Bell Turns to Appeals Court to Overturn Mobile TV App Ruling

In an attempt to overturn the CRTC’s decision about its TV app, Bell has officially filed an application with the Federal Court of Appeal, reports the Globe and Mail.

You may recall that the CRTC found that Bell was not playing according to the net neutrality rules as outlined by the regulator: It gives preferential treatment to the company’s content and it allows users to stream up to 10 hours of television that do not count against their monthly wireless data caps – all that for $5.

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Bell argues that the CRTC erred in law when basing its decision on the Telecommunications Act, because the app is actually a broadcasting service, so the legislation doesn’t apply to it. According to its argument, when Bell acts as an Internet service provider – it provides access to customers to Internet-based video services – it falls under the Telecom Act.

This, however, changes with the mobile TV app because the carrier is actually acquiring, aggregating, packaging, and marketing content before retransmitting to its 1.5 million subscribers. In other words, Mobile TV is actually broadcasting content.

In its filing, Bell apparently forgot the initial complaint filed by Manitoba graduate student Ben Klass regarding the subsidizing of mobile data for TV apps from Bell and Videotron. Bell says the CRTC has no evidence that the app caused harm to customers and that it “unfairly placed the burden on Bell to prove the pricing model had no adverse impact on competitive services.”

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