Industry committee  Right now, home Internet services are really dictated for competitors and for retail by the wholesale rates that incumbents have set. By inflating those wholesale rates—which really goes back all the way to 2011 probably, or earlier, when those rates were first set—they have really prevented competitors from being able to introduce pricing that would discipline Internet pricing across the board.

Industry committee  Thanks for the question. The CRTC has taken a preliminary view that MVNOs are a necessary way to introduce more competition in the mobile mobile market, and now of course we're waiting for a decision from them. MVNOs, of course, as a competitive option should introduce pressure on pricing, so there are obvious competitive benefits for consumers in terms of pricing.

Industry committee  Yes. Just to pivot away from mobile, of course, and to look back at the wholesale services that are really our bread and butter, it specifically addressed Bell and Rogers' anti-competitive practices where, on the one hand, in front of the CRTC, they have inflated for years the wholesale rates that wholesale-based competitors like us pay.

Industry committee  Thank you, Madam Chair, vice chairs and committee members. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you. My name is Andy Kaplan-Myrth, and I'm VP of regulatory and carrier affairs at TekSavvy, an independent Canadian Internet and phone service provider based in southwestern Ontario and Gatineau, Quebec.

Industry committee  You are describing Bell and Vidéotron as the main providers. They're the incumbents. They've been there the longest. They have all the advantages and privilege of incumbency, and they're the best known. They do own the wires, but TekSavvy probably provides service in your area and lots of other competitors probably do, too.

Industry committee  We were actually already seeing dramatic increases in how much capacity we needed to carry our customers' traffic late in 2019, before the pandemic. It was already getting expensive. That's partly a factor of a lot of new streaming services coming online all at the same time. We also lowered prices.

Industry committee  You're asking, I think, what can be done to move things quickly. While I think there is a place for cell on wheels as a very temporary measure to get connectivity to some place that's just unserviced now, that is a very temporary measure. It puts more pressure on cellular networks and will not deliver the kinds of speeds people are looking for, and certainly not in the long term.

Industry committee  I'm not sure I would want to limit what different businesses could do. I think the goal here is to try to connect more people and get more good services to those people. Starting from that focus, I'm not sure that businesses that provide the broadband services shouldn't be allowed to also provide the retail services, but certainly, they're—

Industry committee  Thank you. I think that depending on the different model that you use to build those networks, if you funded somebody to build the broadband network and provide even terms for everyone providing retail services on that network, including perhaps the company that built the network, that might be a way to use the funding mechanisms to ensure that level, competitive playing field.

Industry committee  Effectively, yes. We're not charging overage fees for the small number of customers we have who are still on capped plans. Effectively, everybody is unlimited for as long as we can do that.

Industry committee  Our main concern is the wholesale rates and the August 2019 decision. It really all goes back to that, because that's fundamentally what makes this sustainable for us or not. The old rates are dramatically inflated and we're stuck paying those for as long as the new rates are suspended and under appeal.

Industry committee  To be clear about this, Bell, for example—or any of the incumbents, really—builds the broadband networks and then uses those broadband networks to provide services to its own customers on a retail basis. It also sells wholesale access to those networks to providers like TekSavvy and other wholesale-based competitors, and we take those wholesale services that we buy, put them together with other services that we took to make our Internet service and sell them to our customers.

Industry committee  Thank you. Good evening, Madam Chair, vice-chairs and committee members. Thanks for the opportunity to speak with you. My name is Andy Kaplan-Myrth. I am VP, Regulatory and Carrier Affairs at TekSavvy. TekSavvy is an independent Canadian Internet and phone service provider based in southwestern Ontario and Gatineau.

Industry committee  I'm sorry. There may have been some confusion about that. I was asked if I would provide samples of the notices that we receive, and I said that there is some personal information in those notices, so we may redact them before we provide them to the committee.

Industry committee  That's right.