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. However, we distinguish these reasonable practices from, for instance, hiring a related party or arranging, by way of contract, to bury the mark-up in the fees themselves - a portion of which is then returned to the building owner, property manager, or both, as profit.

We also distinguish these practices from those that the CRTC explicitly either contemplated and excluded in the “MDU Framework”, or has not had an opportunity to contemplate, but that are designed to be more than compensatory.

It is not reasonable to pay a fee per service drop that is unrelated to the property manager’s costs incurred, if any. This fee goes beyond cost issues to engage operational ones. Whenever a customer signs up, the carrier must be able to install that customer’s service immediately. Customers now expect same or next-day service activation. The intercession of a non-cost-based service drop fee is a third-party tax that slows down the process and is not in the spirit of the CRTC’s decisions.

It is also not reasonable to require incoming carriers to only use landlord-supplied in-building fibre distribution. Carriers must frequently deliver on extensive, proprietary Service Level Agreements and other negotiated governance which their operations are geared up to meet. To do so, they must be in a position to build, pay the reasonable costs of, and manage their own network. A landlord is not equipped to respond to and make service level assurances as to in-building wiring and neither are RMFs.

Having to confront a tenant with a landlord-imposed charge puts the carrier in an untenable position. The carrier is not imposing the fees and may strongly disagree that the fees are even needed, yet the carrier becomes, in practical terms, deputized to collect these questionable fees from customers. This inevitably creates conflict.

In the same way, fees for changes to equipment that exceed compensatory costs for whatever accompaniment or security the building owner deems prudent, are a disincentive for carriers to modernize or clean up their infrastructure. Where one telecom company acquires another, for instance, the better result is that they consolidate equipment and delivery models. If doing so incurs punitive fees, this is unlikely to take place, leaving a mess on the property.

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