respond accordingly by reducing their prices in these lower cost areas."

2891             I just want to spend a moment unpacking that sentence.

2892             So you say:

"Once entrants have revealed the cost disparities within a rate band or exchange ..."

2893             Does that mean you didn't know the cost disparities before they entered?

2894             MR. GRIEVE:  We know that three are cost disparities between the built‑up areas and the rural areas with the long loops.  There may be other cost disparities within those built‑up areas that would be revealed by entrants if they chose to de‑average in those areas, or if they chose to only enter in certain areas or if they chose only to build facilities in certain areas.

by their entry decisions, incumbents should be permitted to respond accordingly by reducing their prices in these lower cost areas."


2895             MR. ENGELHART:  But doesn't cable serve about 95 percent of the homes in Canada?  If that is true, don't they serve about 95 percent of the homes in Alberta and B.C.?

2896             MR. GRIEVE:  The Canada number I have heard before.  Alberta and B.C. I don't actually have.

2897             Can I just check here?

2898             MR. ENGELHART:  I don't either, Mr. Grieve, but if we assume for a moment that Alberta and B.C. are typical of Canada, if cable companies serve 95 percent and if Shaw is rolling out their cable service in all of their cable systems, can you really say that they are targeting those areas of the cost band or exchange where margins are high?

2899             I mean, they are targeting 95 percent of the population.  That is not really targeting, is it?

2900             MR. GRIEVE:  Well, they are going where they have their networks and their networks are generally in built‑up areas.  They don't serve these large rural areas that we serve.

2901             So to the extent that they are there, that is what they are targeting.


2902             MR. ENGELHART:  But there surely aren't too many of these large rural areas in Band B.  I'm not saying there is none, but aren't most of these large rural areas going to be in bands D, E, F or whatever?  Isn't most of Band B going to be fairly built up?

2903             MR. GRIEVE:  Urban.  Urban.

2904             MR. ENGELHART:  Yes.

2905             MR. GRIEVE:  There are parts of Band B ‑‑ and I said before that I think the percentage is between 10 and 15 percent in Bands B, C and D ‑‑ of the loops that we would consider to be outside of built‑up areas ‑‑ on second thought, I think it is more like between 8 and 15 ‑‑ but those loops are, in many cases, extremely long when you consider, you know, a rancher or something like that outside of Calgary.

2906             MR. ENGELHART:  The numbers just aren't sort of adding up.

2907             If 10 percent of the people in the ‑‑ well, I guess the reason the numbers ‑‑

2908             MR. GRIEVE:  It would be zero percent in downtown Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver.

2909             MR. ENGELHART:  But some of these long loops that you are worried about that are sort of deep suburbs of Calgary that have great big one acre lots, those places would have cable, wouldn't they?


2910             MR. GRIEVE:  Those aren't the kinds of long loops I'm talking about, Mr. Engelhart, because long loops going into more populated areas, even the one acre houses, those particular kinds of areas don't exhibit the same kinds of cost differences that you would have for a farmer or a rancher, say, 4 kilometres outside of a town like Red Deer.

2911             MR. ENGELHART:  So 10 percent of the loops for Calgary and Edmonton are like ‑‑

2912             MR. GRIEVE:  No.

2913             MR. ENGELHART:  No?

2914             MR. GRIEVE:  I said not Band A.

2915             MR. ENGELHART:  But I think only downtown Calgary is Band A.

2916             MR. GRIEVE:  Yes, right.

2917             MR. ENGELHART:  I think most of Calgary is Band B.

2918             MR. GRIEVE:  Okay.

2919             MR. ENGELHART:  So 10 percent of the loops in Calgary and Edmonton are farms?

2920             MR. GRIEVE:  I think that one in Band B is closer to 8 percent on average across B.C. and Alberta, which would be outside of the Band B areas, and there are some like Kelowna as well that would be Band B.  If you total up all those areas and look at them, I think it's around 8 percent.

2921             I will check that for you, if you would like.

2922             MR. ENGELHART:  So you say:


"Once entrants have revealed the cost disparities within a rate band or exchange by their entry decisions, incumbents should be permitted to respond accordingly by reducing their prices in these lower cost areas."

2923             So what you want to do is lower the prices where Shaw has cable systems and raise the prices in these farm areas that are still part of Band B.

2924             Is that what you are saying?

2925             MR. GRIEVE:  What we have asked for is the ability to de‑average and increase rates by up to 5 percent a year.  If that is required or even possible to do, because we do have other circumstances as well to consider, but if that is possible to do these would be the kinds of areas likely that that would occur, especially after cable entry.

‑‑‑ Pause

2926             MR. ENGELHART:  What about Vancouver, are there farms that are part of Band B in Vancouver?

‑‑‑ Pause


2927             MR. GRIEVE:  It doesn't have the same kind of situations that around Calgary and Edmonton would, and Red Deer or something like that.

2928             If you have been to these towns, and I'm sure you have, you get to the end of town and you can see forever.

2929             MR. ENGELHART:  You couldn't have just put those farms in Band C or D?

2930             MR. GRIEVE:  No, we weren't allowed to.  We actually proposed in 1996 to put all the base rate areas, the built‑up areas into Bands A, B, C and D and then have a Band E that took care of all of these loops.

2931             MR. ENGELHART:  What about your high‑speed internet service.  Does it serve these farms?

2932             MR. GRIEVE:  I think you would have to ask the marketing panel, but my understanding is it does not.

2933             MR. ENGELHART:  These farms, the ones around Calgary, are they actually part of Calgary or are they in some different place?

2934             MR. GRIEVE:  You mean the Calgary city limits?  Calgary is a huge area.  After a whole bunch of amalgamations some of them are probably still in the Calgary city limits and some of them are probably outside.


2935             MR. ENGELHART:  So what percentage of your Alberta operating territory doesn't get high‑speed internet?

‑‑‑ Pause

2936             MR. GRIEVE:  I'm told it's confidential.  We will check that and perhaps you could ask the marketing panel that question.

2937             MR. GRIEVE:  I am told it is confidential.

2938             MR. ENGELHART:  Do you charge higher rates for high‑speed internet customers that have these long loops?

2939             MR. GRIEVE:  You know, that is not something I can answer because these are marketing kinds of questions.

2940             MR. ENGELHART:  If it turns out that you don't charge higher rates for these high‑speed customers that have longer loops, wouldn't it suggest that you are probably not going to charge higher rates to the same customers for their long telephone line loops?


2941             MR. GRIEVE:  I would say it is a different issue, Mr. Engelhart, as you know.  Mr. Hariton mentioned it yesterday, that the ‑‑ first of all, I doubt that we provide ‑‑ to these long loops that we provide high‑speed internet because that would require DSL, but you can ask the marketing panel that.

2942             But of course the loop, the physical loop is paid for in the Res PES rate.  The ADSL service is built on top of that and has costs over and above that, much as your telephony service is built on the cable system which is already being paid for out of your cable rates.

2943             MR. ENGELHART:  Yes.  It struck me as news when Mr. Hariton said it yesterday and it seemed to me he was saying something different to Mr. Janigan today.  As Mr. Hariton said, the fact that you do supply naked DSL loops would seem to suggest that it is not all based on the PES service.

2944             You can buy standalone DSL.

2945             MR. GRIEVE:  Where it is offered, yes.  It's not something that we offered voluntarily shall I say.

‑‑‑ Pause

2946             MR. ENGELHART:  So I guess your position is that none of these low margin areas that you are talking about have high‑speed internet service.

2947             Is that right?


2948             MR. GRIEVE:  They wouldn't from TELUS, but it's hard ‑‑ what we are talking about is long loops here and sometimes you have small urban areas out there that not even a cable company serves, because there are some very small urban areas that are served by cable companies, some that aren't ‑‑ even Shaw even today out in those areas.

2949             But I am talking about the long loops that go out to individual farmers that are four or five kilometres apart out on the prairies or farmers or ranchers.  Those are the kinds of long loops that we have been trying to identify and separate out from these calculations for a long time.

2950             MR. ENGELHART:  So the concern that you are evidencing in this section of you evidence is, you want to charge higher rates to these folks who have the long loops and lower rates to everyone else.

2951             Is that right?

2952             MR. GRIEVE:  We want the flexibility to do that, but we wouldn't necessarily do it because there are a number of other things that we have to take into consideration.


2953             Even where the cable companies don't serve there is still the possibility of the former CallNet's of the world using unbundled local loops and getting these long loops at an average price so they would have the same price for a loop that was two blocks long as they would for a loop that is four kilometres long and goes out to a rural area.

2954             So we would have to be careful in situations where you had a CallNet or a Primus that apparently leases loops for someone that is in the residential business.

2955             We also have to worry about the kind of cap that wireless service puts on these rates.

2956             Those are general considerations and I invite you to ask the marketing panel these questions, because I know that often in these proceedings we end up with lots of questions about marketing so this time we decided to bring a whole bunch of them for you to ask questions of, Mr. Engelhart.

2957             MR. ENGELHART:  In paragraph 100 you say, in the first sentence:

"The Commission should not require incumbents to adjust rates uniformly throughout the band or exchange even where entry has not occurred because this would send the wrong market signals to entrants."


2958             So is it companies like Shaw that have the wrong market signal because you are charging the same throughout Calgary and Edmonton and Red Deer as you are in these farms?

2959             MR. GRIEVE:  Well, as you may or may not know, our rates for unbundled local loops are averaged across all those areas.

2960             But yes, we are talking about competitors who have their own facilities or are building their own facilities competing against prices that are designed to provide, in the urban areas of these exchanges and bands, a subsidy to the rural parts of these exchanges, sort of an internal subsidy that as we lose lines not only do we lose the revenues from those lines, we also lose that portion of the subsidy that has been built into the rates by the Commission.

2961             MR. ENGELHART:  You say in paragraph 98:

"Paradoxically, when incumbents are not permitted to recover their cost it is the entrant and consumers who suffer the most."

2962             That troubles us entrants.

2963             How is that we suffer the most?


2964             MR. GRIEVE:  I think that the entrants and consumers suffer.  Consumers suffer because the entrants aren't forced to make their best offer because of the price floor being set at a level that requires us to make a subsidy payment to the rural areas of these exchanges.

2965             The entrants suffer because they get the wrong price signals.  They don't know what our best offer could be because we are not allowed to do that.  So all of the benefits of innovation and trying to be more productive yourself are lost.

2966             MR. ENGELHART:  So if you were allowed to do this de‑averaging, you would charge a little bit more to these farmers and that would allow you to charge significantly less in Calgary and Edmonton and Red Deer?

2967             It would seem that there are so many more lines.  The 90 percent versus the 10 percent, or 8 percent of these farms in Band B.  It just seems like you wouldn't be able to lower your prices that much in Band B, would you?

2968             MR. GRIEVE:  Well, I'm not sure exactly what the question is, but the last part of your question was "you wouldn't be able to lower the prices that much in Band B".


2969             That would depend on where the imputation test level is, but I would agree generally that lowering the prices doesn't necessarily mean that we could actually raise the prices elsewhere in an exchange or a band in order to make that up.  There are lots of other things that would constrain us, as I said before.

2970             MR. ENGELHART:  I'm just really asking you here about the rule against de‑averaging, not about the other rules.

2971             Explain to me again, I apologize, how it is that it is the entrant who suffers the most?

2972             MR. GRIEVE:  Well, I think it says entrants and consumers, and I think that the entrants suffer and consumers likewise because they are not seeing what the best possible offers are by their competitor.

2973             MR. ENGELHART:  So if you didn't have to charge the same price for these farm lines as you did for all the lines in Calgary and Edmonton, you could charge a lower price for the Calgary and Edmonton?


2974             MR. GRIEVE:  Well, what we are asking for is the flexibility to have the ability to lower the prices in Calgary and in Edmonton and in the urban areas where the cable companies have entered, and we are asking for flexibility with a 5 percent limit per year in other places where we might need to better reflect the costs in the rates if competition in those areas from things like wireless and perhaps high‑speed from other kinds of initiatives, government initiatives like SuperNet, wireless high‑speed service providers and things like that allowed us to do that.

2975             MR. ENGELHART:  No, but this is all about cost.  This says you can't recover your cost.

2976             MR. GRIEVE:  Well, what we ask for always is a reasonable opportunity to be able to recover our costs and if we are forbidden from doing these things, forbidden by regulation, then we don't have any opportunity.  Whether we have an opportunity depends so much on market forces and things like the brand reputation incenting entry, those kinds of things that the Commission has recognized before.

2977             MR. ENGELHART:  But the costs that you can't recover are those costs for those farm lines.

2978             Is that right?  In paragraph 98, those are the costs you are talking about?

2979             MR. GRIEVE:  For the most part, yes.

2980             MR. ENGELHART:  And because you can't recover the costs of those farm lines, the entrant, on a par with the consumers suffers even more than you do.

2981             Is that what you are saying?


2982             MR. GRIEVE  Well, entrants can't enter out there with their own networks when the prices are set artificially low in those kinds of areas, and consumers don't get the benefit of the innovation that competition brings.

2983             MR. ENGELHART:  But the entrant with their own facility as shown, I think you said they are entering everywhere they have a cable system.

2984             MR. GRIEVE  But they are not going to roll out into areas like that if the prices are kept at levels that don't reflect the costs, unless of course there is an economic boom and subdivisions explode into those areas ‑‑ a hypothetical, I might add.

2985             MR. ENGELHART:  What about the entrants like Vonage and Primus and those sorts of people?  They just mail you a modem in the mail and then you plug it into your high speed line.

2986             Are they also targeting the high margin areas?

2987             MR. GRIEVE  No.  Well, they are targeting the areas obviously where people have ‑‑ they don't even target them.  They just offer the service to anyone who has high speed Internet access.  So where there is no high speed, obviously they are not offering service.


‑‑‑ Pause

2988             MR. ENGELHART:  Those are our questions.  Thank you very much.

2989             MR. GRIEVE  Thank you, Mr. Engelhart.

2990             THE SECRETARY:  Thank you, gentlemen.

2991             It is my understanding that there was mutual agreement between two parties to trade places, and that BCOAPO et al will move forward.

2992             Am I correct?  Yes.

2993             So please come to the witness table, Mrs. MacDonald.

‑‑‑ Pause

CROSS‑EXAMINATION / CONTRE‑INTERROGATOIRE

2994             MS MacDONALD:  My name is Patricia MacDonald, M‑a‑c‑D‑o‑n‑a‑l‑d.

2995             I am counsel for the following groups:  The B.C. Old Age Pensioners Organization, Council of Senior Citizens Organization, Federated Anti‑Poverty Groups of B.C., End Legislated Poverty, B.C. Coalition of People with Disabilities, Active Support Against Poverty and the Tenants Rights Action Coalition.

2996             Mr Grieve, in the last price cap hearing you were asked if you consider a phone an essential service and you replied that you did.


2997             MR. GRIEVE  Yes.

2998             MS MacDONALD:  Would you agree that it is still an essential service?

2999             MR. GRIEVE  Yes, I would agree that telecommunications service is an essential service.

3000             MS MacDONALD:  Would you agree with me that that statement holds true for the most vulnerable members of our society?  And by that, I mean people that are the elderly, people that are disabled and other people that are on fixed incomes.

3001             MR. GRIEVE  Absolutely.

3002             MS MacDONALD:  The affordability of PES ‑‑ I have learned a new term.  I was calling it P‑E‑S.

3003             The affordability of Res PES will likely continue to be very important for them.

3004             MR. GRIEVE  Yes, it is.

3005             MS MacDONALD:  You don't need to turn to your comments unless you would like to, but I am referring to your comments where TELUS says that where competitors are present or where consumers have a choice between three service providers ‑‑ and they identified the three service providers as ILECs, a wireless provider and a cable VoIP.

3006             MR. GRIEVE  Right.


3007             MS MacDONALD:  In order for a person to have wireless as one of their choices, they obviously have to have a cell phone.  That would be correct, wouldn't it?

3008             MR. GRIEVE  That is correct.

3009             MS MacDONALD:  In order to have a cell phone, you either have to purchase a cell phone or you have to purchase a type of plan which, for example, might be a three‑year plan at a certain amount of money per month for a certain amount of minutes.

3010             That is correct, isn't it?

3011             MR. GRIEVE  That's right.

3012             MS MacDONALD:  Do you have any idea of the range of the cost of a cellular phone?

3013             MR. GRIEVE  Prepaid phones are a lot less.  You could get better information from the Marketing Panel.  I know it seems to be inconvenient to have the Marketing Panel here, but you could get better information from Mr. Hansen on that.

