(Toronto) Bell Canada chief executive Mirko Bibic warned Monday that increased regulation in Canada’s telecommunications industry could cause companies to cut investment and cut services for underserved communities.
Speaking Monday at a luncheon hosted by the Canadian Club Toronto, Bibic took aim at the federal government and the Canadian Radio-television and micromanagement of the telecommunications industry in Canada”.
He said some investments are “impossible to justify” when large companies are required to provide their smaller competitors with access to their private networks at heavily discounted rates.
“Our industry is highly regulated and we seem to be moving quickly towards even greater interventions,” Bibic said, adding that such an approach “creates uncertainty in the market.”
Our regulator tells us that we must provide access to the new networks that our employees, our partners and our capital are building and they tell us the rates that we must charge for this access. This is not how a competitive market should work. [Cela] certainly does not enhance the quality or resilience of the networks and services you all rely on.
Mirko Bibic, President and CEO of Bell Canada
Earlier this year, Canada’s telecommunications regulator announced it would reduce certain wholesale internet rates by 10% and consider whether large companies should provide smaller competitors with access to their fiber networks up to at their clients’ homes.
The CRTC explained that this decision was aimed at improving internet speeds and strengthening competition.
The move came after Federal Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne ordered the regulator to implement new rules to strengthen consumer rights, affordability, competition and universal access, which included a requirement for wholesale internet rate improvements.
Where will spending be cut first?
The CRTC also said earlier this month that major telecommunications companies would have 90 days to negotiate access agreements for mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs). This followed a policy established in 2021 allowing regional cellphone providers to compete as MVNOs across Canada using networks built by large companies.
Mr. Bibic believes that Ottawa and the CRTC should ensure that Canada’s big four telecommunications companies are incentivized to invest and differentiate themselves from each other, which would lead to greater value for customers. He warned of “unintended consequences” if regulation continues to escalate.
There comes a time when if the government is too interventionist, we are all going to have to cut those investments, which is not good for consumers and businesses.
Mirko Bibic, President and CEO of Bell Canada
“If you have to start cutting your capital expenditures, what will be cut first? Will the Greater Toronto Area be cut first? Or will a northern Ontario community be cut off first? We know the answer to this question. »
A question of quality?
Mr. Bibic also dismissed a “widespread but false story” surrounding the state of competition in Canada’s telecommunications industry, as well as the prices of cellphones and the internet.
Findings from a February report by Wall Communications, which does an annual comparison of phone and internet prices in Canada versus other jurisdictions, found that prices in Canada were still among the highest in the world for cellular and broadband services in 2022.
But Bibic noted that despite accelerating inflation, wireless prices in Canada have fallen 8% over the past two years and nearly 25% since January 2020.
“We all went to the United States, didn’t we? The service is appalling. So there is a quality dimension to that,” he argued.
“Too often the mainstream narrative is based on these studies which, by definition, create these average baskets of goods, so there is some semblance of an attempt to compare prices across the world, but these baskets of goods don’t really reflect what people are buying today. »