CRTC rejects Globalive complaint that Rogers drops too many roaming calls

TORONTO – Customers of Wind Mobile and other new wireless players will continue to face the frustration of dropped calls when roaming onto another network after Canada’s telecommunications regulator refused to intervene in a disagreement between two of the country’s players.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission dismissed a complaint Friday by Globalive Wireless Management Corp., the parent company of Wind Mobile. It had said Rogers Communications (TSX: RCI.B) is denying Wind customers the same service its own customers receive.

Globalive asked the CRTC to force Rogers to grant Wind customers equal service – and provide what’s known as “seamless call transition.” But the CRTC said that it hadn’t found sufficient evidence that Rogers had given preference to its own customers over those of Wind Mobile.

The dropped call problem affects less than 10 per cent of Wind’s 300,000 customers as it only occur when customers are on their phone when they cross into a Rogers zone, something that doesn’t happen to Rogers users.

But the issue is just one of the tactics established players are using to turn customers off of switching to new entrants, Globalive CEO Anthony Lacavera said in an interview. It also affects customers with other smaller players like Mobilicity, which is also petitioning Industry Canada on the issue.

Lacavera said the company plans to keep fighting to give consumers more choice in wireless carriers and has brought the case against the incumbents’ alleged anti-competitive roaming practices to Industry Canada.

The roaming agreement between the two telecom players came after a 2008 decision by Industry Canada to open the telecom spectrum. It mandated that existing players offer mandatory roaming but the CRTC noted that did not require seamless call transition.

The decision is the latest chapter in a saga of fierce competition in the telecom space following the entry of new players including Wind, Mobilicity, and Public Mobile, who accuse established players Rogers, Bell (TSX:BCE) and Telus (TSX:T) of anti-consumer practices that hurt competition – leaving consumers caught in the middle.

“We’re one of the only jurisdictions in the world where this issue occurs – where carriers don’t exchange calls seamlessly, and really it does affect the customer experience a lot, where customers experience a dropped call because the incumbent found this regulatory loophole,” Lacavera said.

The CRTC noted there is nothing preventing the companies from negotiating new terms themselves but Lacavera said he has been trying to reach a deal on seamless roaming since day one and Rogers has cited technical reasons for why it can’t happen. Rogers could not immediately be reached for comment Friday.

Bell and Telus already have such seamless roaming agreements in place, suggesting there’s no reason that other carriers couldn’t do the same, said telecom analyst Amir Kaminer, of the Seaboard Group.

“There are instances where that type of traffic is being handed off in a soft way without being dropped, so you would hope that the carriers will compete on marketing budget service and those kind of ways and not trying to make the experience worse on the wireless networks.”

Globalive also said Rogers is granting itself an “undue preference,” when it markets its discount talk-and-text Chat-r service to consumers. Chat-r advertisements claim that it has fewer dropped calls than new wireless carriers like Wind.

Chat-r, and its controversial marketing campaign, has been a thorn in the side of the new entrants and is now the subject of a probe by the country’s competition watchdog – which says there’s no evidence to support the claim that Chat-r’s mobile phone customers experience fewer dropped calls than they would at rival carriers.

Rogers is contesting the bureau’s accusation that it is using misleading advertising to promote Chat-r.

Mobilicity also submitted its opinion in the dropped call case to the CRTC that Rogers has been subjecting all new entrants to an unreasonable disadvantage.

Mobilicity’s Chief Operating Officer Stewart Lyons said it has also filed a complaint to industry Canada about the issue of dropped calls. It is part of a slew of “customer irritants” that he believes the big players can fix but don’t have the incentive, he said.

“We were lured into the auction under the promise of fair and open roaming and tower sharing rules that have yet to materialize so we believe it’s incumbent on Industry Canada to fix those rules.”