WCA January 2015

From the Americas

For its part, BCE urged the CRTC to give up setting wholesale rates altogether.

resulted from compromises between the two sides, as well as higher taxes on wealthy individuals and temporary stimulus measures.” Even so, many economists believe that the spending cuts dictated by the compromises exerted a fiscal drag that slowed the economic recovery and kept pressure on the central bank – the Federal Reserve – to maintain its expansive monetary policies to offset the austerity moves.  In a joint statement on 15 th October, Treasury Secretary Jacob J Lew and Shaun Donovan, the budget director, reiterated the president’s call for additional government spending. The opposition Republican party has resisted that call, given its contention that Mr Obama’s 2009-10 stimulus package failed. Clearly, it did not.

Broadband providers in Seattle, city of dark fibre, gain new freedom to challenge dominant operator Comcast Seattle, Washington, will no longer put heavy restrictions on companies that want to implement fibre broadband access in that city in the Pacific Northwest. The so-called “SDOT Director’s Rule,” now rescinded, had required utility companies to get permission from some 60 per cent of near neighbours before installing a telecommunications cabinet to support the fibre. “That high bar made the city an unattractive destination for companies that wanted to offer services in Seattle,” wrote Rachel Lerman in the Puget Sound Business Journal . “Some even suggest it’s one of the reasons Google Fiber passed on setting up a service in Seattle.” (“Fibre Is Coming,” 30 th September) The high-speed Internet offerings in Seattle have been a disappointment to its residents, especially its multitude of high-tech start-ups. But the Seattle City Council is optimistic that removal of the restrictions will bring competition to the Internet scene there, which is largely dominated by Comcast. According to Ms Lerman, who covers technology and retail for the Business Journal , the main beneficiary will be CenturyLink, whose plans to bring fibre broadband service to unserved and underserved neighbourhoods have been stalled by the rule on telecom cabinet placement. CenturyLink cited it in the cancellation of 60 projects between 2009 and 2011. Elsewhere in telecom . . .  Google has announced its participation in an undersea cable project for linking the United States and Brazil by the end of 2016. The American search engine giant will partner with Brazilian ISP Algar Telecom, Uruguayan telecom ANTEL, and the Angola Cables consortium. The cable will be capable of carrying a total of 64Tbps of capacity over six fibre pairs. The announcement, reported on 17 th October in TeleGeography , marks the second time last year that Google confirmed its involvement in building a major submarine cable system. In August 2014 Google and five Asian carriers announced plans for the FASTER cable, slated to connect the West Coast of the US to Japan by the second quarter of 2016. Previously, Google had said it was serving as primary investor in two other submarine cable system undertakings: one trans-Pacific, the other intended to link countries in Southeast Asia. Dorothy Fabian – Features Editor

Telecom

Canadian regional carriers protest wholesale roaming rate caps that were intended to help them

MTS Inc, Saskatchewan Telecommunications Holding Corp and Tbaytel are asking the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) for an adjustment of wholesale roaming rates. The three regional carriers say that fee limits imposed by the regulator allow dominant wireless service providers to take advantage of the networks of their smaller competitors. The Canadian government capped the wholesale roaming rates at no higher than a given carrier’s charge to its retail customers. The CRTC has been looking into whether those rates (charged by mobile carriers to other wireless companies when their customers roam outside the home network) ensure adequate competition in the market. The caps on roaming charges were meant to assist new entrants to broaden their coverage and negotiate lower roaming rates for use of the networks of larger players. But according to reports in the  Globe and Mail (Toronto) , at a CRTC hearing on 2 nd October the regional carriers argued that the caps are in fact hurting their business. The dominant players – BCE Inc, Telus Corp and Rogers Communications Inc – have already built their own networks in territories where regional carriers operate. Dan Topatigh, CEO of the Northern Ontario smaller carrier Tbaytel, pointed out that the Big Three are also now permitted to roam on the networks of the regional carriers at discount rates. For example, when a Telus customer roams on the MTS network, Telus pays a capped fee to MTS. As reported by Nestor E Arellano of IT World Canada (3 rd October), the regional carriers are asking CRTC to consider exempting operators with less than ten per cent of the national market share from having to offer BCE, Telus and Rogers the use of their networks at the capped rates.

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Wire & Cable ASIA – January/February 2015