EBOX on the podium of telecom providers offering the best service

EBOX is still on the podium of the independent magazine Protégez-Vous for the fifth year in a row as one of the best services amongst telecom providers. EBOX is proud to offer high qualité services to Canadians since 1997. Year after year, the unequaled quality of the service we offer our clients remains one of our standout features.

An honest and surprise free customer service experience.

The quality of the service offered by EBOX is something very appreciated by our customers and is one of our main business values. Our desire to properly serve our clients and offer our services to a majority of Canadians is what makes it possible for us to keep standing out every year.

The return of the oligopoly and a price increase is upon us. Here is how you can help.

Since 2013, EBOX and all the other independent service providers have been fighting the CRTC to gain access to reasonable prices from the bigger providers. The goal is to be able to offer our clients competitive prices and fight our competitors with equal arms. This regulatory marathon has taken place from 2016 to 2021.

THE REGULATORY AND POLITICAL MARATHON

2016

After a preliminary analysis, the CRTC established interim tariffs that would be in place until a more detailed financial analysis would be completed to determine the final tariffication.

2019

The CRTC concluded that the prices billed by the big telecommunication service providers to independent providers like EBOX were unfair and overpriced. The prices were then reduced in the CRTC 2019-288 decision. They also ruled that the smaller independent service providers had overpaid the big telecommunication providers since 2016.

The telecommunication giants immediately brought the CRTC decision to court, pressured the federal government, complained directly to the CRTC that the new access fees were too low and requested that the decision be reviewed.

2020

The analysis of the federal lobbying files established that between September 2019 and April 2021, Bell, Rogers, Shaw, Cogeco, Quebecor and Telus have had over 250 meetings with different governmental representatives of the ministry of Innovation, Science and Industry (ISI). They also had a dozen meetings with Ian Scott, president of the CRTC, including one encounter that took place in a busy bar in Ottawa.

2021

After almost 2 years of legal procedures and political strategies from the big service providers, the CRTC, who’s president was also the past vice-president of Telus, accepted to bow down before the telecommunication industry giants by throwing away all the work done upstream of decision CRTC 2019-288 and published a new decision, CRTC 2021-181, in which they decided to maintain the 2016 interim tariffs with minor adjustments. Once again, the competition in the telecommunication industry and the interests of Canadians was placed second behind the interests of a hand full of big players in the industry.

 

THE REPERCUSSIONS OF THE 2021-181 DECISION

By letting the telecom giants introduce anticompetitive prices and second brands such as Fizz, that offer services at prices under the cost price billed to independent service providers, this decision gives them the opportunity to keep enjoying the advantages of an unbalanced system in their favor.

These practices keep encouraging the oligopoly that directly affects the Canadian consumers. The prices offered by those second brands are not only unfair but are also the ultimate weapon against the competition in the market.

Following this decision, many independent companies will have to raise their prices to be able to keep gaining enough profit to support their regular operations. Being unable to compete with these disloyal practices, some providers will have no other choice but to close. Once the competition is taken off the map, the bigger players will then have a clean slate to raise the prices as high as they want to and keep in place the oligopoly they have been battling for.

 

HERE IS HOW YOU CAN HELP

We have one last chance to reinstate the lower prices, and that is by asking the Liberal government, which promised to reduce telecom costs, to immediately overturn the CRTC’s decision

Therefore, we have chosen to launch a public relation campaign to bring this to the attention of the minister of the industry M. François-Philippe Champagne. We are asking him to overturn the CRTC 2021-181 decision and to ensure that the CRTC does not take any further decisions that serve the interests of big telecommunication businesses without any considerations for what the Canadians need and deserve.

Your support is crucial to our success. Click on the link below, and in two easy steps you will be able to send a message directly to your local Member of Parliament to oppose yourself to these recent changes. Once you have sent your message, you can ask other members of your household to send messages as well.

Your voice, and that of hundreds of thousands of other Canadians, will make a difference, and help us get back to the important task of providing you with the best services at the most affordable prices.

Send your message to the COMPETITIVE NETWORK OPERATORS OF CANADA

 

IN CONCLUSION

EBOX has always had the mission of offering à different experience to our clients at a fair price. Every day, this goal lives on by being devoted towards our client’s needs and by being respectful and honest towards them.

We will keep on fighting the injustice currently taking place in the Canadian telecommunication industry and keep defending the consumers interests. We are confident that the everlasting support our clients show us will give us the opportunity of making a difference.

The time has come to stop regulatory holidays

Dear subscribers, what are you wishing for in 2021, in addition to good health? We here at EBOX are fighting for just and reasonable rates and price stability in the telecom industry. This is generally where you would stop reading, because—let’s be honest—telecommunications regulations don’t exactly make for riveting dinner table conversation. But you chose EBOX because you wanted to stop supporting major providers for a variety of reasons, including their prices and their general lack of stability. What if we told you that all of this is at stake, but also that you could have an impact, as small as it may be? Keep reading for more…

Since 2017, we have not introduced any significant price increases for internet service, despite rising costs of living and average personal data usage. We have been able to do this by optimizing our processes and investing as judiciously as possible. Many other providers were forced to raise their prices in 2020, and if things keep going the way they are, it’s only a matter of time before EBOX will be forced to do the same. Fortunately, that is not part of our short-term plan, and this is not intended to resemble a letter announcing a price hike. On the contrary, our goal is to improve our prices and offer you more for your money, all without sacrificing the high standards of network quality that EBOX clients are accustomed to.

In order to improve our service offer, however, we are calling on the CRTC, our industry’s regulatory body, to enforce just, reasonable rates. It is critical that these rates be updated as soon as possible, because they have a direct impact on what consumers pay. As technology continues to evolve, we have access to more and more power at lower and lower costs. This means that Canadians will be forced to pay even more for their telecom services due to the lack of competition. This has been the case since 2019, and the situation is at risk of worsening.

