Tomorrow comes last to Canada’s West Coast, but the future of telco-vision may be dawning there first.

Vancouver has become a microcosm in the debate over whether telephone companies should be legally entitled to deliver video signals to the tv sets of the nation.

At issue is whether Pacific Place Communications of Vancouver, a company owned jointly by BC Telecom and developer Concord Pacific Developments and not in possession of a broadcasting licence, will be allowed to continue supplying tv service over fiber-optic cable to properties in the city. ppc is supplying ‘bulk’ service – that is, an identical package of tv and pay offerings – to tenants in the Wall Centre apartment tower and to condominiums in Concord’s condo development on the former Expo site.

Bulk service is okay under crtc rules when management of a condo or apartment building or hotel, for instance, uses a master antenna to receive tv signals off-air or via microwave or satellite transmission. The crtc’s master antenna exemptions do not yet extend to fiber-optic signal relays.

ppc’s use of fiber optics came to the commission’s attention as early as last January when Rogers Cablesystems asked the crtc to determine if ‘an unlicensed cable television distribution undertaking is being operated at Concord Pacific Place.’

The commission subsequently ordered Concord either to stop supplying the tv signals or conform to the crtc’s regulations, which would require that fiber-optic cable not be used to relay the signals. ppc has asked the commission to suspend its cease-or-comply order until it issues its ruling as to whether the master antenna exemptions should be amended to include fiber-optic cable.

While the dispute on the West Coast hinges on a technicality, it points up the need for the broadcast and telecommunications regulator to determine quickly if it will expose Canadian cablers to licensed competition from the country’s telcos.

Judging from the activities of ppc in Vancouver and a recent announcement by New Brunswick Telephone – which includes plans for the phone company to provide broadband hookups to allow schools multimedia-on-demand – phone companies are betting on getting the go-ahead.

There are also indications that the crtc is considering granting the go-ahead, given its call for comment on a proposal to exempt video-on-demand trials, performed by cable companies or telcos, from licensing. (Interestingly, at almost the same time as the commission called for comment on the v-o-d trials, it called for comment on a proposal to allow unlicensed video game-on-demand trials, but this time by cable companies only.)

Cable companies such as Rogers have been governing their businesses according to crtc regulations until now, and are arguing that as long as these regulations exist, they should apply equally to telcos.

According to Vera Piccini, vice-president of community relations for Rogers Cablesystems on the West Coast, ppc is behaving like an unlicensed cable company. She adds that Rogers can offer equally low, or lower, prices for the same package of services ppc is providing because it’s cheaper to provide bulk service.

Rogers is trying to woo Concord condo owners with an offer of more channels than ppc provides, for the same $29.50 a month rate, a cost that equates to 60% less than regular subscribers would pay. Piccini maintains the quality is better with cable (newspaper reports have discussed audio and video quality problems in the ppc-supplied Concord units).

Jon Markoulis, ppc’s president, argues that the crtc should stop trying to protect cablers from telco competition. ‘Historically, it’s very difficult for governments to continue to stop the advance of technologyÉ.A few years ago, when the crtc wrote the exemptions (in the master antenna rules), fiber wasn’t being used to distribute tv signals.’ But it is now, he says, and the exemptions should reflect the advance in quality. He adds that if the crtc ‘says no to fiber,’ ppc will convert to microwave distribution to its master antennas.

David Ellis, a Toronto-based media consultant, argues vehemently that the crtc should never have issued its cease-or-comply order against ppc. ‘I would like the crtc to tell me why the hell it is in the public interest not to allow a (fiber) service offering a) higher quality, b) lower prices? To disallow this service, this really takes the cake for me. Proof positive that the commission really does not believe in competition, regardless of the noises it’s made over the past year. The (phrase in the) Broadcasting Act on technological neutrality is being ignored.’

Ellis, who currently counts some of the Stentor phone companies as clients, concedes that the cable fight to maintain monopolies ‘is not any more or less outrageous than the phone companies fighting to keep their monopolies.’ But, he says, he has been on the record (in his 1992 examination of the Canadian broadcasting environment, Split Screen) since long before he acquired phone company clients in arguing against cable monopolies and for rate rebalancing.

He argues that in situations like the ppc-Rogers battle in Vancouver, the crtc should tilt in favor of competition unless the companies involved ‘are selling Canadian content down the river or committing some other affront.’