ARCHIVED - Telecom and Broadcasting Commission Letter addressed to Janet Lo (TekSavvy Solutions Inc.)

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Ottawa, 9 October 2018

Our reference: 1011-NOC2018-0246

BY EMAIL

Janet Lo
Vice President, Privacy & Consumer Legal Affairs
TekSavvy Solutions Inc.
800 Richmond Street
Chatham ON, N7M 5J5
jlo@teksavvy.ca

Subject: Telecom and Broadcasting Notice of Consultation CRTC 2018-246 - Report regarding the retail sales practices of Canada’s large telecommunications carriers (Notice), TekSavvy’s Procedural Request: Requests for information on issues related to the wholesale relationship

Dear Ms. Lo:

In its 30 August 2018 intervention in the above-referenced proceeding, TekSavvy Solutions Inc. (“TekSavvy”) requested that the Commission issue further requests for information (RFIs) from underlying wholesale providers, in order to gather more information on certain behaviour on the record of this proceeding.

In their 14 September 2018 replies, Shaw Communications Inc. (Shaw), Rogers Communications Canada Inc. (Rogers), Cogeco Communications Inc. on behalf of its subsidiary Cogeco Connexion Inc. (Cogeco), and Bragg Communications Inc., carrying on business as Eastlink (Eastlink) argued that TekSavvy’s requests are outside the scope of this proceeding as they relate to the wholesale regime between TekSavvy and its wholesale service providers and not to retail sales practices within the scope of this proceeding.

However, Shaw supported other concerns raised by TekSavvy, including alleged misrepresentations by certain incumbent agents about the quality and characteristics of competitor services or their own services. The Canadian Network Operators Consortium (CNOC) broadly supported the requests. Shaw and CNOC argued that these issues do not only affect TekSavvy or wholesale carriers.

The Commission has recently made determinations on some aspects of the wholesale relationship. For example, in Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2018-123, the Commission determined that additional regulatory oversight was necessary for all providers of both aggregated and disaggregated wholesale high-speed access (HSA) services, and that these services should be included in a competitor quality of service (Q of S) regime.

The Commission notes that the purpose of this proceeding is to examine issues related specifically to misleading and aggressive retail sales practices and to present this information, along with the most feasible and effective ways to strengthen or expand the scope of existing consumer protections, as directed in Order in Council P.C. 2018-0685. The Commission has sufficient information on the record to consider this issue for the purposes of preparing the report to government.

Therefore, the Commission denies TekSavvy’s procedural requests regarding the issuance of further RFIs by the Commission on issues relating to the wholesale relationship.

Yours sincerely,

Original signed by

Claude Doucet
Secretary General


cc: Distribution list

Bell Canada
Bragg Communications Incorporated, carrying on business as Eastlink
CNOC
Cogeco Connexion Inc.
Northwestel Inc.
Rogers Communications Canada Inc.
Saskatchewan Telecommunications
Shaw Communications Inc.
TBayTel
TELUS Communications Inc.
Videotron Ltd.
Xplornet Communications Inc.

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