ECS 04/2020 Preliminary Determination Review of Wholesale Broadband Access Services under Sections 39 and 40 of the Communications Act, 2009
Following its review of the resale fixed broadband offer (“BRO”) obligation (ECS 09/2018),1 and as indicated in its Annual Plan for 2018,2 the Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (“URCA”) has conducted a review of Wholesale Fixed Access (“WFA”) services to better understand the current demand for and provisioning of these services in The Bahamas. As part of its review, URCA has considered the wider set of WFA services, such as wholesale business connectivity services and wholesale broadband access (“WBA”) services.
URCA has collected further feedback from key stakeholders within this process, particularly via discussions with access seekers in The Bahamas and subsequent information requests it has sent to specified licensees. These access seekers are hereafter referred to as Other Licensed Operators (“OLOs”) and include all licensed providers other than The Bahamas Telecommunications Company Ltd. (“BTC”) and Cable Bahamas Ltd. (“CBL”). Based on this feedback, URCA has concluded that this review should focus on WBA services, and in particular, wholesale Dedicated Internet Access (“DIA”) services.3 As further set out in the remainder of this Preliminary Determination, URCA considers that wholesale DIA services form part of the WBA market previously defined by URCA.
Given this, and taking into account the Significant Market Power (“SMP”) findings set out in ECS 09/2018, this document, therefore, has the following objectives:
to set forth URCA’s preliminary findings on whether there is a need to impose additional SMP obligations in the WBA service market(s) in The Bahamas (i.e., whether BTC and CBL, as dominant providers in the respective geographic markets for WBA services, should be required to provide wholesale DIA services on regulated terms), and the rationale for URCA’s proposed intervention;
to set forth URCA’s specific proposed SMP obligations for the market(s); and
to invite comments from stakeholders on URCA’s proposals.
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