The CRTC today released an incredibly bad decision on wholesale broadband rates. These are the rates that competitors use to compete with incumbents, the rates that lead to competitive pressure for Internet services, and the CRTC decided to INCREASE those rates. 🧵
First, this decision is very, very bad. It's worse then I think anybody anticipated. It's shockingly bad. Some incumbent shills are already pretending that it only freezes the status quo, implying that can't be so bad. But it is. crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2021/2021-181.htm
Competitors have been struggling, in some cases holding on by their fingernails until rates were decreased. We wondered, Would rates go down *as far* as in 2019? Would the CRTC throw incumbents a bone and find a way to increase them a bit? How will CRTC find a balance?
Look, honest talk: TekSavvy has been losing subscribers. We increased prices twice last year *during a pandemic* in order to stop losing money. We're going to survive this, but we are not just chugging along like the CRTC and incumbent talking heads say.
Backdrop for all this: Canada's broadband prices continue to increase year over year, and the Competition Bureau apparently ignores our call to investigate Bell's and Rogers' anti-competitive practices.
TekSavvy was ready to ROCKET🚀 out of a positive rates decision today. We are in the spectrum auction, we are actively building our own fibre network, and we are building toward the wholesale fibre framework. To be clear: ALL OF THAT IS NOW IN SERIOUS DOUBT.
Speaking of wholesale fibre, the CRTC says the order will enable movement toward that disaggregated model. That's false. That model is barely a sketch, the rates there are even higher, it will take years to get there, and meanwhile we need to invest.
As for prices, this decision LITERALLY raises some prices. For example, Rogers' wholesale access rate for 150 Mbps service was $34.57 from Mar 2016 to today, but starting today is $49.06. (That's just one component of your final price).
The CRTC analyzed the evidence for 3 yrs to arrive at the 2019 decision that withstood three court appeals and a petition to Cabinet. Instead of upholding it now, or even finding a compromise solution, they are killing competition.
Oh, but telecom dinosaurs say cOsTiNg iS cOmPlEx! Well, did the CRTC analyze the evidence closely and arrive at today's rates? No they did not. Instead, they say it's too hard to do a "fulsome" review and set just and reasonable rates. So instead, status quo.
[Oh and please please please stop saying "fulsome". It doesn't mean what you think it means.]
Incumbent spokeswits will try to spin this as maintaining the status quo. But look around: The status quo is broken, not just for telecom competition, but in so many other ways too. The CRTC's failure to understand that is on full display in this decision.
I need to make dinner for my family now, so I'm sending this instead of deleting it like I do most telecom tweets these days. But one final thought:
We're not done yet. We will keep fighting for competition and consumers. That's what we do, and it's a hill worth dying on.
Follow up: TekSavvy is withdrawing from next month’s spectrum auction. A straight line from today’s CRTC decision (plus their milquetoast mobile competition decision) to less competition. teksavvy.com/in-the-news/2021-press-releases/crtc-decision-will-kill-telecom-competition-guarantees-even-higher-prices-teksavvy/?opt-in?opt-in
Further follow-up: TekSavvy filed a Petition to Cabinet asking the government to fix Thursday's disastrous CRTC decision and to remove the chair of the Commission, Ian Scott. teksavvy.com/in-the-news/2021-press-releases/teksavvy-petitions-federal-cabinet-to-overrule-crtcs-arbitrary-rate-decision/