Telecommunication Carrier Alliance for Responsible Riser Management & Access
About TelCARRMA
We are an ad hoc coalition of facilities-based telecom carriers seeking to ensure our interactions with property and riser managers are consistent with fair and reasonable access to buildings and their pathways. Fair access helps promote healthy competition and choice for consumers and businesses.
As a coalition, our mission most directly impacts telecom carriers who access buildings and their pathways in order to install fibre. Additionally, we welcome landlords, commercial property managers, and other stakeholders to the table to help ensure that the best practices we identify are standards-based, reasonable, and equitable.
Please contact us to get involved.
Our Purpose
Multi-tenant and multi-dwelling buildings pose a challenge to carriers building telecom facilities into, and within, them. The ownership of cables and structures in public roadways is well-established, but the “last inch” of vertical and horizontal pathway inside a building or between the roadway and the end customer, is less well understood.
The CRTC has set out a regulated framework for in-building arrangements and fees in its Broadcasting Distribution Regulations and its Telecom Decision CRTC 2003-45, each as interpreted in subsequent CRTC decisions and rulings. This combined “MDU Framework” indicates that a building owner must allow any registered facilities-based carrier into the building to install or upgrade in-building wire and related facilities. It must also provide access to the vertical and horizontal pathways to all of the inhabitants within. Read more
We welcome Telecom Carriers, Landlords, Property Managers and all other stakeholders to the table.
Telecommunications Carrier Perspective
Facilities-based carriers make a significant investment to bring their service into a building. As a result, the building’s residents and businesses benefit from telecom services with greater resiliency and additional competitive choice.
Reasonable fees for services rendered - for instance, one-time fees for technical consulting and engineering to establish the incoming carrier’s presence and distribution - are reasonable when they can be passed through the property manager on a cost recovery basis. In the same way, reasonable rent for space occupied by telecommunications equipment, which rent is typically similar to the per-square-foot charge for basement storage space, is expected. Read more
Supporting Stakeholder Perspectives
Property owners need to lease space. Having a rich diversity of telecom carriers in their buildings, with the most modern infrastructure, is key to leasing space. But landlords have also seen competitive telecoms come and go through the years, many leaving a mess in their wake. Telecom providers acquire, divest and go bankrupt frequently, leaving property managers with little industry insight as to what infrastructure is abandoned or not. Read more
End users of telecom services want the technical and financial benefits of choice, and want good service delivered quickly. They rarely want to wade into the detailed politics on how their service gets to them. If there is a problem with their service, they expect to call the telecom provider whom they are paying, and for the provider to be able to fix it immediately. Read more