3014             But there are prepaid phones that are quite inexpensive, prepaid plans that are quite inexpensive.

3015             MS MacDONALD:  Any questions that I have that should be punted to the Marketing Panel, please feel free to do so.


3016             MR. GRIEVE  I love to punt to the Marketing Panel.

3017             MS MacDONALD:  Unless they are ones that you are going to agree with me.

3018             MR. GRIEVE  Okay.  Even if they are marketing questions and I agree, I'll just agree.

3019             MS MacDONALD:  Would I also refer to the Marketing Panel what would be your cheapest monthly plan under your cellular phone service?

3020             MR. GRIEVE  Yes.

3021             MS MacDONALD:  Cellular phones have an access fee of approximately $7.00 per month?

3022             MS YALE:  That's correct but that doesn't apply if you use the prepaid options that Mr. Grieve was referring to.

3023             I don't know if you are familiar with the difference between prepaid and postpaid.

3024             MS MacDONALD:  I think I am familiar, but it might be helpful if you describe it.

3025             MS YALE:  One kind of wireless plan is where it is a monthly rate and there is an access fee that applies on top of the monthly rate.


3026             The other is you just buy a card that has a certain number of minutes and generally speaking for those cards the minimum you would have to spend is $10 a month and that is an all‑in fee.

3027             So if you are cost conscious, your minimum rate is ten bucks a month.

3028             MS MacDONALD:  Do you remember what percentage of TELUS cellular customers would be on prepaid as opposed to the monthly plans?

3029             MS YALE:  Well, I'm not sure how much of that information we disclose publicly, but you can feel free to ask the Marketing Panel for details on that.

3030             Certainly it is an option that is used by a reasonable percentage of our subscriber base.

3031             MS MacDONALD:  Are you able to describe for me a prepaid plan that a cost conscious consumer would have for $10 a month?

3032             Could you describe what that would actually give them in terms of minutes, in terms of ‑‑

3033             MS YALE:  You would have to ask the Marketing Panel exactly.  It is a certain number of day‑time minutes and a different number of ‑‑ because different minutes are priced at different rates, depending on whether they are day‑time or weekends.

3034             Basically you get a card and when it's used up, you get another card.


3035             THE CHAIRPERSON:  Ms MacDonald, could I just interrupt for a second.

3036             Ms Yale, do you think it would be useful for you to bring your marketing colleagues up here?  To be honest with you, there have been almost no questions which have been purely policy questions and quite rightly you have been referring to the Marketing Panel regularly.

3037             I raise it with you.  We could take five minutes and you could re‑organize yourselves and get your marketing colleagues up here, if you think it is a good idea.  I absolutely don't want to compromise TELUS' freedom to organize its witnesses the way it wishes.

3038             But I suggest to you that we are going to have to go through these questions the way we are operating at the moment.

3039             MS YALE:  We can certainly do that.  I thought this was just sort of a lead‑up to a policy question.

3040             But if it is helpful for you to have the full range of the pricing options at your disposal before you ask your policy questions, we can certainly accommodate that.


3041             MS MacDONALD:  I do find that my questions, as I am reviewing them in my head, move back and forth between the two panels.

3042             THE CHAIRPERSON:  What I would like to suggest, Ms Yale, is we will give you ten minutes, until 2 o'clock.  You decide what you want to do but please ensure, given the experience we have here, that we will not have to repeat the same material twice.

3043             Is that reasonable?

3044             MS YALE:  Yes.

3045             THE CHAIRPERSON:  So we will take a break until 2 o'clock, Commissioner Langford.

3046             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  I feel a "Timmy moment" coming on.

‑‑‑ Upon recessing at 1350 / Suspension à 1350

‑‑‑ Upon resuming at 1400 / Reprise à 1400

3047             THE CHAIRPERSON:  So first I am going to ask our colleagues, Telus, to explain the arrangements they have made and introduce the new people.  Then we will proceed with swearing; then we will proceed with questions.

3048             It is also the case that if the competitors in the person of Mr. Engelhart and his colleagues wished to come back and question the new panel at this juncture or conserve their marketing questions for a revisit with the full marketing panel, that also would be possible.


3049             Let's just start by introducing our newcomers, if we may.  Mr. Ryan.

3050             MR. RYAN:  Yes, Mr. Chairman.  You have now before you, in addition to the witnesses I have already introduced, Mr. Paul Hansen.

3051             Mr. Hansen, if I can catch up with events here, his CV is also attached to the letter of October 5 that has been filed with the Commission.  Mr. Hansen is Vice‑President of Pricing and Forecasting, Consumer Solutions.

3052             Our proposal to the Commission, in light of the questions you have raised, Mr. Chairman, is that Mr. Hansen will join this panel for the duration of this panel.  He will also sit, as originally planned, with his marketing colleagues in case there is a cross‑over with that panel.  We will see how all of that evolves and we will make whatever changes seem to be appropriate, if additional changes are appropriate.

3053             Mr. Hansen, attached to the letter of October 5 that I have referred you to are certain interrogatory responses that have been directed to the marketing panel.  Are you familiar with the responses that the company has made to those interrogatories?

3054             MR. HANSEN:  Yes, I am.


3055             MR. RYAN:  Are the contents of those responses true to the best of your knowledge and belief?

3056             MR. HANSEN:  Yes, they are.

3057             MR. RYAN:  You have seen the CV that has been filed with the Commission on your behalf?

3058             MR. HANSEN:  Yes, I have.

3059             MR. RYAN:  And that CV is accurate?

3060             MR. HANSEN:  Yes, it is.

3061             MR. RYAN:  If we can start again, Mr. Chairman.

3062             THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you, Mr. Ryan.

3063             Madam la secrétaire.

3064             THE SECRETARY:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  Please state your name for the record, sir.

3065             MR. HANSEN:  Paul Hansen.

3066             THE SECRETARY:  I will now affirm you.

AFFIRMED:  PAUL HANSEN

3067             THE CHAIRPERSON:  Ms Macdonald.

CROSS‑EXAMINATION / CONTRE‑INTERROGATOIRE (Cont.)

3068             MS MACDONALD:   Mr. Hansen, you might have heard some of the questions, but I will repeat them.


3069             I had asked the previous panel about the range of costs for a cell phone.  Could you provide some information on that?

3070             MR. HANSEN:  Yes.  The prices can range anywhere from a free cell phone, if people are willing to sign up on a contract of one, two or three years, or if people choose not to sign up on a contract, then typically pricing starts at about $99, but can be as low as $49 if people are willing to use a refurbished handset.

3071             MS MACDONALD:  The free phone, that always comes with a monthly plan for one, two or three years?

3072             MR. HANSEN:  Yes.  Typically to get a free phone, people have to commit to a contract term with us.

3073             MS MACDONALD:  Do you know what the percentage of your customers are prepaid versus on one of these monthly plans that are over a term of one to three years?

3074             MR. HANSEN:  Yes, I do.  I believe the information is confidential.  I would be happy to share it with the panel, but I can't comment on it right now.


3075             MS MACDONALD:  Are you saying that it is for sure confidential?  I heard you say I believe it is confidential.  I am just wondering am I going to get an answer later or this is the answer, it's confidential?

3076             MR. HANSEN:  I believe it is confidential.  Yes, it is confidential.

3077             THE CHAIRPERSON:  Ms Macdonald, is there something like a general order of magnitude or some measure of the degree of significance of this customer base that might substitute for the precise figure, because Telus' competitors have a pretty good idea what the numbers are.  They just don't know exactly what they are.  You can ask a general question.  Mr. Grieve, in fact, attempted to give you a general appreciation.  He said, as I recollect, there was a reasonable number of people who took the prepaid option.

3078             I am just encouraging you to ask a general question which would not be a precise figure that might nevertheless convey the information I think you are seeking.

3079             MS MACDONALD:  I think you have asked my question.


3080             MR. HANSEN:  Excuse me, Mr. Chairman, what I could say, if it is helpful, there are some stats that are available in terms of the Canadian industry.  I think it is approximately 30 per cent of the Canadian industry does prepaid versus postpaid, just to give you a ballpark.

3081             MS MACDONALD:  Is there any reason to believe that Telus might be different from that industry standard?

‑‑‑ Laughter

3082             THE CHAIRPERSON:  You have to play by the rules, Ms Macdonald.

‑‑‑ Laughter

3083             MS MACDONALD:  Ms Yale had talked about some customers that are really cost conscious would be able to buy the prepaid card for $10 and they would be able to have phone service for that.  Can you describe what exactly that $10 would get them?


3084             MR. HANSEN:  Yes.  Like with prepaid, you would have to describe it as sort of like a phone with a gas tank.  You can sort of determine how you want to use the funds.  You can use the $10 just for regular air time, use it any time, and our rates start at 25 cents a minute for that.  Or if people choose, they can sign up for different services; for example, unlimited evening and weekend calling.  We have plans for unlimited evening and weekend calling ‑‑ or I shouldn't say unlimited, but evening and weekend calling starting at 5 cents a minute for $5 a month.

3085             MS MACDONALD:  And the latter plans that you are talking about, these wouldn't come with the pay‑as‑you‑go prepaid card of $10, would they?

3086             MR. HANSEN:  The $10, think of it as your wireless bank account, and you can choose to spend that $10 however you would like.  So, if you choose to spend the $10 on some of the different features, you can, but you don't have to.

3087             MS YALE:  To be helpful, the short answer is yes, these are options that are available in a prepaid mode.

3088             MS MACDONALD:  Then you can confirm that if you were to have a cell phone, you could get a $10 card and you could get, let's say, long distance at 5 cents a minute?

3089             MR. HANSEN:  No, long distance is not available at 5 cents a minute.

3090             MS MACDONALD:  Then you would get local calls at 5 cents a minute.  I believe I misheard your answer.  You had mentioned 5 cents a minute.


3091             MR. HANSEN:  That's correct.  If you were to sign up for one of the features, evening and weekend calling, then you can get local calling, evening and weekend for 5 cents a minute.

3092             MS MACDONALD:  Do you have any idea of the magnitude of persons that would use a pay‑as‑you‑go calling card as their only phone?  I know that there is information, and a lot of information that you have filed, about the difference between how many people have wireless and wireline.  But I am specifically interested in do you know about these people that have pay‑as‑you‑go, this $10 a month or the possibility of only spending $10 a month on your telephone calls, telephone phones?

3093             MR. HANSEN:  We have not done a study on wireless substitution with respect to prepaid in particular.

3094             MS MACDONALD:  In decision 2006‑15, the Commission has found that cell phones are generally not considered a substitute for the land line, but VOIP service is.  You would agree with that statement?

3095             MR. GRIEVE:  Which decision was that, I am sorry?

3096             MS MACDONALD:  It is the forbearance decision.

3097             MR. GRIEVE:  Yes.

3098             MS MACDONALD:  We talked a little bit about the cost of ‑‑ you had something to add?


3099             MR. GRIEVE:  You didn't go on to ask the next question about the Commission is now reconsidering whether wireless is a suitable substitute.

3100             MS MACDONALD:  I didn't ask that question.  I wasn't intending to.

3101             MR. GRIEVE:  I have answered it because it is incomplete without all of the information.

3102             The Commission is considering whether wireless, because stand‑alone wireless or wireless only households are increasing rapidly, more rapidly than people thought.

3103             MS MACDONALD:  We talked about the cost of ‑‑ when I started this line of questioning, I was talking about the three main choices that Telus believes that consumers have:  ILEC, wireless providers and cable VOIP.  We have talked about the costs of wireless.

3104             To have VOIP service ‑‑ I am not actually sure if that is how the industry pronounces it.  That is how I am pronouncing it.

3105             MR. GRIEVE:  Sounds good.

3106             MS MACDONALD:  To have VOIP service you need a computer.  Would you agree with that?


3107             MR. GRIEVE:  There are two kinds of voice over IP service.  The kind we are talking about here is the voice over IP service offered by the cable companies on their network, for which you don't need a computer.  That is what we call access dependent voice over IP.

3108             The Vonage style of voice over IP is access independent and you do need a computer for that, and high speed Internet access.

3109             MS MACDONALD:  For the access independent, for the people that need a computer, they are responsible for their own maintenance if something were to go wrong with their computer, aren't they?

3110             MR. GRIEVE:  Yes, I have discovered that.  But it is not part of our test.

3111             MS MACDONALD:  In the Telus interrog from the consumer groups, number 4, that was the interrog question ‑‑ I will ask my question, you may wish to turn it, but it was the attachment to that question, and the attachment was the study of VOIP and cellular households online survey, November 17th, 2005.


3112             There is one piece of information that I was going to ask you about.  It is on page 12, and there you have listed that the average monthly spending on cellular services at home is similar for both the wireless for cellular and for VoIP, and for cellular it is $79 a month and for VoIP it is $73.10.

‑‑‑ Pause

3113             MS YALE:  Sorry, but you're talking about the average monthly spend on cellular?

3114             MS MACDONALD:  Yes.  On page 12 you have got that the average monthly spending is similar for both, 79 for cellular only and 73.10 for VoIP households.

3115             MS YALE:  Right.  But it's not, as I understand the ‑‑ if you look at the bullet above ‑‑

3116             MS MACDONALD:  Mm‑hmm.

3117             MS YALE:  ‑‑ it says:

"For VoIP households that also use a cell for local calls."  (As read)

3118             MS MACDONALD:  Right.

3119             MS YALE:  So, the average monthly spend isn't comparing VoIP local spending with cell local spending, right.

3120             MS MACDONALD:  Right.

3121             MS YALE:  It's comparing average monthly spend where someone is cellular only or they have cellular plus VoIP.


3122             MS MACDONALD:  Thank you, and thank you for that clarification.

3123             Now, and I hadn't understood that.

3124             MS YALE:  And I'm not sure what the question is.

3125             MS MACDONALD:  Well, first, I wanted to get you to turn to that because I do have a line of questions on this, and I did misunderstand this particular piece of information.

3126             So, are you able to tell me then for someone who has VoIP only what their average monthly spending would be?  You have got the number here for cellular at 79.  What would it be if it was a VoIP only, not VoIP plus cellular?

3127             MS YALE:  Go ahead.  It's not in the study.

3128             MR. HANSEN:  Yeah.  No, it's not in the study.

3129             MS MACDONALD:  And do you know what that figure would be?


3130             MR. HANSEN:  No, I don't.  I just know the range that you can pay for access independent VoIP can be anywhere from ‑‑ there are providers out there that provide this service for free, the Skypes of the world, and then some of the more common ones and, subject to check, I think Primus broad band is sort of in the ball park of sort of 15.95.

3131             So, they can range anywhere from, you know, free to 15 to 50 or $60 depending on the provider you choose to go with and the services you want bundled with your local.

3132             MS MACDONALD:  And here today, would you know about what an average monthly spend would be?

3133             MR. HANSEN:  No, I wouldn't.

3134             MS YALE:  If we take a look at the average monthly spend for cellular at $79, I would presume that that would include both local calling, long distance calling and some optional services.

3135             MS MACDONALD:  The cellular average spend at $79 a month, I presume that that is including local calls, long distance calls and some optional services.

3136             Would that also be ‑‑ would that be a correct assumption, that the $79 would include some of those?

3137             MR. HANSEN:  Yes, I believe that includes all of their services.


3138             MS MACDONALD:  In the Telus interrogatories from the CRTC No. 202, you provided the average monthly bill for residences to the Commission but, for confidentiality reasons, you didn't provide it publicly.

3139             But when you did file that interrogatory you did show the average monthly bill for residence individual line subscribers and that was at page 3 of that interrog, and I'll repeat it.

3140             It was the Telus interrog from the CRTC and it was No. 202 and it was page 3.

3141             MS YALE:  Do we still need this other one or are you done with this?

3142             MS MACDONALD:  No, I'm done.

‑‑‑ Pause

3143             MS YALE:  We have it.

3144             MS MACDONALD:  And I'm looking at page 3 which is the B.C. exchanges and the lowest rate of the band is 22.70, which is in several of the bands, and the highest is 28.62.

3145             That's correct; isn't it?

3146             MS YALE:  22.70 is the lowest, 28.62 ‑‑

3147             MR. HANSEN:  Yes, that's correct.

3148             MS MACDONALD:  And we don't know the average monthly bill, but presumably it would include some amount for long distance and some amount for optional services?

