Fee cap irks carriers
Executives from two of Canada’s biggest wireless carriers denounced Tuesday a proposed spending cap in submissions to the country’s telecom regulator, arguing it would be technically impossible to implement and serve little purpose other than to annoy customers.
In an effort to address bill shock, a provision of the draft wireless code proposed by the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission would require wireless service providers to suspend certain services once a customer incurred additional fees of $50 or an amount of their choosing.
If a user were travelling in the United States or internationally, for example, and incurred roaming or data charges of $50 in excess of that provided in their monthly plan, the service provider would have to suspend those services for the balance of the month.
Representatives from Telus Corp. and Rogers Communications Inc. told a panel of the CRTC during a hearing in Gatineau, Que., that the provision is unwieldy.
“The proposal to cap additional fees once they hit $50 creates so many technical and practical problems that it is, with respect, impossible,” said Raj Doshi, senior vice-president of products at Rogers.
Ken Engelhart, senior vice-president of regulatory for Toronto-based Rogers, told the panel it would be feasible to cap certain services individually, but “aggregating everything with a real-time usage and rating engine would cost hundreds of millions of dol- lars.” While capping individual services such as data roaming or domestic data would be possible, he urged against it, arguing customers are better served by flexible packages that automatically bump them up to the next, more expensive level if they go over their monthly limits.
“Our advice to you is that capping is very disruptive,” Engelhart said.
Telus executives told the panel that the company already has a cap of $200 on fees incurred anywhere outside Canada, above which customers must explicitly agree to continue usage.