Bell Letter to CRTC Confirms DA Completion

The plot thickens.

On 29 Aug 2014 Bell submitted a report to the CRTC indicating they completed the Deferral Account implementation program effective that date.

Bell addressed the report to Mr. John Traversy, Secretary General, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. The report was signed for Bell by Jonathan Daniels, Vice President - Regulatory Law.

The letterhead indicated Bell and not Bell Mobility. The corporate name Bell Canada is used throughout.

Bell provided an abridged version of the submission for the public record and the CRTC posted a copy on their website. The information Bell considered proprietary or competitive in nature is redacted in the abridged version. Only information from the abridged public record version is cited here.

The first paragraph of the report reads as follows: (Highlights added by me.)

“We are pleased to confirm that as of 29 August 2014, the rollout of broadband services under our deferral account-funded broadband program to the remaining 43 communities identified in our 15 July 2014 status report has been completed.  Bell Canada has thus completed its rollout of the Deferral Account-Funded Broadband Program as all 112 of the communities that were approved for inclusion in this program are now served.”

In case there was any doubt about the report’s subject, a footnote on page 2 states:

“For the sake of clarity, we note that the broadband services we refer to are the services we committed to provide in the communities that are part of our deferral account-funded program.”

Bell uses the term broadband services throughout the letter and also refers to these services as the “deferral account-funded broadband program”.

One would think when an organization responsible for a program claims to “completed its rollout” of a service or product, it means it is available to the users. This does not seem to be the case with this product based on the wide range of information, often negative, provided by the various Bell CSRs.

Based on the information in this letter to the CRTC, it hardly seems reasonable that Bell can continue to deny knowledge of the Deferral Account program.