3149             MR. HANSEN:  On average, yes.


3150             MS MACDONALD:  But we do know that the cost of a local phone line, so this is your RES/PES, would be under $30 a month?

3151             MR. HANSEN:  Yes, in B.C.

3152             MS MACDONALD:  And, again, I'm wondering if you can assist me in looking at a comparison in terms of choices that the constituency that I represent would be looking at.

3153             And I understand that you don't want to file particular numbers for confidentiality reasons, but when I'm looking at the comparison here for local phone lines it's under $30 a month, and that ‑‑ plus some other portion, we don't know ‑‑ I don't know what it will be for the average monthly bill, but it looks to me that the comparison that a consumer is making would be $30 compared to the cellular amount which was in the study, which was at $79 ‑‑ $30 plus some unknown amount as compared to $79 a month.

3154             MR. HANSEN:  I don't think it's a fair comparison.  There's a couple of different factors at work.

3155             One of them is that the people that are doing wireless substitution today, they may be very heavy wireless users, willing to be the early adopters of the service.


3156             People can ‑‑ and the one thing we have to keep in mind with the averages, that there's a wide distribution of the usage, at sort of either end of the curve there are people that, you know, may be very close to spending the least amount possible.

3157             So, for example, on the wireless we have plans starting from $20 a month on the post‑paid side as well, or $10 a month on the prepaid side if it meets the calling requirements that people have and then, again, people have the choice to layer on additional services if they need them.

3158             MS MACDONALD:  When I looked at the competitors' interrogatories to the CRTC 1203, Cogeco and Shaw do not provide local stand‑alone service.  I don't know if I can call it PES, but I guess it's the equivalent of your PES.

3159             But QMI and Rogers do provide that service, RES/PES, and they do it at a discount to what monopoly service provider ‑‑ what the ILEC provides.  Is that your understanding?

3160             MR. HANSEN:  Yes, it is.


3161             MS MACDONALD:  Is there ‑‑ again, the ILECs didn't file what their average, what their costs ‑‑ actually one did file what ‑‑ there was one figure that was around $23 a month.  I'm just trying to ‑‑ for RES/PES.

3162             MR. GRIEVE:  I'm sorry, $23 a month.

3163             MS MACDONALD:  Yeah.

3164             MR. GRIEVE:  For what?

3165             MS MACDONALD:  I think it was QMI, but let me get to my question ‑‑

3166             MR. GRIEVE:  Is that a rate?

3167             MS MACDONALD:  Let me get to my question which is rattling around in my brain.

3168             What I'm trying to get to is, we've got a residential ‑‑ a RES/PES line, you can do it for $30 a month with Telus.

3169             What can the CLEC offer, and can you provide that information?  What would be the cost of the CLEC RES/PES?

3170             MR. GRIEVE:  Well, I think you're talking about the price?

3171             MS MACDONALD:  Mm‑hmm.  Yes, I am.

3172             MR. GRIEVE:  And the price is something you should really ask them, but they have no regulatory restrictions on them at all, so they can price wherever they want, and as long as the regulator continues to regulate our price, they have no pressure on them to be more innovative or reduce their costs where they are.


3173             MS MACDONALD:  In your service area, are they pricing below you at the discounted, the approximately $30 rate?

3174             MR. GRIEVE:  Where Rogers, formerly CallNet, is offering local service, which is in a limited number of exchanges, mostly urban, that we have been, you know, given in an interrogatory response.  Their stand‑alone PES is 22.95.

3175             I think that would probably be band A and band B.  Shaw I don't think offers stand‑alone residential Primary Exchange Service.

3176             MS MACDONALD:  That was my understanding as well, that Cogeco didn't offer it but QMI would offer it.

3177             So, for a limited number of customers ‑‑

3178             MR. GRIEVE:  I just want to be clear here that Cogeco doesn't offer service in British Columbia, nor does Videotron.

3179             MS MACDONALD:  Mm‑hmm.


3180             MR. HANSEN:  Unless something happened overnight ‑‑ something else happened overnight I guess.  And Rogers offers it, not as a cable company, but as an unbundled loop provider.  So, they buy unbundled loops from Telus and then they put their own switching and other things on that service.

3181             MS MACDONALD:  Right.  And I'm just trying to find a comparison.

3182             So, for Telus then, would it be fair to say that there is very few customers that would be able to obtain RES/PES from one of your competitors?

3183             MR. HANSEN:  No, it would not.

3184             MS MACDONALD:  And why not?

3185             MR. HANSEN:  A couple of factors at play.  If you look at ‑‑ I believe if you look at some of the information that was in some of the recent annual reports, for example Shaw I think indicated that their ‑‑

3186             MS MACDONALD:  Oh, I'm sorry.  When I said RES/PES, I mean just RES/PES, and my understanding is that Shaw doesn't offer stand‑alone residential PES service.

3187             MR. HANSEN:  Okay, I apologize.  I didn't understand the question.

3188             Yes, I would say that it's fair to say that stand‑alone RES/PES is only offered to a limited number of subscribers, yes.

3189             MS MACDONALD:  Are you able to provide what that number is?


3190             MR. GRIEVE:  We have an interrogatory that gets at this.  I'm just looking for the response.

3191             MR. HANSEN:  So, right now I'm looking at interrog CRTC dated August 8th, '06 1202.

3192             MS MACDONALD:  To Telus?

3193             MR. HANSEN:  Yes.  And it highlights the markets where CallNet, the former CallNet offered unbundled local loops.

3194             MS MACDONALD:  And I'm sorry, I didn't catch the number.  It's August, but which is the actual number of the interrog?

3195             MR. GRIEVE:  1202.

3196             MR. HANSEN:  1202.

3197             MS MACDONALD:  Okay.

3198             MR. HANSEN:  Telus/CRTC 8 August 1202.

3199             MS MACDONALD:  Now, to continue with your comments, you had said that you'd agree with me that there were very few residential customers that could get RES ‑‑ residential stand‑alone PES service in B.C.

3200             Would you also agree with me that the trend has been for the competitors to compete by providing bundles rather than the stand‑alone service?


3201             MR. HANSEN:  Sorry, I apologize, I should correct myself.  I didn't mean to say very few.  If I said that, I apologize.  I should have said only a portion of our clients have access, but it's a significant portion because places like Calgary and Vancouver do have access to the service.

3202             Now, I can't comment on why our competitors chose to offer bundles versus unbundled services.  I think they're trying to give what the majority of consumers want, but I'm not sure what their strategy is behind the solutions that they rolled into market.

3203             MS MACDONALD:  Would you agree with me that the trend has been for the competitors to compete by offering bundles rather than stand‑alone?

3204             MR. HANSEN:  Not necessarily.  CallNet does offer stand‑alone RES/PES service.

3205             MS MACDONALD:  I don't know if you were in the room this morning when the Bell panel was up and Mr. Hariton said that PES, and I believe he was referring in the context of his comments that stand‑alone PES was not a service of the future.

3206             I'd like to know what your comments are on that particular statement.


3207             MR. GRIEVE:  I don't think you should be concerned that your customers won't have telephone service.  I think what Mr. Hariton was saying was that, in his view, that in the future customers would buy an access line, whether it be a ‑‑ you know, whether it be an access line through which they get cable today from a cable company or an access line from a telephone company or whatever kind of access service that they got because it could be wireless, fixed or mobile, and through that access service they would pick a number of other services, one of which might be voice.

3208             So, if they just chose voice and just chose access ‑‑ or chose access, because they're going to have to choose at least one, chose access and just chose voice that would be the equivalent of RES/PES.

3209             But RES/PES as the service as we know it today, where you have, you know, a switch and ‑‑ well, just as it's configured today, seems to be going away.

3210             MS MACDONALD:  When you say that it would be equivalent, are you referring to it would be equivalent in terms of the types of services offered, or are you saying it would be equivalent in terms of comparable costs for the consumer?


3211             MR. GRIEVE:  Well, it would be equivalent in terms of the services.  No one knows ‑‑ and I think you mean prices ‑‑ no one knows where the prices will go because those markets are becoming more and more competitive every day.

3212             MS MACDONALD:  I'm sorry, those markets are becoming more and more competitive. When you say those markets, are you referring to what would be the equivalent of stand‑alone RES/PES, or are you talking about telecommunication services generally?

3213             MR. GRIEVE:  Well, both.

3214             MS MACDONALD:  And why do you say that stand‑alone RES/PES service is becoming more competitive?

3215             MR. HANSEN:  Well, I think another indication of how competitive the stand‑alone RES/PES is getting is if you take a look at wireless and wireless only households and the rapid growth we've seen in that market.  And with those services you can get wireless only without additional features, for example.

‑‑‑ Pause

3216             MS MACDONALD:  I want to come back to this point of service bundles, and are you aware that the CRTC Monitoring Report has also commented on service bundling?


3217             And are you aware that they have said that telecom service providers have increasingly relied on the packaging of bundling of various services to maintain or increase their revenues?

3218             MR. GRIEVE:  I'm generally aware.  Could you give me the page number because then that way we can both be reading the same thing.

3219             MR. SCHMIDT:  And the year of the relevant report, please.

3220             MS MACDONALD:  I'm sorry, Mr. Schmidt.

3221             MR. GRIEVE:  Is it the July, 2006 report?

3222             MS MACDONALD:  It's the July, 2006 report, and I can't give you a page number.  I can tell you that it's the reference right before the report began to discuss local and access.

3223             MR. GRIEVE:  We are getting there.

3224             MS MACDONALD:  I don't have a page number, but it's ‑‑

3225             MR. GRIEVE:  You said just before that?

3226             MS MACDONALD:  Just before the 4.2 local and access.

3227             MR. GRIEVE:  I think we have it on page 26 here.

‑‑‑ Pause


3228             MS MACDONALD:  I am looking at (c) "Service Bundling" under the first paragraph:

"Over the past number of years telecommunications service providers have increasingly relied on the packaging or bundling of various services to maintain or increase their revenues."

3229             In light of this statement in the Monitoring Report, and given your comments that you actually see that there has been increased ‑‑ I believe your comments, correct me if I'm wrong ‑‑ is that there has been increasing competition for standalone and there hasn't necessarily been a trend towards bundling.

3230             Doesn't this seem to suggest otherwise?

3231             MR. GRIEVE:  The two are not mutually exclusive.  CallNet ‑‑ I continue to call them CallNet because I'm afraid if I say "Rogers" people will think that I'm talking about cable Rogers.

3232             So it's Rogers CallNet offers unbundled loop service and unbundles loop‑based Res PES standalone to a large proportion of our population in Alberta and British Columbia.


3233             Also, Primus ‑‑ who we don't have registered here because they are not registered as a CLEC but they do actually get unbundled loops from someone and then provide residential service ‑‑ we are not sure if they offer standalone residential primary exchange service, but even the offering of a wireless service ‑‑

3234             THE CHAIRPERSON:  Apparently there is a problem with Ms MacDonald's microphone.  When you finish intervening would you ‑‑

3235             MS FRENETTE:  It is not necessarily a question of the microphone, but it is a question of providing evidence on the record.

3236             If you are going to be referring to the Telecommunications Monitoring Report, could you please undertake to provide copies so that we can file it as an exhibit.

3237             MS MACDONALD:  Yes, I will undertake to provide copies.  My apologies actually for not doing it.  I didn't expect to refer to that passage.

3238             MS FRENETTE:  That's fine.

3239             MS MACDONALD:  I will undertake to provide it right afterwards.

3240             MS FRENETTE:  Thank you.


3241             MR. GRIEVE:  The point just was that the increased move to more and more carriers coming up with more and more bundles doesn't mean that competition for standalone PES would not develop at the same time.  Carriers will offer standalone PES and a variety of bundles.

‑‑‑ Pause

3242             MS MACDONALD:  In five years, in exchanges that don't meet your competitive presence test, are you able to tell me what would be the maximum that would be charged for a Res PES line that at this point in time was around $30 a month.

3243             I am aware that it would be reliant upon very many different things happening in the industry, but do you know the maximum that would be charged?

3244             Would it be ‑‑ well, I have asked my question.

3245             MR. SCHMIDT:  On average over the period the rate would be frozen, so on average in the exchanges where the competitiveness presence test wasn't met the rate would be the same.

3246             MS MACDONALD:  Right.  But for individual rate elements, that could go up 5 percent per year.


3247             MR. SCHMIDT:  And others would have to go down as a consequence to maintain the freeze on average.

3248             So some rates could potentially be susceptible to going up 5 percent a year.

3249             MS MACDONALD:  So if res PES was to go up 5 percent per year and it started out at $30 a month, in five years what would be the cost?

3250             MR. SCHMIDT:  Res PES couldn't go up generally for 5 percent a year for five years, but pockets of subscribers could potentially go up.

3251             MS MACDONALD:  Why couldn't Res PES go up 5 percent?  Isn't that an individual rate element?

3252             MR. SCHMIDT:  Because on average that service in exchanges that don't pass the test, the rates remain frozen.

3253             MS MACDONALD:  What about if it is uncapped?

3254             MR. SCHMIDT:  That is a different scenario now.

3255             MS MACDONALD:  All right.  That is ‑‑

3256             MR. SCHMIDT:  So if it is uncapped ‑‑

3257             MS MACDONALD:  Sorry.


3258             MS YALE:  So in areas that don't meet the competitive presence test rates are on average frozen, so the only changes that can happen are those that happen on a revenue neutral‑basis.  Some rate elements can go up, but on average there have to be offsetting decreases so that on average there are no nominal rate increases.

3259             So where there is no competition, there are no price changes on average.

3260             MS MACDONALD:  Right.  Where it has met your competitive presence test ‑‑

3261             MS YALE:  So where the competitive presence test is met, the residential basket as a whole is uncapped, but individual rate elements within the basket have a 5 percent constraint per year.

3262             MS MACDONALD:  So at $30 a month they would be looking at 5 percent every year that they could potentially be subject to.

3263             MS YALE:  But it is in areas where there is competition, so while the formula permits it the market realities don't, which is why market forces rather than regulation are the constraint that will discipline prices where there is competition.

3264             Where there isn't competition, we have proposed that rates be frozen.

3265             MS MACDONALD:  Yes.  But it still can.  You would still have the ability to raise it 5 percent per year.


3266             MR. SCHMIDT:  As we do now.

3267             MS MACDONALD:  Right.

3268             MS YALE:  Sorry.  Where there is or isn't competition?

3269             MS MACDONALD:  Where there isn't competition.

3270             MS YALE:  Where there isn't competition ‑‑

3271             MS MACDONALD:  Sorry, where there is competition, pardon me.

3272             MS YALE:  Well, where there is competition we have proposed to uncap rates.  So some rates can go up 5 percent per year, but that is no different than the constraint that exists under price caps today, there is a 5 percent rate element constraint.

‑‑‑ Pause

3273             MS MACDONALD:  The concern for certain vulnerable consumers of telephone services has been recognized in the forbearance decision, and what the Commission did with that was to ensure that the availability of PS on a stand‑alone basis was still available.

3274             You would agree with that?

3275             MR. GRIEVE:  Yes, they did.


3276             MS MACDONALD:  Now, the vulnerable customers that they dealt with in that particular decision focused on the disabled, but that would also include other vulnerable segments of society such as the elderly and other vulnerable Canadians on fixed or low incomes?

3277             MS YALE:  Yes.

3278             MS MACDONALD:  If affordability of local phone service, of standalone service, becomes a bigger issue, would you agree that something would need to be done to assist them, for example a program of subsidies?

3279             MR. GRIEVE:  We have said in a number of proceedings, and recent ones in a different venue, that affordability is measured by penetration, but there will always be customers who will find service unaffordable at any level.

3280             So the real question is:  How do you deal with those?


3281             We were asked in the Northwest Tel hearing recently whether we would support a targeted subsidy program and we have said in the past that if that is what the Commission needs, then there are ways to do a targeted subsidy program, but there are also other ways and these were discussed in the Northwest Tel hearing, as well as government programs and things like that that are more efficient for the delivery of these things and some telecommunications‑based project or program.

3282             MS MACDONALD:  Do you foresee that as something that could be dealt with in a subsequent price cap hearing, should it become necessary?

