Quash CRTC ruling

Re How Bell holds back Bell Oct. 3.

Citing Bell Canada’s launch of “the most advanced and featurerich VoIP service in North America,” Tyler Hamilton questions our rationale for appealing a CRTC decision to regulate prices for VoIP services offered by established phone companies. Hamilton should not be surprised that Bell can offer a new and exciting service. Better to ask why the cable companies are not offering the most innovative VoIP service around? The answer is that as long as prices for Bell’s VoIP services are regulated, there is little incentive for others to innovate. Innovation matters less when your main rival has one hand tied behind his back. Hamilton also misses the point in suggesting we are marketing Bell Digital Voice as local phone service while arguing that VoIP is anything but. Bell now offers two VoIP services to consumers. One needs high- speed Internet access and one does not. But just because one looks more like traditional phone service than the other does not change the fact that both offer different features and are based on different technology than traditional service.

Wireless enables voice communications. Does this make it traditional phone service? No, and even though it is increasingly a substitute for traditional phone service, it is not treated that way by the regulator. But VoIP is. And in this respect, Canada increasingly stands apart. Other countries — including France just last month — are choosing not to regulate prices for VoIP regardless of “ flavour” or who provides it. Canada needs to also rely on market forces — not regulation or managed competition — to deliver on the promise of innovation. Services based on new technologies must evolve based on what is possible, not what has been offered in the past or deemed permissible by the regulator. And that is why the federal cabinet must not allow the CRTC decision to stand. Lawson Hunter, Executive Vice-President and Chief Corporate Officer, BCE and Bell Canada, Ottawa