Bell, Telus must rebate phone customers: CRTC
Bell, Telus and other phone companies must pay back about $310 million to urban customers in the culmination of a bitter dispute with consumer groups that has lasted years, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has ruled.
The phone companies, including Bell Aliant and MTS Allstream, must give refunds to customers who were overcharged between 2002 and 2006. The rebates will be between $25 and $90 per customer, the CRTC said Tuesday.
The regulator also approved a plan for the deployment of broadband internet to 287 rural and remote communities at a cost of $421 million, with roll-out taking place over the next four years.
"Today’s announcement is a positive solution for Canadian consumers," CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein said in a statement. "Subscribers of the major telephone companies in urban areas will enjoy a rebate on their home telephone service. And residents in hundreds of rural communities will soon be able to take advantage of the many social and economic benefits broadband internet access provides."
The money for both the refunds and the broadband expansion comes from so-called "deferral accounts." In 2002, the CRTC allowed phone companies to charge above their normally regulated price caps so that new competitors entering the market for home phones — primarily cable companies such as Rogers and Vidéotron — could undercut them.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/08/31/crtc-deferral-account-phone.html#ixzz0yHfUXhYz