CRTC Allows Telus and Bell Canada to Set Free Market Local Phone Rates

Canada’s biggest telephone providers, BCE Inc. and Telus Corp., have won the right to set their own prices on some fixed-line phone services, provided that they fall within a range approved by the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission.

The phone companies have been lobbying the CRTC for the ability to compete on a fair market basis with cable carriers like Rogers and Shaw, who have started offering VoIP digital phone services at lower-than-normal market rates. Canadian telephone companies will lose a projected 8% of their residential subscribers over the course of 2006, as users switch to VoIP and cell phones.

A free market pricing system will allow Vancouver-based Telus and Montreal-based BCE to lower prices and offer more competitive services to consumers across Canada.