3283             MR. GRIEVE:  It could be a subsequent hearing if the Commission thought such a thing was necessary.

3284             I actually think that it is likely to become less and less necessary over time as competition rolls out more and more and as we find that the prices on average for us are frozen and where they are not subject to the same competitive pressures the areas that haven't met the competitive presence test even averaging them, even having average prices, does reduce them in real terms every year as opposed to nominal terms.

3285             MS MACDONALD:  Are you talking generally?

3286             MR. GRIEVE:  Yes.


3287             MS MACDONALD:  Because we are talking about a particular segment of society that we have just said it may not be possible for them to afford telephones, but you are saying you don't believe that will be the situation for the vulnerable segments of society either.

3288             MR. GRIEVE:  I think I also said that ‑‑ well, I did also say that there are some people for whom telephone service, like many other services unfortunately, will be unaffordable at any price.

3289             The only question is how best society should deal with those people, whether it is through a telecommunications targeted program or other kinds of government programs.

3290             MS MACDONALD:  Then to be clear ‑‑

3291             MR. GRIEVE:  That is not to say in any way that we don't think that is something that needs to be dealt with.

3292             MS MACDONALD:  Just to be clear then, you are not suggesting that competition will take care of the affordability concerns of that particular population of people?


3293             MR. GRIEVE:  I think the more time rolls out we will find that some people who can't afford telephone service today because of the general decreases in prices over time that are likely to occur and the new types of services that will be available, there will be less need for targeted government programs, but maybe not.

3294             MS MACDONALD:  That is something that ‑‑

3295             MR. GRIEVE:  That is why I agree with you that if it becomes an issue that we need to deal with, then we just need to decide who needs to deal with it:  Is it society as a whole through government programs or is it a targeted telecommunications sector kind of program?

3296             MS MACDONALD:  I would like to ask a few questions with respect to the income trust as proposed and I want to make sure that the income trust that is proposed generally would not undermine the existence of the price cap structure.

3297             So my first question is:  When you create an income trust, is every service element and every service that is within the overall price cap structure still contained within the corporate entity?

3298             MS YALE:  Yes.  The TELUS proposal is to convert the entire corporation into an income trust, so that after the trust conversion the basis corporate structure of TELUS is unchanged.

3299             MS MACDONALD:  So there will be no impact on rates per se?

3300             MS YALE:  Correct.


3301             MS MACDONALD:  If you were to put all the high cost serving areas in a separate corporate entity, hypothetically, would it be possible to say that the entire basket structure has then been split into two and then would it be possible to raise rates in the high cost areas to the maximum without impacting on rates and non‑high cost serving areas?

3302             MR. RYAN:  Mr. Chairman, I think counsel prefaced her question with the word "hypothetical" and I'm not sure if posing of a hypothetical question of this sort is of any assistance to the Commission.

3303             THE CHAIRPERSON:  I think, Ms Macdonald, that you are already on the borders of, if not outside, the scope of the hearing, and then to pose a hypothetical question of a fairly complex nature which is not at all what the corporation has itself said it is planning to do is probably not a very constructive use of our time.


3304             MS MACDONALD:  Mr. Chair, we do know the income trust that TELUS is proposing at this point, but income trusts can change over time and I am looking at a very specific instance of what would happen to non‑high‑cost and high‑cost serving areas which are within the scope of this hearing.  My concern is what the costs will be in the high‑cost areas if there is a further restructuring of the income trusts.

3305             We have just heard of a new one today.  There has been an announcement.  I don't know what else is coming down the line in terms of income trusts.  I could rephrase my question without asking it in a hypothetical, but my question is with respect to high‑cost serving areas and would there be any potential impact with the income trust.

3306             MR. RYAN:  I would have to object to that question, Mr. Chairman, on the same grounds.  It has never even been alluded that any such structure would be adopted by TELUS.

3307             THE CHAIRPERSON:  I have to uphold that objection, Ms Macdonald.  You know, we could have a literally infinite number of hypothetical possibilities.

3308             I understand your concern and I think it is a legitimate one, but expressing it in the particular way you have expressed it with respect to a corporate structure, which once again is not on the table, that has never been alluded or discussed, I think is inappropriate.


3309             There are other possible witnesses here.  Unfortunately, you missed your opportunity to pose them the question because they have done something along those lines, but the issue has not arisen and I doubt very much that it would be appropriate to allow you to proceed.

3310             MS MACDONALD:  I will ask another further question.

3311             Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I take your point.

3312             With respect to the income trust structure that you have proposed, everything that is within the single basket structure now will continue to be in a single basket structure after?

3313             MS YALE:  Yes.

3314             MS MACDONALD:  Just one moment, Mr. Chair.  I'm just going to review my notes, just to see if I have asked everything that I needed to.

3315             I don't know when you were planning on taking the afternoon break.

3316             THE CHAIRPERSON:  If it would be helpful to you, Ms Macdonald, I would be glad to take it now.

3317             MS MACDONALD:  Yes.  I would like to review my notes.  I may be finished.  I may have one small line of questioning after this, but I will know after I have reviewed my notes.


3318             THE CHAIRPERSON:  Fine.  We will begin again at 3:05.

3319             MS MACDONALD:  Thank you.

‑‑‑ Upon recessing at 1446 / Suspension à 1446

‑‑‑ Upon resuming at 1503 / Reprise à 1503

3320             THE CHAIRPERSON:  Order, please.

3321             Ms MacDonald.

3322             MR. RYAN:  Mr. Chairman, before we resume ‑‑ and excuse me, Ms MacDonald ‑‑

3323             THE CHAIRPERSON:  Mr. Ryan.

3324             MR. RYAN:  I committed a sin of omission when I introduced the panel the second time around, Mr. Chairman.

3325             The back‑up panel was supplemented by the addition of Mr. Quick, who is aptly named because he snuck in there before I noticed he was there.  I apologize to him and to you for not having introduced him.

3326             He is the Director of Pricing and Product Marketing of Consumer Solutions and of course is providing back‑up to Mr. Hansen.

3327             THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you very much, Mr. Ryan.

3328             Mr. Quick, welcome.

3329             Ms MacDonald.


3330             MS MacDONALD:  Thank you, Mr. Chair.  I believe that I will be five to ten minutes more.

3331             THE CHAIRPERSON:  Please proceed.

3332             MS MacDONALD:  With respect to the TELUS interrog from the CRTC, 1202, which you referred to in answer to one of my questions, I have a follow‑up question, and that is ‑‑

3333             MR. GRIEVE  Excuse us, we are just waiting to get that.

3334             MS MacDONALD:  Sorry.

3335             So out of the number of exchanges outlined in this interrogatory, what percentage will be uncapped pursuant to the competitive presence test in B.C. and Alberta?

3336             MS YALE:  We are just verifying the number.

3337             We have an interrogatory response that shows it geographically.  I'm not sure if you are familiar with that.

3338             MS MacDONALD:  I have seen that one.

3339             MS YALE:  So separately for Alberta and B.C., we are just doing a count.


3340             MR. SCHMIDT:  To answer it on a preliminary basis ‑‑ we have to do some math here with the denominator ‑‑ but in CRTC‑1202 we said 13 exchanges in Alberta and seven exchanges in B.C. would pass the test.

3341             And they in turn constitute, respectively for Alberta and B.C., 58 percent of the network access lines for residential in Alberta and 36 percent of the Res NAS in British Columbia.

3342             MS MacDONALD:  You said that was a preliminary answer.  Do you anticipate that you will be providing ‑‑

3343             MR. SCHMIDT:  You asked me for the percentage of exchanges, and I have only the absolutes for you.  We are looking just on totalling up the exchanges.

3344             There are hundreds and hundreds of exchanges in Alberta and British Columbia put together.

3345             MS MacDONALD:  I guess I'm wondering, would you like that as an undertaking because you will have to ‑‑ or are we going to see if we can do it now?

3346             MR. SCHMIDT:  If we are speedy, we are going to tell you in the next few minutes.

3347             MS MacDONALD:  Maybe Mr. Quick can do it.

‑‑‑ Laughter / Rires


3348             MS YALE:  I think we will do it as an undertaking.  We had calculated it by lines, not by exchanges.

3349             MS MacDONALD:  All right; thank you.

UNDERTAKING BCOAPO‑1:  Telus to provide the percentage of exchanges that would be uncapped pursuant to Telus' proposed competitive presence test for BC and Alberta respectively.

3350             MS MacDONALD:  Ms Yale, I had a follow‑up question ‑‑ and it may not be for you.  It might be for the marketing fellow.

3351             With respect to a $10 prepaid calling card, if a consumer were to use that as their alternative to a local telephone line, you had said to me that there was a choice of 25 cents a minute if they did not have a particular plan that they purchased, a plan that they purchased pursuant to the $10 a month prepaid card, or they could be on some type of plan that would give them the ability to have 5 cents a minute for local calls.

3352             That was my understanding of what you had said?


3353             MR. HANSEN:  Yes, those are two of the choices or for different amounts more than $10 a month, because people aren't limited to $10 a month.  They can spend any amount they like.

3354             They can get unlimited evening and weekend calling with their prepaid as well.

3355             MS MacDONALD:  So for someone that would spend $30 a month ‑‑ and again I'm making the comparison to TELUS' stand‑alone Res PES service which was a range, I believe, from almost $23 up to almost $29.

3356             I would like to just round it off to $30.

3357             So if a consumer had a $30 prepaid card and they were not on a particular plan and they were calling during the day time, my calculation at 25 cents a minute would be that they would have approximately two hours that they would be able to use their telephone over the month.

3358             My math could be very wrong, but I'm doing 25 cents a minute for a $30 card.

3359             My very quick calculation would be about two hours.

3360             MR. HANSEN:  Yes, I would agree that that is the right calculation.

3361             Depending on how much people are going to spend, then there is probably a better plan for them to get the best value.


3362             So for $30 a month on our postpaid side, you can get a free incoming plan.  So all of your incoming calls are free.  And you also get evening and weekends with that and LD minutes as well.

3363             For a person that is going to spend more than $30, then one of those solutions might be more appropriate for them.

3364             MS MacDONALD:  And those solutions are very different from what they currently have in their regular Res PES line.  As you mentioned, there is one where you can get incoming calls, but there is no solution for a customer wanting to spend $30 a month on a prepaid card that would give them the equivalent service of a Res PES line right now.

3365             MR. HANSEN:  I think it is going to depend on what is the calling patterns of the individual person and when they are going to use their phone.  To comment on what is the right plan for them, it really depends on when and how much and what type of calling they are going to do.


3366             MS MACDONALD:  A customer that was looking at one of these plans where they would be spending 5 cents a minute for their local calls, my calculation is that they would have about nine hours that they would be able to use that phone for local calls per month.  Would that be correct?

3367             MR. HANSEN:  I don't have a calculator in front of me, but I am assuming your math is correct.

3368             MS MACDONALD:  I don't know if I would assume that.

3369             But just by order of magnitude, if we have two hours at 25 cents a minute, at 5 cents a minute presumably nine hours would be relatively in the right ballpark.

3370             MR. HANSEN:  Certainly.

3371             MS MACDONALD:  Thank you, these are my questions.

3372             THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you, Ms Macdonald.

3373             Actually, I have a couple of follow‑up questions.  Don't go anywhere because they relate to your questions, Ms Macdonald.

3374             Mr. Hansen, you are aware that Statistics Canada did a study of what, for a better word, we might call wireless substitution for wireline in Canadian cities published in I believe February of last year.

3375             MR. HANSEN:  Yes, I am, Mr. Chairman.


3376             THE CHAIRPERSON:  That study showed that there was a fairly rapid increase in that phenomenon.  You might just remind us, if you can, what was the national number and what was the Vancouver number for the wireless substitution for wireline?

3377             MR. HANSEN:  Sir, I believe the national number was 4.8 percent for Canada, and then within Vancouver it was 10 percent wireless substitution ‑‑ sorry, 9.6 percent, I am rounding.

3378             THE CHAIRPERSON:  I was going to say that, but I thought maybe I better bow to your superior knowledge, having been you had it under your nose, but I thought it was 9.6 percent.

3379             Could we talk a bit about, because of your experience in this market, what might inform that.  First, it seemed to me that there was an additional dimension to that study, one of two things.  It either asked consumers why they had cut their wireline and adopted wireless only, or it cross‑tabbed those consumers to their socioeconomic status, one of the two.

3380             Am I on familiar territory here or not?  Do you recall this or not?

3381             MR. HANSEN:  No, I am going to have to refresh my memory.  I apologize.


3382             THE CHAIRPERSON:  The burden of this incremental analysis was that, to the surprise of the searchers, and this result has been duplicated in the United States, a significant proportion of the people who substituted wireless for wireline did so for economic reasons.

3383             The surprise was that these were not necessarily all students.  These were people who had very specific financial needs that they were trying to cope with, and I am not trying to introduce new evidence here.  One possibility, I suppose, might be that they didn't want to anchor their phone service to an address they weren't necessarily going to stay in for very long.  Is that a possibility?

3384             MR. HANSEN:  Yes.

3385             THE CHAIRPERSON:  A second possibility would be that they didn't want to commit themselves to a fixed quantum by month, but, rather, use the prepaid option so that they could manage their budget relative to their financial availability, as we call it in French?

3386             MR. HANSEN:  Certainly that would be a possibility as well.


3387             THE CHAIRPERSON:  So you don't have any other evidence or indicators of the kinds of motivations that might apply when there is wireless substitution for wireline?

3388             MR. HANSEN:  No, I do not.

3389             THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thanks.  Thank you very much, Ms Macdonald, unless you want to ask any more questions in that regard.

3390             MS MACDONALD:  No thank you, Mr. Chairman.

3391             THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you.

3392             Madam la secrétaire.

3393             THE SECRETARY:  Thank you, Ms Macdonald.

3394             We will now proceed with the Consumer Group counsel, Messrs. Janigan and Lawford.

3395             MR. JANIGAN:  Thank you, Mr. Chair.

CROSS‑EXAMINATION / CONTRE‑INTERROGATOIRE

3396             MR. JANIGAN:  Good afternoon, panel.  I have some questions which I think are of a general policy nature.  If they are better answered by Dr. Wiseman's panel, I would be happy to put them to that panel.

3397             But I want to first start with the regulatory objectives that you have identified, first of all the two key objectives in your comments page ii, and I believe they are repeated throughout ‑‑ and I am looking at the middle of the page ‑‑ that:


"Telus submits that the Commission should adopt two general regulatory objectives to guide its overall approach to economic regulation, including its approach to developing a new price cap regime.

The first is market forces should be relied on to the maximum extent feasible as the means of achieving the telecommunications policy objectives set out in the Telecommunications Act."  (As read)

3398             I just want to stop there and deal with this first objective.  I wonder if it might be possible for you to define what "maximum extent feasible" means?  That phrase has become so stylized it has become like "operation during freedom" or something like that.  I would like to know precisely what is meant in the context of a price cap the maximum extent feasible.


3399             MR. GRIEVE:  To us it means, in the first instance, that you look at where regulation is justified to begin with.  As long ago as 1993, we discussed this issue in this room, and it was raised today with the Bell panel, that regulation of the type that we have is generally confined to monopoly providers, usually natural monopoly providers of essential services to the public.

3400             So, we would say that we would start by saying that regulation should be confined to essential services to the public, and then after that, the reliance on market forces.  The question would be where market forces aren't sufficient to provide some sort of discipline, then you need sort of a heavier hand of regulation.  As you get more competitive entry and market forces start to take over, you need less.  So it is this sort of continuum that was referred to earlier from monopoly and monopoly‑style regulation of essential public services through to the eventual forbearance or deregulation from those services.

3401             MR. JANIGAN:  So market forces would be unfeasible to be relied upon when you are dealing with essential services and the market forces aren't sufficient to protect consumers, I guess?

3402             MR. GRIEVE:  That is generally it, yes.


3403             MR. JANIGAN:  The second part of that test is that:

"Regulatory measures that may still be required, including those related to price cap regulations, should be efficient and proportionate to their purposes and interfere with the operation of competitive market forces to the minimum extent necessary to meet policy objectives."  (As read)

3404             Does the maximum extent feasible meet the minimum extent necessary in this court of circumstance?

3405             MR. GRIEVE:  Yes.

3406             MR. JANIGAN:  Has the Commission's approach to price caps to date met these two objectives?

3407             MR. GRIEVE:  You could have asked me that about the first objective as well, so I will go back to that.

3408             MR. JANIGAN:  Met these two objectives.


3409             MR. GRIEVE:  I would say that to the extent that the Commission focuses on regulating now in this particular market and under price cap regulation focuses on the regulation of things like optional local services, things that are by their nature discretionary, I would say that that is not an efficient use of the Commission's time because the regulatory theory and the regulatory reality says that these are not essential services.

