The CRTC has just deregulated home telephone service in Fort McMurray and several cities in the Maritimes. CTV News says the decision “is the first of what is expected to be a flurry of decisions that will result in home telephone services being largely deregulated in many regions of the country.”

CTV also claims that the decision “[opens] the door for more competition and lower home telephone bills.” Reading that made me laugh. How, exactly, does deregulation lead to increased competition in the current environment? As we’ve seen with the upcoming spectrum auction in the US, there are structural barriers to newcomers in the telecommunications market; in the absence of regulatory policies to counteract those barriers, the “free market” is slanted in the favor of incumbent telcos.

As for lower phone bills, well, Canada’s deregulated wireless market has given us the highest cell phone bills in the developed world. So I’m not holding my breath on that one.

The CRTC’s decision comes on the heels of the creation of a new non-governmental office, the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services. As Michael Geist notes, the new commission lacks teeth: membership is voluntary and it can’t assess penalties of more than $1,000, which is pocket change for the big Canadian telcos.

In other words, the interests of the big incumbent telcos continue to trump the interests of ordinary Canadians.

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