We must acknowledge that the CRTC did their part, in August 2019, by announcing an important decision—a decision that was met with strong disapproval from major service providers. This decision allowed us to offer just and reasonable rates, which could have resulted in EBOX and other independent companies being able to lower their customers’ bills significantly. In addition, as rates are a key point of comparison when customers are negotiating their service contracts with major providers, our reduced prices would have been echoed in the retail prices offered by those major providers and their subsidiary brands. The result? Every Canadian would benefit, whether clients of EBOX or a major provider, thanks to increased competition.

Unfortunately, ever since the decision was announced, the biggest providers have been leading a fight worthy of a Hollywood movie, resulting in the temporary suspension of the CRTC decision designed to lower market prices—a decision the CRTC had been working on for four years leading up to 2019. This decision was the result of rigorous technical and financial analysis, as well as hundreds of legal arguments presenting the positions held by different parties.

Since the CRTC’s announcement, major service providers have been involved in a series of legal events: a petition to Industry Canada, hundreds of meetings with lobby groups and ministers, legal proceedings at the Federal Court of Appeals, and, just recently, a final appearance before the Canadian Supreme Court, in which they did their best to demonstrate that the CRTC is in the wrong and that this issue is of utmost national importance. Major service providers claim, among other things, that if the CRTC decision is upheld and prices are lowered, they will be unable to develop their network in underserved areas. Ironically, the government has just established a $1.75 billion fund to finance the construction of broadband networks in those same regions. We see all of this as a ruse to continue benefiting from the lack of regulations and to control retail prices in order to maximize profits.

That is why we are launching a public relations campaign to ensure that the new Minister of Industry, the Honourable François-Phillipe Champagne, who is expected to make a ruling in 2021, is well informed on the issue. Will he support the CRTC decision by putting an end to the lack of regulations, or will he give in to the arguments of the industry giants, causing an inevitable rise in market prices? As for the Supreme Court, we hope they will follow the example set by the Court of Appeals judges, who unanimously rejected the major providers’ demands, deeming them to be “of dubious merit”. In the meantime, we invite you to share your opinion by signing this online petition.

Did you know that 38% of Canadians still have an internet connection speed below the 50 Mbits CRTC’s targets, despite the availability of the appropriate technology to improve it. The reason for this is the price of such services. In large urban centers such as Toronto, nearly 40% of households still do not have an internet connection with decent speed. A decent internet connection is a basis for teleworking and distance learning and it is outrageous that Canadian families are having to do without it because it is too expensive, which contributes to the increase in disparity between social classes.

Reported Home Internet Download Speed

Reason Why Respondents Have No Home Internet

source: Mapping Toronto’s Digital Divide [PDF File]

Speak up. Pay Less

Dear clients,

We are writing to you today because we know how much you are counting on us to deliver quality service at aggressive prices. On September 20, 2019, we committed to improving the internet packages to more than 90% of our customers if an important CRTC decision was upheld. To offer you our internet services, we have to pay fees to the companies that own the distribution of infrastructures. These rights are based on cost recovery plus a profit to maintain and build the physical networks. To do this, EBOX must connect its infrastructures, operate a network and maintain IT systems to deliver the service to your home. More than 450 EBOX employees work every day to make this ecosystem work for more than 100,000 customers.

On August 15, 2019, the CRTC ordered the holders of telecommunications infrastructures to reduce on a final basis the fees that EBOX pays to a level that is fair and reasonable following a long regulatory debate initiated in 2015. In 2017 , EBOX had indeed reduced the bill for the majority of its customers following an initial decision by the CRTC which recognized on a temporary basis that the fees were grossly overvalued and that they do not represent the true cost to be paid by EBOX to maintain and use telecommunications infrastructure.

Cost Cutter Threatened By Big Players

Large network operators have intensified their legal actions to reverse this decision. All means have been used to appeal the judgment.

In the end, you will understand that these actions have only one goal, to prevent the CRTC’s decision from being implemented, because prices would become much more competitive in the market and large companies would be forced to follow the new reality.

If the big players succeed, the level of competition will decrease for consumers and prices will tend to increase. This situation is not desirable for anyone.

What can I do as a consumer?

Today you can appeal to the government not to reverse this decision and to refuse a price increase.

Find out more

For many years, EBOX has been fighting to ensure that royalties are fair and equitable so that your price is competitive. Unfortunately, it is no secret that Canadians still pay far higher prices than other industrialized countries despite our continued efforts to lower consumers’ bills.

The large infrastructure companies fiercely defend the cost prices that must be established by the CRTC. Through powerful lobbies, legal processes and other actions, they have been able to keep prices relatively high in the market.

These same companies are protected from international competitors and enjoy huge credits & subsidies from the government to build and deploy new infrastructures. The political apparatus in place relies on players like EBOX in order to regulate prices to consumers.

We sounded the alarm several years ago that the charges are more and more inequitable with the growth of internet traffic on our networks and very high speed access. By working very hard and thanks to a dynamic team, we have been able not to impose annual increases on our customers for several years as it is done with big players.

Following the final decision, the big owners of the telecommunications networks announced in the media that they would reduce their investments in the deployment of infrastructure in rural areas and reduce investments in 5G technology for mobile networks. We believe these are subterfuges to influence public opinion and influence the government to go back.
Here is a timeline of legal actions since the CRTC decision that favours consumers


All of these legal actions are extremely costly in public funds and ultimately to EBOX customers. We must deploy an enormous amount of legal resources to defend and respond to these actions which are becoming commonplace.

Thank you for choosing EBOX and for your loyalty.