3410             MR. JANIGAN:  So you would say that in the previous price caps, when they dealt with this, that this objective wasn't adhered to?

3411             MR. GRIEVE:  I would agree with that.

3412             MR. JANIGAN:  Anything else that was done in the past that ran afoul of these two objectives?

3413             THE CHAIRPERSON:  We have to finish by 5:30, Mr. Grieve, or 5:00.

3414             MR. GRIEVE:  Let me check the time.

‑‑‑ Laughter

3415             MR. GRIEVE:  You said is there anything else?  I would say perhaps you could be more precise in what you would like to focus on in order to save us some time.


3416             MR. JANIGAN:  I would like to know, these objectives, whether or not they are introducing a new element that wasn't considered by the Commission before or wasn't followed by the Commission before, and where in fact these new objectives may affect the Commission in the adjudication of the price cap in this proceeding.

3417             MR. GRIEVE:  I hesitate to give a little bit of history, but I will use optional services as an example.

3418             In 1993, AGT, as we then were, suggested in the regulatory framework proceeding that essential services should not be regulated by the Commission in the new world.  Discretionary services, optional or discretionary services.

3419             We called Alfred Kahn, who testified to that effect and we answered quite a long interrogatory on that in the record of that proceeding.  The Commission, in decision 94‑19 that came out of that hearing, had a number of concerns about it, most related to unbundling and things like that, but did not disagree with the principle that they shouldn't be regulated.  They were also concerned about still being under rate of return regulation and, frankly, they had been asking that the prices be as high as possible to maximize contributions so they could subsidize other services.


3420             At that time, there was a need for it.  As we moved forward, I think that we got to the first price cap period, the Commission did not regulate the upward movement of those.  Some companies perhaps were considered to have abused that, and the Commission corrected that in the second price cap period.

3421             From my point of view, at that time they were still optional services, and I think that the consumers have reacted when choices have been made available to that.  There just weren't a lot of choices at the time.

3422             I would say that is one example of how the Commission has been adapting over time, been moving forward, and maybe moving back, and now we are asking again, because there is so much competitive entry, there is so much competition all around us, not just for residential primary exchange service, but of course we also offer wireless; we are in the high speed Internet business; we offer long distance services.  All of these things around us, that are all competitive, if we start to do anything that is not acceptable to customers, those customers now have lots of choices for lots of other services that perhaps didn't exert the kind of competitive restraint that it might have in the first price cap period.


3423             I think this is an opportunity for the Commission to move ahead and give market forces a try again.  We believe that market forces are going to be quite a constraint on us.

3424             MR. JANIGAN:  You have identified local optional services.  How about the price cap itself, did that meet the two objectives in its imposition in the first two iterations of the price cap?

3425             MR. GRIEVE:  The first price cap was put in place in an era, I would like to say, quite a bit different than what we are experiencing today.  I think for that time it was probably ‑‑ the Commission had the right approach.  There were some things that happened because of the basket structures they adopted, but generally they had the right idea.


3426             In the second price cap period, I think the deferral account was probably something that people regret having done, but by and large in the second price cap period, from a price cap perspective, I think that the Commission was in the ballpark.  I generally wouldn't complain except for the deaveraging rule that, you know, we talked a lot in the second price cap proceeding, and there will be people in the room who remember about the very unhealthy rate structure that we had, and that rate structure was basically frozen in place here for five years.  We haven't had an opportunity to move that, and now we have competition breathing down our necks in the form of the cable companies that we didn't have at that time.

3427             I had an opportunity to look back at some things Mr. Watt said.  He said, well, we are thinking 2003, it might even be as late as 2005.  Well, he was prophetic on the 2005.

3428             But generally the price cap mechanism has adapted to the circumstances, and now it is time for it to adapt again to the circumstances that we face today.

3429             MR. JANIGAN:  Where the Commission went astray was in your estimation ‑‑ and I realize this probably doesn't encompass a list of every detail, but the major things were the local optional services, the deferral account, and the deaveraging rule?


3430             MR. GRIEVE:  I don't think it is helpful to get into a long discussion.  If there is something that you think that the Commission did wrong that you want to address to me, then we can discuss that.  But unless you want to have me go through a long explanation of how different things moved under the different price cap scenarios and those things, I would appreciate it if you would just sort of focus on the ones that are concerning you.

3431             MR. JANIGAN:  I am more interested in the application of your objectives in terms of a going forward basis.  In order to see how they should be applied, to some extent you have to see how they would have been applied or if they were applied in the previous price cap proceedings.

3432             MS YALE:  Mr. Janigan, if I could help, hindsight is often 20/20.  What we have proposed is a set of objectives that we believe is appropriate given the market circumstances in which we find ourselves.  So, when you say would these objectives have been right five years ago when the market circumstances were different, we are not saying that.

3433             If you are asking us to comment on the things we disagreed with about the last price cap regime, that is a completely different set of circumstances.

3434             MR. JANIGAN:  No, I guess what I am saying did the Commission apply these objectives in the previous two price caps?


3435             MS YALE:  The market circumstances, as Mr. Grieve has said, were different.  So, there wasn't the same extent of competition.  In fact, the Commission made certain decisions that were designed to incent the very kind of entry that we now find ourselves confronting, which is allowing us to suggest that there is a need for changes to the price cap regime in light of the much more competitive environment in which we find ourselves.

3436             MR. JANIGAN:  But these were general principles and they were applied in whatever environment that they are designed to comply in.

3437             MS YALE:  Correct.

3438             MR. JANIGAN:  To the extent that the environment was different, the Commission applied these objectives in the first and second price cap, and by and large evolved a result that was applicable to these objectives except for the ones which we have identified.

3439             MR. GRIEVE:  I think that the Commission, if you had asked them at the time, would have said yes, what we are doing is in response to where we think regulation is required and where we think we can relax regulation.  But hindsight is 20/20, and things happened especially during the first price cap case which were unexpected, I think, by the Commission.


3440             MR. JANIGAN:  Let's move forward.  I want to deal with your proposed price cap framework and I suppose the chart that is on page iii and going over to iiii might be helpful in that regard, at least in terms of organization.

3441             First of all, there is the residential services basket.  I have read your proposal to combine all residential PES in a single basket.  I understand the mechanics, but I don't understand the effect.

3442             Can you explain to me what that means in terms of the residential services within that basket?

3443             MR. GRIEVE:  The first effect is that it is a lot simpler for us to administer.  The second effect, which is relatively minor, is that prices can be deaveraged across bands and within bands more easily than they could be under the existing structure where, basically, rates were frozen in place.

3444             MR. JANIGAN:  What I am particularly interested in is what's the effect of the combination of the high cost serving area and the non high cost serving area in a single basket.  What's that going to mean in terms of prices, for example, for customers in that basket?


3445             MR. GRIEVE:  Well, in areas that don't pass the competitive presence test, prices on average, including the ones that are in the high cost areas and the ones that are in the non high cost areas, would not change on average and each rate element would be subject to a five per cent rate element constraint, upward rate element constraint.

3446             And at the same time, Mr. Janigan, I believe it's still the Commission's rule that those rates can't be lowered lower than the amputation test for those services in those areas.

3447             So, that would be a problem in some of those areas and in others this is more room to lower prices.

3448             MR. JANIGAN:  Does that in effect give you more head‑room in terms of raising and lowering prices?

3449             I guess what I'm trying to get at is why do you put them ‑‑ I mean, you can easily do this both in two different baskets, why do you put them in one basket?  What's the benefit that's associated with putting these two ‑‑


3450             MS. YALE:  Well, I think what we did is we started with the objective and what we said was that the meaningful difference in residential services on a going forward basis is between exchanges where there is competition and what ‑‑ and exchanges where there isn't.

3451             And so, it really isn't about creating head‑room or not creating head‑room, it's about focusing on the issue of what the existence of market force is.  And so our proposal distinguishes between those exchanges where there is competition, at least sufficient competition to meet the competitive presence test.

3452             It doesn't mean there isn't any where the test isn't satisfied, but our distinction is really drawn not based on high cost and non high cost on a going forward basis, but rather on whether or not there is the existence of competition sufficient to meet the test and then drawing regulatory distinctions on a path towards increased reliance on market forces, based on whether or not that test is met.

3453             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.  So I am not ‑‑

3454             MS. YALE:  And it flows again from our objectives and our starting point.

3455             MR. JANIGAN:  I am not missing some advantage that you're gaining from putting this ‑‑

3456             MS. YALE:  Not to my knowledge.

3457             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.  That is the reassurance I needed.


3458             Let's continue on that, effectively, within the residential services that prices are capped so that prices for services in the residential services basket will not on average increase.

3459             Now, I assume that means and I don't know if I want to have the same ‑‑ chasing around the same way I had to chase around Mr. Bibic yesterday, but that I equals X, and if we had to distil this down to a formula.

3460             MR. GRIEVE:  Trying to avoid as much chasing around, we are not proposing an X, but the practical implied effect is that X would equal I every year.  So if inflation went through the roof, we're stuck with that, we take all the risk.

3461             If inflation drops and the rates stay on average, the same as they are just as if inflation goes through the roof, that is not the case today, of course, Mr. Janigan, because if inflation goes above 3.5 per cent, then we would be able to raise rates.


3462             MR. JANIGAN:  I understand.  Now, rate de‑averaging would be permitted within a band and you were likely present when we discussed rate de‑averaging with the company's panel yesterday, effectively, the rate de‑averaging is a concept that is applicable across geographical areas, across types of customers, across acceptable measures of discrimination for customers within a band.

3463             Am I correct on that?

3464             MS. YALE:  This proposal is about geographic de‑averaging.  Other forms of segmentation are not what I've referred to in this particular item and they are as they exist under the current rules.

3465             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.  So, it would be effectively rate de‑averaging within a local exchange?

3466             MS. YALE:  Yes, within a band or within an exchange and as you will note from the chart, where it's proposed to be permitted within an exchange, where the competitive presence test is not satisfied, there would be a safeguard which is a Commission review for unjust discrimination.

3467             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.  But the area that would be, let's say, lowered the number of customers that would experience a lowering of their rates, for example, by way of rate de‑averaging, was that across an exchange or is there a specific identifier that they would have in common?


3468             MR. GRIEVE:  I think, you know, you were here when Mr. Engelhart and I were having our discussion and I would say that one of the advantages of this proposal is we get to sort of rationalize a great deal of the de‑averaging that's already there.

3469             I mean, we talked about the rule against de‑averaging, we looked at an Interrogatory Response before, there is a lot of de‑averaging already, geographic de‑averaging that is the product of the historical and as I've said many times, you've heard me. Mr. Janigan, the very unhealthy rate structure.

3470             So, if we have a rule against de‑averaging which, in effect, has meant to us if you  lower rates $2.00 in one place, you have to lower them everywhere else in the band by $2.00, you don't have a chance to rationalize to take into account more expensive areas to serve less expensive areas to serve across a band and in an exchange.

3471             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.  I may be being thick here.  When you proposed to lower the rates within ‑‑ within a band or with an exchange, are you proposing that there is a certain minimum area in that band or exchange for which the rates will be lowered or that the characteristics of the customer is very depending upon what your plan is?


3472             MS. YALE:  I think it would ‑‑ I mean, the primary driver for those responses will be to respond to competition and so, it's really a case of where the competitors have entered and what offers are in the market place, so it's hard to predict.

3473             MR. JANIGAN:  So, for example, and take an example from yesterday.  If you decide to lower rates for university students at the University of Alberta, would that be an example of rate de‑averaging or would you have to lower the rates for all of that exchange in which the university students are present?

3474             MR. HANSEN:  Yes, that is an example of de‑averaging that we are considering and that we would consider.

3475             MR. JANIGAN:  And so you could lower them simply for the university students.  Now you don't have to lower them all across the exchange.

3476             MR. HANSEN:  Correct.

3477             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.  Those are my questions.

3478             And when you do that, presumably you get some head‑room under the band which you can use to increase rates in another local,  Do you not?

3479             MR. HANSEN:  Sorry; I'm not sure I understand the question.  Could you say it again, please?


3480             MR. JANIGAN:  Well, if you're lowering rates, let's say ‑‑ let's say you decide to lower rates in a particular exchange, all across the exchange because you're facing competition, that act of lowering will, in fact, increase the head‑room that you have to increase rates in other parts of the band?

3481             MS. YALE:  Well, you have to remember how the price cap formula works again.  It depends if you're talking, there is sort of a firm line between exchanges where the competitive presence test is satisfied and where there isn't, right.

3482             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.

3483             MS. YALE:  Because where the competitive presence test isn't satisfied, nominal rates are frozen.  So, you can't do something on one side of the line and make it up on the other side of the line.  That doesn't exist because where there is no ‑‑ where the competitive presence test isn't satisfied, nominal rates are frozen and ‑‑ sorry, average rates are frozen in those exchanges, right?

3484             MR. JANIGAN:  Yes.

3485             MS. YALE:  So, if you're focusing on exchanges where the competitive presence test is met, right, there we're proposing not to have a cap on the basket ‑‑ sorry, on those exchanges, subject to the five per cent rate element constraint.


3486             MR. JANIGAN:  Can I take you back to the ones which are uncapped?

3487             MS. YALE:  Right, so that's ‑‑

3488             MR. JANIGAN:  But you still have rate de‑averaging?

3489             MS. YALE:  Right.

3490             MR. JANIGAN:  But the fact that you lower it in a lower rate within an exchange ‑‑

3491             MS. YALE:  Correct.

3492             MR. JANIGAN:  ‑‑ that will give you head‑room to raise it somewhere else, will you not, as long as you meet the average rate?

3493             MS. YALE:  Sorry; the ‑‑

3494             MR. JANIGAN:  Average rates won't increase at all across the band.  Right?

3495             MS YALE:  If it's uncapped.  Sorry.

3496             Where there is competition ‑‑

3497             MR. JANIGAN:  No, no.

3498             MS YALE:  Where there isn't competition?

3499             MR. JANIGAN:  Where there isn't competition, okay?

3500             MS YALE:  All right.  You are in an exchange where the competitive presence test is not met.

3501             MR. JANIGAN:  Is not met.


3502             MS YALE:  Right.

3503             MR. JANIGAN:  You elect to lower rates.

3504             MS YALE:  Right.

3505             MR. JANIGAN:  All right.  Now, that lowering of the rates for that exchange ‑‑

3506             MS YALE:  Or part of an exchange.

3507             MR. JANIGAN:  ‑‑ or part of an exchange, can be used to give you head room to increase rates in another exchange in the band just so long as you continue to meet the stipulation that rates on average will not increase.

3508             MS YALE:  There are two constraints.  One is that one ‑‑

3509             MR. JANIGAN:  Yes.

3510             MS YALE:  ‑‑ the overall basket constraint, and the second is the 5 percent element constraint which exists today.

3511             MR. JANIGAN:  Yes.

3512             MS YALE:  So just as any basket structure there are puts and takes.  The puts and takes where the basket structure still exists is as you have described, if you lower some rates you can increase others, but for each rate element there is a 5 percent annual limit.


3513             MR. JANIGAN:  But this gives you the addition flexibility and you don't have to change everything across the band.  In this case, you can change a rate by lowering it and in a particular local exchange that may engender head room that will enable you to raise the rate in another local exchange just so the 5 percent and the no rate increase limit is met?

3514             MS YALE:  Correct.

3515             MR. JANIGAN:  All right.

3516             Now we have, then, the other circumstance where the competitive presence test is met.

3517             In our interrog, Consumer Groups' Interrog No. 53 it indicates that your competitive presence test does not require an alteration of the Commission forbearance Decision 2006‑15.

3518             Is that correct?

3519             MR. GRIEVE:  That's right.

3520             MR. JANIGAN:  All right.

3521             And Decision 2006‑15 established when the Commission believes an ILEC possesses market power.

3522             Would you agree with that?


3523             MR. GRIEVE:  It is the Commission's view of when ‑‑ and I want to be clear here:  Yes, on the market power, but there are two parts to the test.  One is where there is competition and section 34(2) is sufficient to protect the interest of users, and then section 34(3), which is:  Thou shalt not forbear if you think it would harm competition.

