During CRTC Hearings Telus Voices Disapproval Of $50 Additional Fee Cap

By: Talha Bhatti  |   February 13th, 2013   |   Business, News, O Canada

The government regulatory body, Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), is in the second day of hearings relating to a national code of conduct for wireless service providers in Canada. The hearings that got started on February 11th are still seeing opposition from executives from Telus who claim the code has flaws. The CRTC is trying to address “Bill Shock” and long 3-year contracts that tie in consumers to one provider and make moving to another wireless company expensive. On the second day one of the points that came under discussion was a proposed rule that would force wireless providers to suspend specific features when a users additional fees reached a $50 limit. The CRTC also recommended that the consumer could set the limit if they wanted.

 

Telus told the CRTC that is believed the $50 spending cap that is part of the current draft of the code is not a workable figure.

 

Ted Woodhead, senior vice-president of federal government and regulatory affairs for Telus, stated in an interview that “People are using these services and rely on them so we think it would be a very large customer irritant to be in the middle of a data session when you’re roaming — or even domestically — and that your service basically be suspended at $50.” He further added that in order to create system where users could go and create their own cap would be “enormously expensive.”

 

CRTC chair, Jean-Pierre Blais, was told by Telus representatives that they already had a $200 limit on fees that are  incurred outside of Canada. When a customer hits the limit they need to agree to continue service or they are shut down until the bill is paid. The executives further added that Telus sends out several different notifications to users about their usage and also has an online monitoring system that lets them check how much they have used up. The company further claimed that users that wanted to stay under specific budgets could use pre paid services. The company executives argued that if a cap does make it into the wireless code it should be closer to $200 because this is the limit near which customers call in to complain.

 

The Vancouver-based telecom provider also added that they had put in a large sum of money to create their data notification system and creating a new system to come inline with the proposed code would be hard to create and would not offer its consumers any extra benefits.

Source: Financial Post