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The chief executive of BCE Inc. blasted the national telecom regulator as he announced the company would further scale back the build of its fibre internet network.
The parent company of Bell Canada no longer plans to meet its previous target of reaching 8.3 million homes through its fibre footprint by the end of 2025, CEO Mirko Bibic said on Thursday, adding the company would make further capital spending cuts this year.
Bibic said the move is in direct response to a decision earlier in the week by the CRTC surrounding wholesale fibre services. Bell has been at loggerheads with rival Telus Corp. over whether Canada’s largest telecoms should be allowed to sell internet service in regions where they don’t own fibre networks, by paying the local incumbent to use their infrastructure.
The CRTC has so far sided with Telus in allowing them to do so — although it deferred a final decision on the matter until the summer — while Bell says that direction discourages the big players from investing in their own network expansions.
“To put it bluntly, we’re not in the business of building fibre for Telus’s benefit, and that’s what the CRTC policy that’s in place right now forces us to do,” Bibic told analysts on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call.
He said it “makes no sense” that the CRTC would allow incumbents to resell internet service from each other at a time “when Canadian productivity is already lagging.”
“I don’t understand why a regulator would put in place policies that create disincentives to investment, puts jobs at risk, and puts at risk the building out of critical infrastructure,” he said.
“It seems like the wrong policy at exactly the wrong time.”
The CRTC has said its wholesale fibre rules are meant to level the playing field for smaller internet providers, many of which have struggled to compete with the big players.
After a limited version of the rules were set in late 2023, Bell responded by announcing it would cut network investment plans by more than $1 billion in 2024-25. On Thursday, Bibic said Bell had achieved more than 70 per cent of those reductions by the end of last year and would cut “by more than we anticipated” this year in response to the regulator’s latest decision.
“We will revisit our build out plan if the CRTC reverses its decision,” he said.
The move raised questions from analysts over Bell’s investment strategy, especially given its pending $5-billion acquisition of U.S. fibre internet provider Ziply Fiber, which operates in the Pacific Northwest. Bibic noted that deal, which is expected to close this year, comes as Bell seeks to transform into a “fibre-first company.”
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