3524             So the forbearance test, to me, tells me that the Commission believes that both section 34(2) and 34(3) are met under the conditions they have specified.

3525             MR. JANIGAN:  I take it you would agree with me there will be circumstances where the competitive presence test that TELUS proposes will be met, but the forbearance test for market power will not be met?

3526             MR. GRIEVE:  That is correct.

3527             MR. JANIGAN:  All right.  And in that circumstance the ILEC will, at least in accordance with the Commission decision, be able to exercise market power over the prices that it charges to customers for residential primary exchange service?

3528             MS YALE:  Sorry.  We will have not yet met the conditions for forbearance?

3529             MR. JANIGAN:  That's correct.

3530             MS YALE:  Right.


3531             MR. JANIGAN:  In that circumstance, taking the Commission's analysis, the ILEC has market power, therefore it is able to, if it wishes, raise its prices above competitive levels and to sustain those price increases?

3532             MS YALE:  Which is why, as under our proposal, rates would continue to be regulated, even when the competitive presence test is met.

3533             I can review with you the constraints, the difference, if you will, between the sort of a path to forbearance.  So when the competitive presence test is met, certain flexibility is given to the ILECs under our proposal, well short of total forbearance.

3534             MR. JANIGAN:  Yes.

3535             MS YALE:  So tariff approval requirements remain in place, price floor rules remain in place, so imputation test, marketing restrictions, bundling restrictions, on and on it goes.  So this is well short of forbearance.

3536             MR. JANIGAN:  Yes.  But the rates will be uncapped, will they not?

3537             MS YALE:  Sorry.  Sorry.  The rates, you have to distinguish between the overall cap ‑‑

3538             MR. JANIGAN:  Yes.


3539             MS YALE:  ‑‑ and the individual rate element constraints.  So the individual rate element constraints continue.

3540             MR. JANIGAN:  That is 5 percent per year.

3541             MS YALE:  Correct.  And on application to the CRTC, because of course rates continue to be regulated.

3542             MR. JANIGAN:  Yes.  But overall, the overall restraint on increasing rates will be changed and the cap will be removed?

3543             MS YALE:  But again, this is in areas where there is competitive pressure.

3544             MR. JANIGAN:  Yes.

3545             MS YALE:  So the fact of the matter is that this is, as we propose, a path to increased reliance on market forces.  What we are saying is that where the competitive presence test is met, which means there are at least two competitors, a facilities‑based CLEC and a wireless competitor in the marketplace, it is market forces that will discipline prices to that extent and so a cap, which is sort of a substitute for the lack of competition, if you will, is no longer required.

3546             MR. JANIGAN:  But the market forces that you are suggesting fall short of what is required to remove the market power of the ILEC.


3547             MS YALE:  Well, under the Commission's current test.

3548             MR. JANIGAN:  Yes.

3549             MS YALE:  Yes.

3550             MR. JANIGAN:  In that case, up to the 5 percent limit TELUS will be able to increase prices and will not suffer ‑‑ or sill be able to sustain those price increases because of existing market power.

3551             MS YALE:  Not necessarily.

3552             MR. JANIGAN:  Well, that is effectively what the Commission believes.

3553             MS YALE:  Well, not necessarily.

3554             I mean, I think the Commission hasn't yet ruled on our proposal and our proposal is about the appropriate form of price regulation for the next price cap period.

3555             What we are suggesting is a continuum and that in areas where there is a meaningful competition, not perhaps sufficient to warrant full forbearance but meaningful competition nevertheless, that some further flexibility is warranted and we have proposed some additional flexibility, recognizing that it is nowhere near the kind of flexibility that we would obtain with complete forbearance for the reasons you have put to us.


3556             MR. JANIGAN:  But your competitive presence test essentially still leaves in place an ILEC with market power with the ability to increase prices up to a 5 percent limit?

3557             MR. GRIEVE:  The competitive presence test would allow us to increase rates, you know, to de‑average rates and to increase certain rates in the exchanges that pass the competitive presence test if we thought we could.

3558             Now, you say because we have market power.  I don't happen to believe that our particular approach says that we have market power.

3559             What our approach says is that we are subject to a sufficient degree of competition that we believe it will constrain our pricing.  There are parts of our exchanges, you have heard the discussions, where we think that the prices don't properly reflect the costs.

3560             The Commission has recognized before a couple of different things.  In the forbearance decision in relation to quality of service the question was whether the Commission should forbear from quality of service for what they called "uncontested customers".


3561             So we looked at what the reasons were for removing the quality of service, which is the other side, the flip side of economic regulation, and one of those was:  If you do bad things to customers, then you are going to incent entry.

3562             The other one was that we should be concerned about our brand and reputation.  Well, where could that be more intense than in an exchange where you already have competitive entry,  where you already have lots of services around you that are subjecting you to competition and, as the Competition Commissioner said, it is the fact of entry more than the actual market shares that have an effect on our competitiveness.

3563             So I would not agree with you that we have market power in those areas in those exchanges.  I would say that we have an opportunity to raise the rates and if that has a better reflection on costs, then that is better for everyone.

3564             MR. JANIGAN:  But applying the Commission's decision you will agree, Mr. Grieve, if you applied the Commission's decision in the forbearance decision and the test that was used for market power, you would come to the conclusion you do have market power in those particular areas because you don't meet that particular test.


3565             MR. GRIEVE:  The Commission's test has to be two parts, and I believe that what the Commission was doing was putting on the 25 percent market share loss criteria more with concern for section 34(3) than 34(2) having competitors established.

3566             MR. JANIGAN:  Whatever your interpretation, the application of the test will result in an uncapping of rates up to the limit that you provided in areas where the Commission would determine you still have market power?

3567             MR. GRIEVE:  Yes.  I might point out that under the Commission's forbearance regions there will be lots of places that that will have occurred that are far less protected perhaps than customers in these particular exchanges.

3568             MR. JANIGAN:  Isn't this a variant of a similar argument that you put forward in the forbearance proceeding, a competitive presence test?


3569             MS YALE:  I'm not sure what specifically you are referring to, but from our perspective, as I have indicated to you, this is substantially different than forbearance.  As I have indicated, there are still tariff approval requirements.  The price floor test is still in place, restrictions on win‑backs and promotions are still in place, and bundling rules are still in place, and there is a 5 percent rate element constraint.

3570             You can talk to the marketing panel, but that is a significant difference than the kind of flexibility we would have if we were deregulated in those exchanges.

3571             So I don't agree with you at all that this is like forbearance.

3572             MR. JANIGAN:  No, but the test that you put forward for the competitive presence test for pricing flexibility or your halfway house between regulation and forbearance seems a lot like what you put forward in the forbearance decision for a test for forbearance.

3573             MS YALE:  Not at all.

3574             MR. JANIGAN:  All right.

3575             You describe this as a seamless transition.  I presume that refers to the idea that you are making a transition towards eventually complete forbearance.

3576             Is that what ‑‑


3577             MS YALE:  It goes back to the objectives we were discussing at the beginning of your questioning.  Consistent with those objectives we said let's not think of residential services any longer as about the difference between high cost and non‑high cost areas but about the difference between whether or not competition is emerging in those particular markets.

3578             If that is the right way to think about it ‑‑ and we believe according to the objectives we set for this price cap regime that is the right way to think about it ‑‑ then it isn't an all or nothing distinction.  Either it is completely regulated as today or it is completely deregulated, but there is a transition path where some flexibility, where there is meaningful competition, something short of forbearance, should suggest that market forces can be relied on ‑‑ and that is consistent with our objectives ‑‑ to discipline us in the marketplace.

3579             So the relaxation, if you will, that flows from satisfying the competitive presence test is, from our perspective, a small step on the way to deregulation because, as I have indicated to you, there are many, many restrictions from a regulatory perspective that remain in place until the full forbearance test has been met.


3580             MR. JANIGAN:  Well, let's look at in the forbearance decision there is a protection that is put in place in terms of a price ceiling on standalone PES.  If your competitive presence test is met in any exchange and rates are increased pursuant to your ability to do so on an average of 5 percent per year, what kind of price ceiling are we talking about by the time ultimate forbearance arises, if it arises?

3581             MR. GRIEVE:  Well, the price ceiling that the Commission put in place in the forbearance decision, the way I read it is it basically freezes everything in place.  That was a surprise to us to see that in the decision, but that is basically what it says.

3582             So that is even more of a reason for us to be able to fix this unhealthy rate structure I have been talking about for five years now, you know, some chance to do that before we get there.

3583             But it is true that is what the decision says.

3584             MR. JANIGAN:  Let's just stop you there.  Can I ask a question?

3585             Is rate de‑averaging what you are doing to fix the unhealthy rate structure or is it the uncapping that is doing it?

3586             MR. GRIEVE:  Well, it is the rate de‑averaging.


3587             MR. JANIGAN:  All right.  Let's stick with the ‑‑

3588             MR. GRIEVE:  Well, it's not rate de‑averaging, it is further rate de‑averaging or additional rate harmonization.

3589             MR. JANIGAN:  All right.

3590             MR. GRIEVE:  But we don't have the flexibility to do any of that.

3591             MR. JANIGAN:  If you could avoid going into that area again because it is confusing me.

3592             MR. GRIEVE:  All right.

3593             MR. JANIGAN:  If you could stick with the capping and uncapping aspects of the proposal, that would help.

3594             I'm sorry, I interrupted your frame of thought.

3595             MR. GRIEVE:  Well, I just said ‑‑ you asked about the freeze that will occur on every single Res PES rate element according to the Commission's forbearance decision, which, you know, we said took us by surprise, and I suppose that there must be some ‑‑ there has to be some mechanism for the Commission to look at applications to change rates after that, but the way the decision stands it says they are frozen.


3596             Now, prior to that, leading up to forbearance, we will have a chance, under our proposal, to do some remedy, you know put in place some remedies to the rate structure problem that we have.

3597             MR. JANIGAN:  But what I'm concerned about is that effectively your competitive presence test guts the essence of the protection for price ceiling.  What you have effectively done through the competitive presence test is gain the ability to uncap prices before the ceiling has actually been imposed.  So you could have five years of increases at 5 percent per year, you go into forbearance and the ceiling is imposed, and the ceiling is imposed after the 25 percent increases have been levied.

3598             Isn't that a scenario that is possible?

3599             MR. GRIEVE:  Did you say 25 percent?

3600             MR. JANIGAN:  Well, five years at 5 percent per year.

3601             MR. GRIEVE:  Well, we propose four years, but I get your point.


3602             You know what, Mr. Janigan, the proposal is what the proposal is and the reality is we have an unhealthy rate structure and we haven't had a chance to fix it for a long, long time.  Every time we try, Mr. Janigan, you and I have the same discussion.  Right?

3603             So this time we are asking again.

3604             MR. JANIGAN:  But for someone ‑‑ I'm sorry, go ahead.

3605             MS YALE:  I mean, let's maybe look at it a slightly different way.

3606             If you look at an overall cap, say on these services, your assumption that somehow rates are going to be frozen given the current levels of INX, certainly as we see them, is not correct.  There would be nominal rate increases under any kind of cap that we would propose.

3607             If you look at inflation at 2 percent a year and the kind of productivity estimates that we believe are appropriate in the 0.3 percent range, then a cap would still see nominal rates increases.

3608             So from our perspective, we thought that where the competitive presence test wasn't met that the freeze on average was better protection to consumers where there is no competition, and recognizing that where market forces are operating there is no need to have an overall cap because the market will do the disciplining that regulation would otherwise do in terms of the overall level of prices.

3609             MR. JANIGAN:  All right.


3610             But returning to my example, if my somebody is in an area where there is a competitive presence and they have been uncapped, and let's say rates are increased to the maximum 5 percent per year over ‑‑ okay, I'll take the four‑year period ‑‑ of 20 per cent, and at the conclusion of that period the conditions are sufficient that forbearance can be granted, that customer in that area then gravitates to a price ceiling for PES which was granted under the forbearance decision to something that is 20 per cent higher than his fellow customers in a capped area.

3611             It seems to me that if we are looking for a seamless transition, this is a pretty big seam for a customer.

3612             MR. GRIEVE:  Well, you know, what's five per cent of 25.  I mean, you know, we're not talking huge numbers here and we do have, you know, for the ‑‑ there's a five per cent rate element constraint, these are exchanges in which there are competitive pressures and, so, we're asking for the ability to use these five per cent changes on a go‑forward basis.

3613             I mean, that's our proposal and we believe that there's going to be lots of competition and lots of competitive pressures on us during this four‑year period.


3614             You know, could there be?  Yeah, under the proposal there could be but, you know, that's the proposal.

3615             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.

3616             MR. GRIEVE:  Will there be?  I don't know.

3617             MR. JANIGAN:  Now, I wonder if I could understand as well the uncapping test associated with residential bundles.

3618             Am I to understand that if I have local exchange service and I bundle that with Call Display, let's say, that my rates are uncapped under your proposal.  Is that correct?

3619             MR. SCHMIDT:  Yes.

3620             MR. JANIGAN:  And how many customers does that affect immediately?  How many customers will be uncapped in the current circumstance just on that alone?

3621             MR. SCHMIDT:  The precise bundling numbers are likely confidential, or are confidential, in fact, and competitively sensitive, but we could provide them to the Commission.


3622             But at some practical level you could say nobody is affected because every  constituent element of the bundle is available on a disaggregated basis.

3623             You know, you don't have to buy the  bundle, you can go get the PES rate at a reg ‑‑ PES at a regulated rate.

3624             MR. JANIGAN:  And where will I get Call Display?

3625             MR. SCHMIDT:  You could get it from us.

3626             MR. JANIGAN:  If I get it from you, I'll be uncapped?

3627             MR. SCHMIDT:  You can get it from a lot of people in the market.

3628             MR. JANIGAN:  Yeah, but I have to buy their service; correct?  It's not a stand‑alone service; correct?

3629             MR. SCHMIDT:  There's lots of competition for options and features.

3630             MR. JANIGAN:  Yeah, I know, but I have to get the service to do it, they're not going to go out and sell me Call Display so I can hook it onto your ‑‑

3631             MR. SCHMIDT:  Absolutely, for technical reasons, because of switch design and everything else, yes, you're typically getting the PES line with the option and feature.


3632             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.  But if I do that, if I go and buy PES with you, I'd become uncapped; correct?

3633             Let's say, and taking it further, if I buy PES from you and I buy Call Display from you, your proposal is that not only do I become uncapped when I get Call Display, but Call Display is also uncapped and you're free to set prices on the basis of demand.

3634             MR. SCHMIDT:  Under the Commission's bundling rules, 2003‑49 said something that's tied for technical reasons that you have to purchase them together is not, in fact, a bundle.  You'd be paying separate rates for each, you'd have your PES rate and you'd have your voice mail rate and they're both in the tariff now.

3635             So, in fact, they wouldn't be ‑‑ at least on the PES they wouldn't be uncapped, it would still be tariffed.

3636             MR. JANIGAN:  But if I went to buy ‑‑ as I understand your proposal, once I buy a Call Display feature I become uncapped; do I not?

3637             MR. SCHMIDT:  No, just the feature is uncapped.  Only the feature is uncapped.


3638             MR. JANIGAN:  Well, it says the  bundles that include residential local exchange service are uncapped, and a bundle presumably is one feature of Call Display.

3639             MR. SCHMIDT:  Provided it is indeed a bundle.  We'll call it the call feature and local line bundle, and it's expressly identified as a bundle, they would both be uncapped.

3640             If you happened to just buy two individual rate elements ‑‑

3641             MR. JANIGAN:  Yes.

3642             MR. SCHMIDT:  ‑‑ the PES rate would still be rate controlled and it would only be the feature that is in the uncapped category.

3643             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.  So, when is a bundle a bundle, I guess is the question?

3644             MR. SCHMIDT:  Yeah.  If it's actually a bundle it's uncapped, absolutely.

3645             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.  So, a customer presumably would want to take care to purchase PES service and a local optional feature separately in the event that your plan went through, otherwise he would be uncapped and subject potentially to price increases, particularly if he lived in an area where there was no competitive presence.


3646             MR. GRIEVE:  Well, uncapped is not a disease.

‑‑‑ Laughter

3647             MR. GRIEVE:  You know, if the customer bought a bundle of a Primary Exchange Service and say Call Display, then the reason we put bundles together is so the customer buys both of them and they pay a lower rate than they would for the two services on a stand‑alone basis.

