Large Canada Phone Firms Must Open Fiber-Optic Networks to Smaller Rivals

Starting February 2025, Canada’s largest telephone companies, led by BCE and Telus, must provide smaller rivals with wholesale access to their fiber-optic networks in a bid to foster affordable access to high-quality internet services. The order from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, in essence, makes permanent a temporary order issued in November 2023. At the time, BCE responded with plans to curtail planned capital expenditures for the current fiscal year. This ruling would apply across the country, thereby affecting Telus, which is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, and leans on western Canada for sales. The previous ruling applied to only the big central Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. In its ruling, the commission said this would allow competitors to the big phone companies “to bring innovative new Internet service plans to market … Increased competition creates more choice and lower prices.” The commission added the phone companies’ significant market share “gives them the ability to exercise market power in a way that could be harmful” to maintaining affordable and competitive telecommunications services, as dictated by the country’s Telecommunications Act.