A tiny telecommunications company has Bell and Shaw fuming
There's a new telecommunications monopoly in the land and the reigning telecom companies are not happy about it.
"Monopolistic thinking leads to very strange views," sniffs Bernard Courtois, Bell Canada's chief regulatory officer. He's not talking about his own behemoth corporation; he's referring to Alfredo DeGasperis, a renowned Toronto-based land developer who is stirring things up with his new telecom firm, Futureway Communications Inc.
DeGasperis controls millions of hectares in the Toronto area, and, through his development
companies, does everything from moving earth to laying sewer lines to building houses. Now,
DeGasperis has stuck his fingers into one more pie with the creation of Futureway.
In his latest 460-home subdivision, Bayview Glen Phase 5, located in Richmond Hill, Ont., DeGasperis
locked out the giant telecom companies at the subdivision's borders, giving Futureway the
exclusive right to lay all phone and cable TV lines.
It's Canada's first known instance of a land developer blocking phone and cable companies from open trenches in a new development--and it has left Bell Canada and Shaw Cablesystems in the novel position of complaining to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission about someone else's monopolistic leanings. In early April, the CRTC denied Bell and Shaw's application to gain access to what is still essentially a vacant private property owned by DeGasperis. The ruling leaves the giant telecom companies three options: install their own wires at a later date; lease access over Futureway's network; or abandon customers in the subdivision.
Futureway president Steve McCartney says it was never their intention to force Bayview Glen homeowners to use only Futureway for telephone, television, and Internet access. Rather, he says, Futureway was given exclusive access so they could put in place North America's most cutting-edge fibre optic household service. But not everyone has as much faith in Futureway. "It's one thing to bury the cable and have it running into houses," says Mark Quigley, a telecommunications analyst with the Yankee Group in Canada. "It's another thing entirely to manage it and to make it work properly." Thanks to Futureway, Quigley fears that mini-telecom monopolies are likely to become a trend.
Bell and Shaw say they have no intention of leasing Futureway's lines. (Currently, telephone and cable competitors lease access to new customers over the competition's existing wiring.) As soon as houses are built and the newly-laid streets become municipal rights-of-way, the telecom giants plan to rip up the pavement again and lay another set of cables to siphon off Futureway's customers. "It's a very messy way to do it and nobody's happy about it," says Maureen McCauley, commissioner of engineering and public works for the Town of Richmond Hill. "This is more expensive for the municipality. Whenever we have to do water main repairs or fix pot holes, we're going to have to worry about all this unnecessary duplication of infrastructure. Isn't that great?" she groans.