Search

ARCHIVED - Telecom Commission Letter Addressed to Distribution List

This page has been archived on the Web

Information identified as archived on the Web is for reference, research or recordkeeping purposes. Archived Decisions, Notices and Orders (DNOs) remain in effect except to the extent they are amended or reversed by the Commission, a court, or the government. The text of archived information has not been altered or updated after the date of archiving. Changes to DNOs are published as “dashes” to the original DNO number. Web pages that are archived on the Web are not subject to the Government of Canada Web Standards. As per the Communications Policy of the Government of Canada, you can request alternate formats by contacting us.

Archived

This page has been archived on the Web.

Ottawa, 27 October 2015

Our reference: 8638-C12-201505661

BY EMAIL

Distribution

RE:   Vaxination Request for Disclosure of Confidential Wholesale Wireless Roaming interim tariffs- Follow-up to Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2015-177

Dear Madams/Sirs:

This letter addresses a request for disclosure of information for which a claim of confidentiality has been made by Bell Mobility, Rogers Communications Partnership (Rogers), and TELUS Communications Company (TCC) (collectively, the national wireless carriers).

On 3 July 2015 Vaxination Informatique (Vaxination) filed a request for disclosure of all the confidential information in the wholesale wireless roaming interim tariffs issued on 4 June by the national wireless carriers, pursuant to Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2015-177, Regulatory framework for wholesale mobile wireless services.

Between the 14 and 17 July 2015, the national wireless carriers as well as Bragg Communications, carrying on business as “Eastlink,” Quebecor Media Inc., on behalf of its affiliate Videotron G.P., and WIND Mobile Corp. file submissions opposing the above request.

Disclosure

When evaluating whether to require disclosure of information designated confidential pursuant to section 39 of the Telecommunications Act (the Act), an assessment is made as to whether there is any specific direct harm likely to result from the disclosure of the information in question. Further, in order to justify a claim of confidence, any such harm must be sufficient as to outweigh the public interest in disclosure. The Commission’s approach is explained in Information Bulletin 2010-961, Procedures for filing confidential information and requesting its disclosure in Commission proceedings.  

The Commission notes that the rates that are the subject of this disclosure request are set out in a tariff. Pursuant to section 25(3) of the Act, it is the essence of a tariff that the information be available for public inspection. The national wireless carriers argued that, in this case, “public” should be read narrowly to mean inspection by only the ‘relevant’ public, meaning potential customers who need access to the rate in order to decide whether to take the service. The Commission disagrees with this interpretation. In the Commission’s view, a restricted interpretation of public is fundamentally inconsistent with the statutory requirement that tariffs be available for public inspection. While the Commission has accepted that, in certain instances, a portion of a rate can be maintained in confidence (e.g. the lower rate in a rate range for retail services), these are in very specific circumstances and at least one portion of the rate (whether the maximum or the minimum) is always public. Transparency is essential with respect to the administration and enforcement of the regulation of rates, both wholesale and retail.

In light of the above, the public interest in disclosure in the information sought to be kept confidential, is highly significant.

With respect to the specific direct harm, the wireless carriers submitted that the interim rates are identical to the legislated roaming caps imposed pursuant to section 27.1 of the Act and, hence, are based on sensitive retail commercial information which, if required to be disclosed, would increase the risk that interested parties could reverse-engineer their total retail revenues from the provision of each roaming service. The Commission disagrees. The Commission considers that interested parties have no means to derive or reverse-engineer sensitive revenue or demand information based on the interim rates. Had the disclosure request included the underlying calculations from which the interim rates were derived, the specific direct harm would have been significant but that is not the case here given that the request is merely for the interim tariff rates.

With respect to the national wireless carriers’ argument that disclosure of interim rates would harm Canadian carriers vis-à-vis foreign carriers during commercial negotiations, the Commission is of the view that international roaming agreements are, in general, more elaborate, include multiple factors, and are largely based on reciprocal agreements which are mutually beneficial to both carriers.

In light of all of the above, the Commission is not persuaded that in this case the specific direct harm, if any, outweighs the public interest in disclosure – an interest, which, as discussed, above is highly significant given the statutory requirement in subsection 25(3) of the Act that tariffs be available for public inspection.

Accordingly, the Commission directs Bell Mobility, Rogers and TCC to publicly disclose the interim rates by re-issuing their respective tariff pages within 5 days of the date of this letter.

Sincerely,

Original signed by Luc Begin for

John Traversy
Secretary General

Attach. Distribution list

Distribution list

Date modified: