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TELECOM ORDER
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Ottawa, 29 March 1994
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Telecom Order CRTC 94-302
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IN THE MATTER OF a Part VII application by Unitel Communications Inc. (Unitel) dated 5 October 1993, against AGT Limited, Bell Canada, BC TEL, Island Telephone Company Limited, Maritime Telegraph & Telephone Company, Limited, New Brunswick Telephone Company, Limited, Newfoundland Telephone Company Limited and Stentor Resource Centre Inc., (Stentor) (collectively, the Respondents) requesting the Commission to make six orders regarding 800 number portability and related matters.
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WHEREAS, by letter dated 28 October 1993, the Commission addressed interrogatories to Unitel and the Respondents and set out a schedule for filing answers and commenting on the application;
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WHEREAS the Competitive Telecommunications Association, the Canadian Business Telecommunications Alliance and Sprint Canada filed comments supporting Unitel's request for multi-carrier selection capability;
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WHEREAS, by letter 13 December 1993, the Commission, noting that an agreement had been reached to introduce an access arrangement permitting the introduction of 800 number portability early in 1994, invited Unitel to consider whether it wished to amend its application in light of developments and, if so, to submit a revised application;
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WHEREAS, on 23 December 1993, Unitel responded that it wished to complete the process according to its original request and the Commission, by letter dated 20 January 1994, resumed the interrupted process and directed Unitel to file its reply;
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WHEREAS the Commission has considered all the submissions by the parties in reaching its decision;
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WHEREAS initial implementation of portability in Canada occurred on 29 January 1994, at which time, all the unassigned numbers in Canada were returned to the portability pool and as a result, as Unitel acknowledged in its reply, two of its requests were rendered moot;
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WHEREAS the Commission notes that draft Canadian Interconnection Liaison Committee (CILC) guidelines were published by Industry Canada on 13 January 1994;
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WHEREAS the Commission encourages the ongoing development and revision of these guidelines within the CILC;
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WHEREAS the Commission considers the patent infringement lawsuit mentioned by the parties a separate matter that should be resolved in the courts or by negotiated settlement among the parties;
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WHEREAS Unitel, in its initial submission, did not explicitly address its request to order the respondents "to implement a non-proprietary, industry compliant 800 carrier selection SCP database, using industry standard interface protocols within 6 months" and clarify its meaning;
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WHEREAS Stentor stated that it was adopting an arrangement used to communicate with U.S. companies as an interim method to implement portability in Canada and was continuing to seek solutions to supply FG-D/TR-394 (TR-394) in conjunction with 800 access services in a cost-effective manner;
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WHEREAS the Commission understands that Stentor, subsequent to filing its comments, has presented a preliminary study on options to provide this capability to the CILC Technical Subcommittee and promised a more detailed report by 31 March 1994;
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WHEREAS the Commission, while it considers that Stentor is addressing this issue in a responsible fashion, is of the view that requests for bottleneck functions should be addressed expeditiously by the Respondents;
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WHEREAS the Commission is of the view that the term "portability", as commonly used in the industry, refers merely to the ability to move from one service provider to another while retaining the same service number, and should be distinguished from the access arrangements for 800 Service;
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WHEREAS the Commission considers "the capabilities for carriers to be selected, based on: originating NPA, originating NPA-NXX, originating telephone number, time-of-day, day-of-week, specific date, and on a percentage allocation basis", which it will refer to as "multi-carrier selection capability", to be connected with the 800 access service and not portability per se;
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WHEREAS the Commission considers multi-carrier selection capability to be a bottleneck feature that would offer greater customer choice and flexibility and therefore a desirable component of 800 access services; and
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WHEREAS the Commission considers that such capability should be introduced based on full cost recovery from users of the feature -
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IT IS HEREBY ORDERED THAT:
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1. The Respondents file a proposed tariff, or proposed tariffs, for an 800 access service providing multi-carrier selection capability as a vertical feature within 60 days of the date of this Order.
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2. Stentor include implementation time frames in its study on the provision of TR-394 and file it with the Commission by 5 April 1994.
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3. The remaining requests in submissions of the parties pertaining to this application are hereby denied.
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Allan J. Darling
Secretary General
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