ARCHIVED - Telecom - Commission Letter - 8638-C12-72/02 - Bell Canada's ServiceImprovement Plan

Letter

Our File: 8638.C12.72/02

Ottawa, 17 December 2002

BY TELECOPIER

Mr. David Palmer
Director - Regulatory Matters
Bell Canada
105 rue Hôtel-de-Ville
6^e étage
Hull, Québec
J8X 4H7

Dear Mr. Palmer

Subject: Bell Canada's Service Improvement Plan

This is further to the company's responses dated 21 November 2002 to the Commission's interrogatories dated 7 November 2002 with respect to Bell Canada's Service Improvement Plan (SIP) dated 18 September 2002.

Commission staff has a number of additional interrogatories for Bell Canada (see attached). Bell Canada is to provide responses to the enclosed interrogatories by 31 January 2003, serving copies on all parties.

Where a document is to be filed or served by a specific date, the document is to be actually received, not merely sent by that date.

Yours sincerely,

Scott Hutton
Director
Contribution & Costing
Telecommunications
(819) 997-4573

c.c.: Public Notice CRTC 2001-37 List of Interested Parties
Hugh Thompson, CRTC (819) 953-6081

Attachment

Attachment 1: Interrogatories for Bell Canada

102.  With reference to the response to interrogatory Bell(CRTC)7Nov02-7:

a) indicate whether the treatment of the $1,000 customer contribution as revenue is reflected in the Phase II cost study with a view to reducing the output costs;

b) provide an explanation why Bell Canada does not credit the $1,000 customer contribution to capital in the SIP (i.e., credit the $1,000 to the $25,000 capital cost yielding a net of $24,000);

c) for the $1,000 customer contribution, indicate whether Bell Canada's plan to credit revenue rather than to credit capital penalizes the companies that pay the TSR [Total Subsidy Requirement]; and

d) redo the Phase II cost studies for both the $127.8 million SIP and the $78.5 million SIP treating the customer contribution as a capital credit and provide detailed input and output information by Band (see interrogatory 105 below).

104.  With reference to the response to interrogatory Bell(CRTC)7Nov02-10, provide detailed information and calculations to support the amounts of $2.7 million for Annual Equivalent Cost (AEC) recovery beyond the price cap period and $8.87 million for AEC recovery within the price cap period.

105.  With reference to the response to interrogatory Bell(CRTC)7Nov02-9, Attachment 2, provide a detailed explanation of how maintenance expense is developed by Band.

106.  With reference to the response to interrogatory Bell(CRTC)7Nov02-9, Attachment 2, provide complete input details of the economic studies by Band, including all input financial parameters, capital and expense cash flows, capital parameters, and increase and productivity factors. Also, provide the complete output results of the economic studies by Band.

107.  With reference to the response to interrogatory Bell(CRTC)7Nov02-9, indicate whether the costs for the underserved portion of the SIP (Internet access projects) are included in the Phase II cost study, Attachment 2. If so, provide the details. If not, indicate how Bell Canada plans on recovering these costs and provide the appropriate cost study.

108.  With reference to the response to interrogatory Bell(CRTC)7Nov02-9, Attachment 2:

a)  identify what is included in Expenses causal to demand - Sales Management and Other; and

b)  explain how the identified costs were calculated.

110.  With reference to the response to interrogatory Bell(CRTC)7Nov02-9, Attachment 2, and Attachment C of the SIP dated 18 September 2002, given that (a) the decrease in residence Network Access Services (NAS) to be served in most Bands and (b) most expenses causal to demand show similar decreases, explain why Sales Management remains relatively unchanged.