Competition Bureau’s request for info ‘overly burdensome’: CRTC

Wireless carriers are too busy to answer the Competition Bureau’s questions in the review of the mobile wireless market, according to a letter addressed to the Bureau from the CRTC.

Deemed both “highly granular” as well as overlapping with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s own requests for information, the Commission denied the Competition Bureau’s request as “overly burdensome” on the service providers.

Originally in a March 8th letter, the Competition Bureau Commissioner Matthew Boswell proposed an economic analysis by the Bureau to determine competition in the Canadian mobile wireless industry. It asked the CRTC to “issue a request for information to wireless service providers.”

The bureau will be studying and helping the CRTC review the scope of mobile wireless services in Canada. That review was announced in February and a hearing is set to take place in January 2020.

In a reply later that month, the Commission asked Boswell to refine the information he is seeking, so that it can “effectively address the competition issues relevant to this proceeding.”

The CRTC also asked that “in the alternative,” Boswell elaborate how the information will allow him to “provide the CRTC with important economic evidence to assist it in assessing the state of competition across various Canadian wireless markets and how certain policy changes would likely affect outcomes in those markets.”

Now, the CRTC adds that instead of gathering data through its own request for information (RFI), the Competition Bureau can submit its questions by May 29th to be included in future RFIs from the commission expected in the summertime.

“At that time, Commission staff will also take into account the RFIs already proposed by the Competition Bureau, as there may be a need to supplement the record with some of the more detailed and granular information that the Competition Bureau is seeking in its questions,” read the letter.

Source: CRTC