Experts are calling for the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to use its regulatory powers and force Rogers, Bell, and Telus to provide underground cellular service on the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) subway system — reports The Globe and Mail.
Torontonians and city officials have been expressing a rising need for wireless coverage along the TTC amidst an uptick in violence on the subway line over the past year. Calls for cell service were renewed after 16-year-old Gabriel Magalhaes was stabbed to death at Keele station last month.
Even though the required wireless infrastructure has been in place along the TTC for almost a decade, Freedom Mobile is the only operator currently providing underground cell service on the line. Rogers, Bell, and Telus customers get no cell service on the TTC.
In 2012, BAI Communications won a 20-year, $25 million exclusive contract to build out network infrastructure on the TTC. Today, all 75 subway stations and portions of the tunnel have the infrastructure required for talk, text, and data coverage. However, service remains widely unavailable because none of the Big Three have signed on to use BAI’s network infrastructure.
With the growing violence on the TTC, riders are concerned for their safety and demanding that wireless operators provide underground coverage. Ben Klass, a Ph.D. candidate and telecommunications policy researcher at Carleton University, said the CRTC could step in and issue a mandate compelling Rogers, Bell, and Telus to provide wireless service on the TTC.
According to the expert, the regulator could use Section 24 of the Telecommunications Act, which gives the institution the powers to impose conditions on wireless carriers governing the “offering and provision of any telecommunications service.”
“The CRTC has the power to order these companies to offer service and also to set the conditions on which they do so,” the researcher said. “It has extremely broad powers to deal with these types of things.”
In addition to Section 24, Klass noted that the CRTC could also use Sections 40 and 42 to justify its intervention. Section 40 enables the CRTC to require a Canadian operator to connect its telecommunications facilities to another company’s network, while Section 42 allows the CRTC to require or permit a carrier to provide telecommunications facilities.
“In general, Bell, Rogers and Telus never want to use other companies’ infrastructure,” Klass added. “They always want to use their own because it’s the cheapest way. They make the most money when they do that.”
Rosa Addario of consumer interest group OpenMedia said that the Big Three won’t budge unless forced to.
“There’s an easy fix and they’re refusing to sign on to it,” she said. “These companies are so used to being the ones that own the networks and people pay them for access and they don’t want to see it be the other way around.”
According to Jennifer Quaid, a University of Ottawa professor who specializes in competition law, this situation goes to show why regulation can be essential. “It’s an illustration of when you do need regulation,” she said.
Klass said that the CRTC usually doesn’t act on some of the powers it has under the Telecommunications Act until it receives a complaint. Last week, the Toronto City Council passed a motion urging the city to “call on all cellphone providers” to ensure that service is made available across the subway system and to notify the provincial and federal governments of the request.
“If we received advice from city staff and the TTC about the need to reach out to the regulator, we would follow that advice,” a spokesman for Deputy Mayor Jennifer McKelvie said in an email.
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i small govt service fee coming soon to a bill near you
Underground roaming fees 🥲
Force them to pay BAI? How about force the TTC to allow them to provide networks through a Canadian owned consortium. The TTC is the reason that there’s not coverage. The TTC needs to buy out the BAI contract.
The reason there is not coverage is that the Big Three don’t want to spend any of their enormous profit – made off us, the consumers – to rent the connectivity from BAI. The idea of having three additional companies – each wanting their own service – wandering around the tunnels for maintenance…you think the TTC run times are dodgy now? Why would TTC chance it – or more to your point, buy out the BAI contract (with money they don’t have), if still the Big Three would want their own lines?
If barely-relevant Freedom can pay the charge (and hopefully Videotron will continue the practice), then there is no reason but greed preventing the others from doing so.
In the meantime, 911 service is available to all in the subways.
The TTC put in their own chosen provider, and then expects the mobile companies to pay up, Montreal did it the right way and got the four main providers to put in a network and share costs. It is not set up as how you say, where they each have their own. There is just no BAI. Freedom probably got in there on the cheap with their paltry number of subscribers. Get BAI out of there and solve the problem.
This was Adam giambrone who signed this terrible deal with freedom mobile. He was and will always be a moron in my eyes. CRTC is useless. The Canadian government is always useless. See the Shaw Roger’s approval. People keep looking for crtc to do stuff but they do more posturing than anything
Among other things. Bell nor Telus take advantage of areas where only Rogers has coverage. It’s a big country and this is getting old…
Of course it’s for Toronto. How about get better service across the rest of Canada first, without using government funding? We’re paying more than enough for that.
The city of Toronto needs to pay the costs to provide services down there. The Big 3 are not going to do it for free!
I’m all for more cell service in the subway, but, as far as the safety reasoning goes, 911 already works no matter who your provider is, so what more is cell phone service going to give you while you’re being stabbed or set on fire by someone suffering from mental health issues? TTC staff are instructed not intervene so calling them won’t help (aside from them calling 911). So, as far as safety goes, calling 911 directly after being stabbed or otherwise assaulted (instead of waiting for staff to do so) is about the best you’re going to be able to do with cell phone service and that already exists. Perhaps putting up posters reminding people that 911 works would help since it doesn’t seem to be common knowledge.
Put a mobile repeater in every TTC officers gear, let them be cell service mules. TTC already pays (thru Toronto city ) millions for infrastructure.