ARCHIVED - Telecom - Commission Letter - 8638-C12-73/02 -  TELUS' RevisedService Improvement Plan

Letter

Our File: 8638-C12.73/02

Ottawa, 17 December 2002

BY TELECOPIER

Mr. Willie Grieve
Vice President
Public Policy & Regulatory Affairs
TELUS Communications Inc.
Floor 31 - 10020-100 Street NW
Edmonton, Alberta
T5J 0N5

Dear Mr. Grieve:

Subject: TELUS' Revised Service Improvement Plan

This is further to the company's responses dated 13 November 2002 (including updates on 21 November 2002) to the Commission's interrogatories dated 16 October 2002 with respect to TELUS' revised Service Improvement Plan (SIP) dated 13 September 2002.

Commission staff has a number of additional interrogatories for TELUS (see attached). TELUS 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 and Costing
(819) 997-4573

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

Attachment

Attachment 1: Interrogatories for TELUS

102.  With reference to the response to interrogatory TELUS(CRTC)16Oct02-6, Attachment 1, confirm that the costs for Expenses causal to the service such as Advertising and Promotion, Billing-Related, Training, Maintenance, and Other are expected to be zero over the program study period. In the event that Other is non-zero, provide a description of the services being provided and the expense amounts causal to each service. In the event that the costs for the remaining items are non-zero, provide the amounts.

103.  With reference to the response to interrogatory TELUS(CRTC)16Oct02-6, Attachment 1, confirm that the costs under Expenses causal to demand such as Non-Access Maintenance, Service Provisioning, Advertising, Sales Management and Other are expected to be zero over the program study period. In the event that Sales Management and Other are non-zero, provide a description of the services being provided and the expense amounts causal to each service. In the event that the costs for the remaining items are non-zero, provide the amounts.

104.  With reference to the response to interrogatory TELUS(CRTC)16Oct02-6, provide a new Phase II cost study for the unserved portion of the SIP that totals $13.572 million in capital expenditures for 50 unserved communities. The capital expenditures include: $11 million for 43 communities; $1.2 million for 400 unserved premises that chose not to subscribe in the past Service Extension Plan (SEP); $0.7 million for 28 unserved premises within two spans from the SEP , and $0.672 million for 7 communities from the SEP. Assume a roll-out period of three years, 2003-2005. Also, provide the company's views on the appropriateness of the Commission approving a SIP with this total capital and the reduced roll-out period.

105.  With reference to Bell Canada's revised SIP dated 18 September 2002 and response to Commission interrogatories dated 21 November 2002, Bell Canada appears to treat the customer's contribution of $1,000 in a different manner than does TELUS when calculating the total capital expenditures of its SIP. Provide the company's comments on Bell Canada's treatment and provide the company's suggestion for the plan that should be used by both Bell Canada and TELUS for consistency.

106.  With reference to the SIP program described in interrogatory 104 above, 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.  Provide a new Phase II cost study for the underserved portion of the SIP that total $0.281 million in capital expenditures (i.e., assuming that the project for Greenville Internet is not approved).

108.  Assuming that the Commission's decision disposing of TELUS' revised SIP will not be issued until sometime in the first half of 2003, confirm that TELUS would still carry out the scheduled projects in the first half of 2003 such that the roll-out of the SIP will not be delayed.