3648             MR. JANIGAN:  And I guess that raises the question, why are you uncapping them?

3649             If, in fact, the bundling is supposed to lower prices, when do we see a proposal that once you get into a bundle it's uncapped?

3650             MR. GRIEVE:  Well, one of the things that happens with putting services in price caps is that the revenues across those services are included in the price cap and then you have to deal with those in the price cap ‑‑ in the price capping basket.

3651             You know, Mr. Janigan, we asked for bundles to be uncapped.  They've been uncapped in the business services market now for the last four years, it hasn't been a problem.


3652             Bundles are designed to be competitive, to get customers to buy more services from you.  They are put into ‑‑ they are priced at lower prices than you can get the sum of all the services together at stand‑alone rates.  That's the purpose of them.

3653             And, you know, that goes right to your question, why would you cap them?

3654             MR. JANIGAN:  So, for example, if you have local exchange service in an area where there is non‑competitive presence let's say ‑‑ make it clear ‑‑ and you decided to purchase Call Display, you wouldn't be uncapped just because you purchased Call Display?

3655             MR. GRIEVE:  Not unless you purchased Call Display as a bundle that had a lower rate and it was a requirement that you buy the two of them together to get the lower rate for the sum of the two.

3656             MR. JANIGAN:  So, if you got Call Display and Call Answer, for example, and there was a lower rate for the two of them, that would automatically uncap you?

3657             MS YALE:  If it was offered.

3658             MR. GRIEVE:  If it was offered as a bundle of the PES.

3659             You know, a bundle is where you have to take, in your example, the three services together to get the lower price.


3660             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.  But let's say you're already getting PES and you decide one day that, hey, I'd like to have Call Display and Call Answer, so you called up, subscribe to the bundle and zap you were uncapped for PES and for the bundle.

3661             MR. GRIEVE:  Right, and you just got yourself a lower price for those three things than you would have got if you had bought them at stand‑alone rates.

3662             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.  Now, in terms of uncapping for the customer, what does that mean?  Does that mean that if you ‑‑ can you raise the local rates for that customer?

3663             MR. GRIEVE:  No, it doesn't mean anything for the local customer other than they just got a bundle that they pay less for the three services than they would otherwise.

3664             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.  Why do you need to uncap it then, I guess is the question; is it not?


3665             MR. GRIEVE:  Because when you cap a service you have a cap in a basket, you put the service and all of its revenues in the basket, then any movement in that basket, any decrease in those services would take those bundles, we'd put them in, the volumes go up, that means we have to ‑‑ if we decrease those then we get more head room in the basket for increasing other rates.

3666             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.

3667             MS YALE:  So, it's actually a consumer protection to take them out.

3668             MR. JANIGAN:  You have to run that by me again.

3669             MR. GRIEVE:  You can get head room in the basket by introducing bundles that reduce the revenue per line or reduce the revenues over time and you can get yourself head room in the basket.

3670             MR. JANIGAN:  But I thought the revenues were taken out of that basket ‑‑

3671             MR. GRIEVE:  That's what you just asked, why not put them in the basket, and I just told you, because then you get all of these constraints ‑‑ or, not constraints, you get all of these ‑‑ you put all the revenue in and then you have to, every time you calculate the price cap index you have to include all the changes to the bundled rates.

3672             So, if you're lowering bundled rates, that gives more head room on other rates.

3673             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.


3674             MR. GRIEVE:  Right.  So, we take it out of the cap and then you have ‑‑ let's say you have the rule where you have no change in average prices, then in order to get ‑‑ in order for us to get head room to raise a residential PES service, because our basket proposal is just RES/PES, then we have to lower it somewhere else.

3675             You know, there are constraints,  there's not a lot of room to lower them, not a lot of room to raise them at five per cent.

3676             MR. JANIGAN:  And effectively what happens if the customer terminates the bundle?

3677             MR. GRIEVE:  If the customer terminates the bundle, the RES ‑‑ the stand‑alone RES/PES rate would be paid by the customer and that revenue would go back into the price cap basket.

3678             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.

3679             MR. GRIEVE:  Okay.

3680             MR. JANIGAN:  Just so I understand your competitive presence test, there has to be both a facilities‑based competitive local exchange carrier that provides residential local exchange service in the exchange and there is a wireless alternative for PES; is that correct?

3681             MR. SCHMIDT:  Yes, it is.

3682             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.  And that's available throughout the exchange?

3683             MR. SCHMIDT:  No.


3684             MR. JANIGAN:  Well ‑‑

3685             MR. SCHMIDT:  We've said that they have to be ‑‑ both of these networks have to be in the exchange in addition to us and providing service to customers.

3686             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.  And in the event that a customer doesn't have ‑‑ doesn't have access to that service, then he goes back to the cap rate; is that what you're saying?

3687             MR. SCHMIDT:  We've articulated a consumer safeguard in our proposal.  If there is an exchange where the test is otherwise satisfied but the customer doesn't have access to competitive options, they can avail themselves at the nearest regulated rate in an adjacent exchange where the test is not satisfied.

3688             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.  And what is a wireless alternative for PES?

3689             MR. SCHMIDT:  Non‑affiliated carrier like Rogers Wireless in downtown Vancouver offering local service.

3690             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.

3691             MR. GRIEVE:   Offering wireless service...


MR. SCHMIDT:  Offering wireless local service.

3692             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.  And it's unaffiliated, it can't be a Telus wireless?

3693             MS YALE:  Correct.

3694             MR. SCHMIDT:  Correct.

3695             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.  I want to go to the general objectives and ‑‑ well, actually, before I do that I want to look at your economic principles that you've devised, or Dr. Weisman has devised and you've incorporated ‑‑

3696             MR. GRIEVE:  It's more like Dr. Weisman has identified for us.

3697             MR. JANIGAN:  Oh, has identified for you.  Okay.

3698             All right.  And I believe those are found ‑‑ page 11.

3699             MR. GRIEVE:  Yeah, we have it.  Thank you.

3700             MR. JANIGAN:  And once again my question is ‑‑

3701             MR. GRIEVE:  Can we just ‑‑ I'm sorry, Mr. Janigan.

3702             MR. JANIGAN:  Sorry, go ahead.

3703             MR. GRIEVE:  Just for clarification, this is page 11 of what?


3704             MR. JANIGAN:  Of your comments.

3705             MR. GRIEVE:  Of our comments.  Okay, that's fine.

3706             MR. JANIGAN:  Paragraph 30.

3707             MR. GRIEVE:  Yeah.

3708             MR. JANIGAN:  I guess we're at the tail end of...

3709             MR. GRIEVE:  Yeah.

3710             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.  And there is 12 principles that are set out there which can be used in the design of a price cap plan and perhaps this question is better addressed to Dr. Weisman.

3711             What new elements, or what new principles or factors are introduced by this set of principles to the old set of principles that were used to devise the first and second generation price cap?

3712             MR. GRIEVE:  Since Dr. Weisman was here for the first and second generation price cap, it's probably better for you to ask him that question.

3713             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay, I will do that.

3714             MR. GRIEVE:  Yeah.

‑‑‑ Pause

3715             MR. JANIGAN:  If you could skip ahead to page 16 of your comments.  I don't think that's the correct reference here.  Just a moment.


3716             Sorry, Mr. Chair, I've jotted down  an incorrect reference here.

3717             Possibly best to address this from page 25, and the concerns about protecting competitors that are associated with the setting of a price cap and subsequent regulation.

3718             Would you agree that where it is necessary to set rates or price floors, they should not be set at levels simply to protect the interests of competitors?

3719             MR. GRIEVE:  Yeah, except to protect the interests of competitors from predatory pricing but, you know, yes, they shouldn't be set to give competitors, you know, a regulated price umbrella, things like that.

3720             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.  And looking at this section on page 25 and, in particular, the words of Mr. Justice Breyer of the United States Supreme Court, it would appear that you agree with the proposition that consumers shouldn't pay higher prices just to protect competitors.

3721             MR. GRIEVE:  Yes.

3722             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.

3723             MR. GRIEVE:  They shouldn't be forced.


3724             MR. JANIGAN:  Okay.

‑‑‑ Pause

3725             MR. JANIGAN:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  Those are all my questions for this panel.

3726             THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you, Mr. Janigan.

3727             MR. JANIGAN:  Thank you, panel.

3728             THE CHAIRPERSON:  I think we have a couple of additional questions, at least they have been signalled to me by my colleagues.

3729             I think we will probably pose them right now, and wait, Mr. Janigan, because they probably arise from your cross.

3730             Commissioner Del Val.

3731             COMMISSIONER del VAL:  Thank you.

3732             I just wanted to clarify on your proposed price cap framework and the safeguard that you put in where it is subject for rate de‑averaging being permitted within an exchange where there is no competitive presence, and there you have put in the safeguard of being subject to Commission review for unjust discrimination.


3733             So, is this the same review as we would go through under, say, section 27.3 for the Commission determination as a question of fact whether there is unjust discrimination, or is this a different test, say?

3734             MR. GRIEVE:  No, it's the same test.

3735             COMMISSIONER del VAL:  Then just to understand this a bit better, this safeguard is not available where de‑averaging is within the band, whether or not there is competitive presence.

3736             Is that correct?

3737             MR. GRIEVE  We have a different safeguard for individual unserved customers in exchanges that pass the competitive presence test.  In the exchanges that pass the competitive presence test, we realized that even though the exchange passes the competitive presence test, there might be a customer ‑‑ and I will give you the example I gave all the time to people back home.

3738             Somebody living on the other side of a mountain on the other side of a creek, or the other side of a hill, can't get any wireless service.  There is no loop reseller in the exchange.  There is no high speed Internet.  Absolutely the only choice that customer has is our Res PES.  Even though it's an exchange like that, it's a customer just completely isolated.


3739             In a situation like that, if we set about to start raising that customer's rate and that customer was really unhappy and they looked around said I want an option here, then they have an option of going to the next exchange for the regulated ‑‑

3740             COMMISSIONER del VAL:  Okay.  Also turning to page 21 of your submissions, in paragraph 71, the last sentence where you are talking about de‑averaging rates in such exchanges ‑‑ and those are the exchanges where there will be competitive presence ‑‑

3741             MR. GRIEVE  Right.

3742             COMMISSIONER del VAL:  ‑‑ without regulatory constraints.

3743             MR. GRIEVE  Except I realize the paragraph is not complete, because it is later on that we talk about the 5 percent rate element constraint.

3744             COMMISSIONER del VAL:  Okay.  But in those places where you didn't specifically spell out that it is subject to Commission review for unjust discrimination, with the remedy under say section 27(2) for unjust discrimination is the carrier still subject to that prohibition under the Act?

3745             Or are you advocating that it no longer be subject to the constraint imposed by section 27(2) of the Act?


3746             MR. GRIEVE  Our thinking on this was that in the exchanges that do not pass the competitive presence test, you would have to look for whether or not there was a reason for a particular discrimination, because you would first have to show there was discrimination.

3747             You would have to look for a legitimate reason for that discrimination so that you could say it wasn't unjust; it wasn't just arbitrary.

3748             One of the tests for that is the presence of competition.  When you look at the court cases on this, the first issue is:  Are the two customers in question taking the same service?  Are they getting the same rate or a different rate?  If they are getting a different rate, then it is discrimination.

3749             Then the next step is:  Is it unjust discrimination?

3750             One of the things that the courts have used consistently, and the CRTC has used as well, is that in the presence of competition or competitive pressures, then a discrimination like that is not unjust.


3751             What we said was because this exchange passes the competitive presence test and the courts and the CRTC have acknowledged in the past that there are competitive pressures, where there are competitive pressures that's a legitimate reason for making de‑averaging not unjust.  Then we said it would be kind of weird for us to put that test into the exchanges that pass the competitive presence test.

3752             But we understood that the rancher living on the other side of the hill can't even get wireless, and that we needed to deal with.  Commissioner Langford talked about the exceptions, and this is how we propose to deal with that here.

3753             COMMISSIONER del VAL:  I understand the logic, but that section 27(2) remedy is nonetheless still available for those who are unhappy to pursue.  Right?

3754             MR. GRIEVE  Yes.  As a question of law, yes, there has been no forbearance from it.

3755             COMMISSIONER del VAL:  Just looking back at the proposed price cap table in the Executive Summary page iii, where you have the last two bullets on the first square, rate de‑averaging is permitted within a band, rate de‑averaging is permitted within an exchange subject to Commission review for unjust discrimination.


3756             Is that the difference between whether the rate de‑averaging is permitted within the band or the exchange?

3757             MR. GRIEVE  No.  The de‑averaging...

3758             I see what you are saying.  It says:

"Rate de‑averaging is permitted within an exchange..."

3759             COMMISSIONER del VAL:  Yes.

3760             MR. GRIEVE  And you are saying if there were rate de‑averaging within a band so that the relationship between exchanges or within exchanges stayed the same but the relationship between exchanges changed, would that be subject to Commission review for unjust discrimination?

3761             COMMISSIONER del VAL:  Yes.

3762             MR. GRIEVE  Certainly as a question of law, it would be, yes.

3763             COMMISSIONER del VAL:  Thank you.

3764             Thank you, Mr. Chair.

3765             THE CHAIRPERSON:  Commissioner Langford.

3766             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  I just want to follow up on this fellow on the other side of the hill on the other side of the creek, or on the other side of whatever.


3767             Is this the subscriber that is anticipated in paragraph 47 of your comments, where it says ‑‑

3768             MR. GRIEVE  Yes.

3769             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  ‑‑ no competitive alternative, you can request and obtain.

3770             MR. GRIEVE  Yes.

3771             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  It sounds like the onus is on this poor guy.  Maybe he doesn't even get radio.  Certainly he doesn't get the Globe and Mail.

3772             Why is the onus on him to know there is an alternative?

3773             How are you going to tell this poor isolated guy that there is an alternative?

3774             MR. GRIEVE  Well, we have said ‑‑ there is an interrogatory response that says that the customer service reps of the company would be available.  So if the guy phones up and says I'm really unhappy about this, they can say you have an option.

3775             I don't know any other way to do it, because I can't identify these people.  I can't go driving around in my car to see where the cell coverage is and ‑‑

3776             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  So you in fact don't know who this might be applicable to.


3777             MR. GRIEVE  No.

3778             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  They are just out there.

3779             MR. GRIEVE  They might be.

3780             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  At the end of the longest loop in God's country.

3781             MR. GRIEVE  Yes.  Five hundred times more expensive than a loop in the downtown.

3782             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  There is no way to identify these people.

3783             MR. GRIEVE  Not that I know of.

3784             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  But you are thinking about it every day in every way, I suspect.

3785             MR. GRIEVE  Well, you know, Commissioner Langford, I knew that if I didn't address it in our submission that somebody else would think of it and ask me.

3786             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  Well, I'll give it some thought.  The process isn't over yet.

3787             I want to ask you another question, and I'm not sure if this is the right time.  I'm having a little trouble adjusting to the policy/marketing and then learned experts panel.


3788             I am interested in how quickly you and Mr. Janigan disposed of the question of the X factor, sort of the thinking behind it rather than the way Mr. Bernstein or Mr. Weisman might define how to do it, but the actual thinking behind it.

3789             It went by pretty fast, so fast that I got the impression that you were just doing everybody a favour.  I think what you said, Mr. Grieve, was we are taking all the risk and the customers are kind of protected by not having this X factor.

3790             But it did go by quickly.

3791             Was that your thinking behind this as yet another way to help customers?

3792             MR. GRIEVE  The way we came at this originally from the beginning, and then it was later that we figured out what the consequences of it were and we felt this is what we think is right.

3793             The way we came at it was we said you know, we've gone through two price cap periods.  Now we are finally, after everyone holding their breath waiting for the cable companies, they are coming in.  We no longer have a fledgling CallNet.


3794             You will recall in the last price cap proceeding the biggest concern seemed to be with the fledglings, the little competitors who were suffering at the hands of the first price cap régime and at the hands of all these regulatory costs ‑‑ not regulatory costs but costs that had been imposed on them.

3795             So this was a much different world that we were facing and we said with all this competitive entry, all the kinds of pressures that are on us and the danger we believe an I minus X formula is driving prices below costs and the problems with the way costs have been calculated, we said let's take the rates as they are, ask for some flexibility to move them around and not change them on average.  And then let the market decide where they go.

