Telecom Regulation in Canada

From teleclick.ca

Canada’s fast-growing and ever changing telecom industry is regulated primarily by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC, a non-political government agency designed to protect public interest in the communications and broadcasting sectors.

In 2005, the CRTC was responsible for the approval of satellite radio in Canada, as well as a new policy making it possible for cell phone customers to port their phone numbers between wireless carriers.

Since the election of Canada’s new Conservative government, however, one could argue that the CRTC’s economic influence has diminished somewhat, due to the neoliberal monetary policy championed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his cabinet.

In May 2006, for example, the Harper government asked the CRTC to reconsider a policy preventing incumbent telephone operators from offering their own Voice over IP telephony services at fair market prices.

“After careful study … and the subsequent appeals, the government believes it is in the public interest for the CRTC to reconsider its decision,” commented Industry Minister, Maxime Bernier, in a statement. “This will give the CRTC the opportunity to take into account the increase in demand for VoIP services and changes to the overall regulatory environment since the original decision was announced.”

Four months later, after conducting a review, the CRTC chose to stick to its guns on the issue, upholding the same discriminatory policy against local telephone providers. In November, however, the federal government exercised its rarely used power to overturn a regulatory decision and took away the CRTC’s ability to restrict the VoIP market.

In an unrelated decision just days after the federal government’s VoIP decision, the CRTC also gave incumbent telecom operators the right to set their own prices on some fixed-line telephone services. A few months later, in April 2007, the government brought this a step further, deregulating the price of basic telephone service in all markets where adequate competition exists.

This chain of events sends a clear message that role of regulators in Canada’s communications market has diminished, and suggests that the free market will generally trump restrictive CRTC policies in future disputes over telecom regulation.