The move comes less than three months after the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) rejected an appeal by Bell Canada to overturn the move.
According to an unconfirmed report in Canadian newspaper Financial Post, the CRTC will announce its plan to implement the rules this week.
The move will affect not only Canada’s three most powerful operators, Bell Canada, Rogers and Telus, but also cable operators and also smaller service providers that are seeking wholesale access to the new fibre infrastructure.
According to the Financial Post, “the new rules require a switch from aggregated wholesale access to an entire network to disaggregated wholesale access”. The decision will be implemented first in the provinces of Ontario and Québec, says the paper.
In July the newspaper reported that the big providers had proposed higher wholesale rates for access to their fibre.
In the June appeal, the CRTC said it “finds that Bell Canada has failed to demonstrate substantial doubt as to the correctness of the Commission’s original decision on the basis of an error in law.”
The Capacity North America conference takes place in Toronto on 5-6 October 2016.