3796             That was the theory behind the whole thing.

3797             As it turns out, when we did that and we went into the individual Res PES basket, we realized we are really taking a risk here and we had to think about it.  We said we will take the risk for four years.

3798             So that is generally how we got there.


3799             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  But as this price cap formula that we are looking into here in this third time around really is only going to apply to places where market forces aren't working, why would you so quickly kind of dispose of perhaps one of the few tools, the X factor, which might drive prices down for people?

3800             They don't have any competitors, they don't have sufficient competitors even under your test.  Even under Bell's test there will be areas where there won't be sufficient competitors to do the job.

3801             So why would you not keep an X factor in for those people that might do the job?

3802             MS YALE:  If you look at our proposal where the competitive presence test is not satisfied, our proposal provides consumers better protection than an I minus X formula.  Certainly in terms of our evidence of I and X, if inflation is at 2 percent and the Commission were to accept our view of what X looks like in a more competitive environment, and with the kinds of productivity expectations that we have, which is on average in the 0.3 percent range, and if you do the math, the 2 minus 0.3 gives you a 1.7 percent nominal rate increase.

3803             So apply an I minus X formula, where the competitive presence test isn't satisfied, means prices on average go up by 1.7 percent.

3804             Our proposal is to freeze them on average, which is in fact better for consumers where there is no competition.


3805             So where I is greater than X, which is the case, we believe, this is better for consumers.

3806             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  Take a deep breath now, and we have a doctor standing by.

3807             What if we were to accept Dr. Roycroft's approach and look at something like 6 percent, hypothetically.  If that were to turn out to be the correct number or say the number we had in price cap two, 3.5, then under the scenario you just painted wouldn't you agree that you are depriving those customers who don't have the advantage of a competitive marketplace of a small saving, or a big saving, depending?

3808             MS YALE:  Well, first of all, we obviously completely disagree with that notion of the kinds of productivity gains that are realistic.

3809             In any event, it seems to us that we  have been through that dance with mandatory price reductions and the Commission being concerned about the disincentives to entry that that creates, which is why we ended up with a deferral account in the first place.

3810             We don't accept that there would be mandated price reductions because we don't accept that X is greater than I, number one.

3811             And number two, it just seems to us that our approach is a better way to go.


3812             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  I don't have any doubt that you like your approach better and I don't have any ‑‑

3813             MS YALE:  Well, frozen rates I think, on average, provide better consumer protection.  We recognize that whatever happens to inflation, as Mr. Grieve has indicated, the risk is on us associated with this.

3814             So there are puts and takes associated with that.

3815             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  I understand your philosophy and your position.  I was just asking you to reflect on the narrow question I asked: that if we did come to the conclusion that say 3.5 again was the right number, wouldn't you be depriving some consumers of a small decrease somewhere along the line, using your formula?

3816             MR. GRIEVE  Well, if you adopted a 3.5, the arithmetic tells you that unless the rate of inflation exceeds 3.5 or is equal to 3.5, there would be small decreases.


3817             We don't believe that we have the productivity opportunities with Res PES that we used to have because of declining lines.  The evidence is very clear on that.  There is no sort of opinion here about whether or not we have declining lines.  We have declining lines.

3818             If you were to turn around and say we want to see rate decreases for people, then we are actually going to see a situation where you are ordering rate decreases where we are being asked to eat not only the inflation, but also in addition to that a level of productivity offset that is not consistent with the way the Commission has done it in the past.

3819             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  I want to assure you that I am not coming from some doctrinaire position that is trying to force rate decreases on you.  I am just trying to look for the right answer here, and I am trying to do it at a policy level before we have the opportunity to talk about mathematics and systems with your expert witnesses.

3820             I am trying to figure out how to characterize productivity, and we have had a long time of looking at it.

3821             Is it fair to say that basically it's the ability to realize savings and then under an X régime that would be the way you would pass that on to consumers?


3822             I'm looking at paragraph 89 in Appendix ‑‑ was it 89?  Paragraph 83 in Appendix A to your ‑‑

3823             MR. GRIEVE  In CRTC‑1101.

3824             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  There is just so much paper here.  Appendix A, yes.

3825             It was a discussion by one of your experts, Dr. Weisman, I believe.

3826             He just kind of characterized it.  There was an interesting sentence in the middle of it where he characterized the U.K. and American experience, and he says:

"In similar fashion to stage two in the U.S. experience, British regulators had previously set the value of X so as to pass along to consumers anticipated industry‑wide productivity gains."

(As read)

3827             So it got me thinking about what we could characterize as productivity gains.  Are they really just ways of realizing savings?  Maybe you would get along with fewer works, you would get along with fewer trucks.  You would find ways to cut back.

3828             Isn't that in a sense what it is all about, realized savings?


3829             MR. GRIEVE  I know that Dr. Bernstein can do a much better job than me, but productivity changes over time are not just a product of whether you cut costs or control your costs.  It also has to do with output.

3830             So if you cut your costs but your output decreases by more than you are capable of cutting your costs, then you have negative productivity.

3831             The establishment of an X factor takes into account other things like the role of the inflation rate, the relationship between us and the economy.

3832             Then of course in our particular case ‑‑ and the Commission went to this in the last price cap proceeding because of its experience in the first price cap proceeding ‑‑ we now no longer have sort of industry‑wide total factor productivity studies because you just can't do them at the service specific level.


3833             So we went to service specific access and we are in a particular service here now.  What we are trying to do is sort of predict, if you are doing an X factor you need to ‑‑ because circumstances have changed and we are losing lines, you have to predict what that decrease in outputs, what effect that has on the company's ability to recover its costs.

3834             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  I understand that.  And you are quite correct, once we get into that world we are better off with the experts.

3835             From a policy point of view, you indicated in the second price cap proceeding, because of what we had learned because of what everyone had experienced, the Commission made a change and it looked at productivity and the X factor differently.

3836             So would you agree that we could make a change again and we could look at how circumstances have changed again and look at it differently?

3837             MR. GRIEVE  Certainly you could try, and you could talk to Drs. Bernstein and Wiseman about this, but if you try to pass on what you perceive as industry productivity gains achieved in markets that are mostly competitive now, then you are kind of ‑‑ anyway, you are ‑‑

3838             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  I want to get specific now, because something has changed dramatically, of course.  We have heard an announcement this morning there is going to be another dramatic change since all of this was written.


3839             That is, of course, the plans to restructure Telus.  We have heard this morning kind of vague plans, a vague outline of plans to restructure Bell.  I assume we will hear more about that soon.

3840             I understand your response of October 10th to an interrogatory where you said it doesn't apply under the present way that we look at the X factor.  But I am saying to you from a policy point of view, we have changed the way we have looked at the X factor before, and you agree that, although you may not like it, we could do it again.

3841             Why couldn't we look at the savings that may be realized here?  Why couldn't we examine what savings may be realized, and of course I am talking about savings in taxes, taxes paid, and say, you know, that falls under the general notion of a productivity factor in a sense, it's a saving, and perhaps could be passed on.


3842             I know it is outside the scope of this proceeding to look at new going in prices, but we are not looking at it that way.  Why couldn't we look at it in another way and say, we are going to look at it in the sense of calculating an X factor.  There are some big, big savings here, the same sort of savings you could get from what we normally think of as productivity.  Maybe these should be passed on to consumers with a higher X factor.  Could we look at it that way?

3843             MS YALE:  I suppose there are lots of things that you could do, but again we are not in a world of rate of return regulations.

3844             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  I understand that.

3845             MS YALE:  So, let me just sort of explain the way I see it.

3846             In a world of rate of return regulation, it is your actual cost plus the opportunity to earn a reasonable return on your investments.  So, cost changes by definition are taken into account in setting the overall revenue requirement of the company.


3847             The purpose of price cap regulation is to sever that direct link between the way in which prices are set and the ongoing cost of operations of a company's business.  It is designed, in part, to encourage the company to become more efficient, to find ways to organize itself, to achieve efficiencies that exceed whatever the price cap is that is set because, to the extent that the company makes good bets and beats them, those benefits are passed on to shareholders in the form of higher returns, and to the extent that the company doesn't, the shareholders in turn bear the risk.

3848             Financial structure, financial restructuring is one of those opportunities that is present for organizations under price caps to improve their bottom line, and that inures to the benefit of customers to the extent that our superior performance allows us to reinvest in the business, and it inures to the benefit of shareholders to the extent that we beat the price cap targets.  That is very much part of the price cap regime.

3849             So, from our perspective, financial restructuring in the form of an income trust conversion is a really different issue than productivity, which was the question that you asked.  I really see it as quite different.

3850             In terms of how, if at all, productivity changes are affected as a result of various issues, you will have to talk to Dr. Bernstein about that.  But it is not the cost of operations per se that is relevant in price caps.


3851             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  Thank you for that.  I noticed you used a very interesting phrase and I wrote it down, a sentence right off the top, that unlike rate base rate of return under price cap, there are incentives, and you said "to become more efficient, to find ways to organize itself," incentives for companies.

3852             You have found a new way to organize yourself, and I wonder why those subscribers who don't have the benefits of market‑based competition that we all would so dearly love to rely on, why wouldn't we recognize this type of way to organize itself as something they could benefit from as well, and set an X factor?

3853             I mean, let's face it, you came to us with an X factor of zero.  Then under interrogatories, you came back with kind of a movable feast anywhere from .3, possibly as high as 1.9 under certain very well‑defined circumstances.  But still it wasn't a set one figure.

3854             Why couldn't we add this as one of the elements to be looked at as one of the ways that, all right, it is not productivity in the sense of working faster or hanging wires faster, driving your trucks faster, but it is, in a sense, a saving and has the same effect.  For those who can't benefit from competition, why couldn't they benefit from this saving partially with an increased X factor?

3855             MS YALE:  As I say, let's take the question in the piece parts, if I could.


3856             First of all, the conversion to an income ‑‑ we have to start from the reality that Telus, as a matter of fact hasn't paid taxes for a number of years because of the ways in which we have organized ourselves.

3857             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  Or buy things.

3858             MS YALE:  But acquisitions are a perfectly legitimate business practice and we have done them for a variety of reasons that have resulted in us sheltering our taxable income, and we have continued in that practice through a different device.

3859             So this is no different than the way in which we have continued to take advantage of opportunities that are open to us to structure ourselves financially, to minimize our taxable income, and from our perspective should be treated no differently than other sorts of acquisitions or corporate restructures that we have done in the past which have not led to changes from a price cap perspective for reasons that I have discussed with you already, which have to do with the fact that this is not rate of return regulation.


3860             Having said that, as far as what the Commission could or couldn't do from a productivity perspective, and whether or not the questions around the X factor, as I say, as Mr. Grieve has indicated, calculating the X factor is about looking at the difference between cost of inputs and overall outputs and is a much more complicated exercise than I am in a position to discuss.  You will have to put those questions to Dr. Bernstein.

3861             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  That is the process that is used now, but it wasn't the process perhaps that was used exactly the same way in the first scheme, so we could change it, couldn't we?

3862             MR. GRIEVE:  No, it is not the same process, but it is the same concept of measuring outputs and inputs.

3863             COMMISSIONER LANGFORD:  Thank you very much.  This is our opportunity to explore different avenues and to worry not only about the fellow on the other side of the mountain, but everybody in Telus territory.  So I am grateful for your answers.

3864             Thank you, Mr. Chair.

3865             THE CHAIRPERSON:  I don't think we will bring anyone else on this evening.  I think we will rise now.  We will see you tomorrow but don't leave because madame la secrétaire a quelque chose à dire.


3866             See you tomorrow at 9:00 o'clock in the morning.  I guess I also have a decision I have to read here.

3867             D'abord, madame la secrétaire?

3868             THE SECRETARY:  Merci, monsieur le président.  Sorry, it is kind of boring stuff at this time of the day, but I would like to resume all the undertakings and the exhibits that were presented before the Commission today.

3869             In order, Telus number 2, Exhibit No. 2, Énoncé préliminaire de Société TELUS Communications.

PIÈCE TELUS‑2:  Énoncé préliminaire de Société TELUS Communications, daté le 10 octobre 2006.

3870             Exhibit CRTC No. 1, response to interrogatory Bell(CRTC)26Jun01‑1202, abridged version.

EXHIBIT CRTC‑1:  Response to Interrogatory Bell(CRTC)26Jun01‑1202 PC, Abridged, 2 pages.

3871             CRTC confidential Exhibit No. 2, response to interrogatory Aliant(CRTC)26Jun01‑1202, supplemental.


EXHIBIT CRTC‑2 (Conf.):  Response to Interrogatory Aliant(CRTC)26Jun01‑1202 PC, Supplemental, 3 pages.

3872             CRTC confidential Exhibit No. 3, response to interrogatory SaskTel(CRTC)26Jun01‑1202, confidential.

EXHIBIT CRTC‑3 (Conf.):  Response to Interrogatory SASKTEL(CRTC)26Jun01‑1202 PCR, CONFIDENTIAL, 2 pages.

3873             As for the undertakings requested by Consumers Group, Undertaking No. 1, Dr. Roycroft's analysis of productivity associated with DSL service reestimated using Bell cost data to the companies.

3874             Undertakings requested by the CRTC No. 1, to Aliant and SaskTel, clarification of the penetration rates for SaskTel and Aliant call display feature either as part of a bundle or whether taken on service‑by‑service basis.

3875             CRTC Undertaking No. 2, to Aliant and SaskTel, information regarding the penetration rates for SaskTel and Aliant answer feature either as part of a bundle or whether taken on a service‑by‑service basis.


3876             CRTC Undertaking No. 3 to Bell Canada, data regarding demand for the seven discretionary services listed in CRTC Exhibit No. 1 for the period 1998 to 2002.

3877             CRTC Undertaking No. 4 to Aliant, data regarding demand for the discretionary services listed in CRTC confidential Exhibit No. 2 for the period 1998 to 2002.

3878             CRTC No. 5, to SaskTel, data regarding demand for the discretionary services list in CRTC confidential Exhibit 3 for the period 2000 to 2002.

3879             CRTC Undertaking No. 6 to the companies, percentage of subscribers to the companies local primary exchange service who subscribes to at least one optional feature.

UNDERTAKING CRTC‑6:  The Companies to provide Percentage of subscriber to the companies' local primary exchange service who subscribe to at least one optional feature.


3880             The last undertaking from BCOAPO No. 1, to Telus, to provide the percentage of exchanges that would be uncapped pursuant to Telus' proposed competitive present test for B.C. and Alberta respectively.

3881             Thank you very much.

3882             THE CHAIRPERSON:  Madam Girard, who are we proceeding with tomorrow with this panel?

3883             THE SECRETARY:  The City of Calgary, with counsel Inlow, followed by our Commission counsel.

3884             THE CHAIRPERSON:  Thank you.

3885             I have a decision I have to convey to the proceeding.

3886             In a letter dated 4 October, 2006, the Commission provided all parties with an opportunity to provide their views on the Consumer Groups' request for disclosure in confidence and only to themselves, information requested in interrogatory MTS Allstream/Consumer Groups 8 August No. 15.

3887             In a letter dated 6 October, 2006, MTS Allstream filed in confidence with the Commission the information requested by The Consumer Groups in their interrogatory and placed on the public record an abridged version of one of the documents filed in confidence with the Commission.

3888             The Commission received letters from MTS Allstream, the companies, Bell Canada, Bell Aliant, SaskTel dated 10 October, 2006 and a letter from The Consumer Groups dated 11 October, 2006.


3889             The Commission has reviewed the documents filed in confidence, the abridged document filed on the public record and the submissions to the parties and determined that no further disclosure is required, and consequently The Consumer Groups' request is denied.

3890             As a result of this determination, there is no need to consider the appropriateness of providing this information pursuant to a non‑disclosure agreement.

3891             Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.  We will commence tomorrow at 9:00 o'clock.

‑‑‑ Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 1655, to resume

    on Thursday, October 12, 2006 at 0900 / L'audience

    est ajournée à 1655, pour reprendre le vendredi,

    12 octobre 2006 à 0900.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


  

 

 

 

                      REPORTERS

 

 

 

 

_______________________   _______________________

Johanne Morin             Lynda Johansson

 

 

 

_______________________   _______________________

Jean Desaulniers          Fiona Potvin

 

 

 

_______________________   _______________________

Sue Villeneuve            Madeleine Matte

 

 

 

  

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