The CRTC has approved a Northwestel wholesale rate cut of less than 1%, and one commissioner says the Commission didn’t do its job.
Northwestel serves Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and northern B.C. Smaller internet providers can’t afford to build their own networks up there, so they rent access from Northwestel through a service called Wholesale Connect. That rental price largely decides whether anyone can compete with Northwestel at all.
Under a 2022 CRTC decision, whenever Northwestel drops its own residential internet prices, it has to pass the same percentage cut along to competitors. This time around, it filed for 0.8%.
But competitor SSi Canada objected. It pointed out that Northwestel had separately cut prices on winback promotions, the deals used to lure former customers back, by 23% to 38%. Meanwhile competitors got just 0.8%. SSi also said it couldn’t verify the math because Northwestel filed its data and methodology confidentially.
The Commission approved it anyway and announced its decision on August 25, ruling that promotional pricing falls outside the rules covering this filing.
But the lone holdout was Commissioner Bram Abramson, who disagreed. His argument: the Commission checked Northwestel’s math against a CRTC formula instead of asking whether the resulting rate is actually fair. Treating the formula as the entire test, he wrote, “mistakes the map for the territory.”
He also noted the formula didn’t quite work here, as it relies on 2021 revenue figures, and the internet packages in question didn’t exist back then, so applying it literally would have produced a discount of zero. Northwestel substituted newer numbers on its own initiative.
Abramson pointed to the CRTC’s own January 2025 review, which found competition in the North remains pretty limited. He wanted the Commission to ask whether a 0.8% cut actually helps competitors survive while Northwestel discounts its own packages by up to 38%. In the end, nobody else questioned Abramson’s points and the rulling was approved.
Sounds like those in north should be considering satellite internet solutions like Starlink to bypass dealing with telecoms.
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