Summary

  • CRTC Decision 2026-208 let Cogeco proceed with the retirement of HFC wholesale access in four Ontario locations after the regulator considered two alternatives: Bell’s regulated wholesale fibre and a commercial proposal from Cogeco.
  • The published decision says TekSavvy rejected Cogeco’s offer and could use Bell’s network, but it does not establish equivalent prices, service terms, speeds or customer-retention results across those routes.

The wholesale question did not begin with fibre. It began when Chatham and Windsor’s cable sites were scheduled to close. Cogeco had notified TekSavvy of the planned changes months earlier, and the two companies extended the original February 2026 date to 1 April. The sites closed on that date. TekSavvy had already moved some customers to Bell’s fibre wholesale service, but told the regulator it could not retain most customers at addresses served by those two sites.

That is the operational detail that makes the CRTC’s August decision more consequential than a routine equipment refresh. A network owner may replace an old platform because it is costly or unsupported. A wholesale customer, however, has built retail plans around the access product that platform made available. When the platform disappears, the legal question is whether the replacement routes preserve a viable way to serve those customers—and what evidence is enough to answer it.

Canada’s framework separates telephone and cable networks. In its 2024 wholesale policy, the CRTC required major telephone companies to provide aggregated wholesale access over fibre, while leaving cable companies outside a new wholesale FTTP mandate. The Commission said cable fibre then reached only about 5% of homes passed nationally and that competitors could generally rely on incumbent telephone-company fibre where cable fibre existed. Cable providers still had to offer wholesale access over their HFC networks at the fastest speeds available to their own retail customers.

The policy also anticipated a gap: a cable operator could replace HFC with fibre while the telephone incumbent in the same area still relied on older copper. The CRTC said it expected carriers to avoid cutting off higher-speed wholesale access in that situation and would address disputes case by case. Decision 2026-208 is one such test of the boundary, not a nationwide amendment to the framework.

TekSavvy asked the Commission either to keep the existing wholesale service in place or to require access to the new fibre while the regulator considered broader decommissioning rules. It argued that losing the HFC route could leave customers with lower speeds, higher prices, interruptions or fewer choices. Cogeco said maintaining both platforms would be economically unreasonable and, in many cases, technically infeasible. It also cited unsupported equipment and expired rights of way. Those were the parties’ positions in the proceeding; the concerns TekSavvy raised should not be mistaken for measured outcomes across all four locations.

Timing narrowed the immediate remedy. The CRTC’s public decision says Chatham and Windsor had already been decommissioned by the time it considered interim relief; Burlington followed on 2 June. The decision lists 1 September as the expected Kingston date but does not verify what happened after that schedule. Because two sites were already closed, interim relief there had become moot. The Commission therefore focused on final relief.

The CRTC found that two alternatives were available. One was Bell’s mandated wholesale FTTP service in the affected areas. The other was a commercial arrangement Cogeco had offered TekSavvy to use Cogeco’s new fibre. TekSavvy rejected that proposal. The Commission concluded that the options were sufficient for TekSavvy to continue serving customers and that the record did not establish a disadvantage or discrimination by Cogeco. It denied relief and, finding no violation, did not impose an administrative monetary penalty.

The ruling does not say the routes were interchangeable. A regulated wholesale product and a privately negotiated offer can differ in price, service levels, ordering processes, coverage at individual addresses, repair obligations and contract duration. The decision does not publish a side-by-side comparison of those terms or show how many TekSavvy customers used either route after the upgrade. Bell’s availability also means a competitor may remain in the market without preserving its former relationship with the cable network; that can matter to resilience and bargaining power even if retail service continues.

The CRTC’s reasoning turns on a practical threshold: whether the record showed that Cogeco’s action prevented TekSavvy from seeking or serving customers on high-speed networks. In this case, the Commission said it did not. It also found the upgrade necessary because the old equipment lacked manufacturer support and some sites faced rights-of-way constraints. The Commission distinguished an earlier Rogers case, where insufficient notice had effectively denied competitors the chance to seek new customers over FTTP. The difference it identified was not the technology alone, but the notice and the available alternatives.

It balanced continued investment against competitive access, while applying the rule it had already adopted for cable FTTP.

That is a narrower conclusion than “the migration caused no harm”. The record summarized in the decision documents a loss of most customers at the Chatham and Windsor addresses, as reported by TekSavvy. It does not quantify replacement prices or compare customer experience before and after the migration. Nor does the ruling decide whether a commercial offer should be judged against regulated wholesale terms in every future case. It finds that TekSavvy did not establish the legal disadvantage required on this record.

The distinction will matter as more cable networks move from HFC to fibre. A continuity review can ask whether a rival still has a route to customers. A stronger equivalence review would ask whether that route is available on terms, speeds and operating conditions that let the rival compete in practice. The 2024 policy leaves cable FTTP outside the general mandate; the 2026 decision shows how the Commission may evaluate the transition when an affected competitor seeks case-specific relief. The next cases will reveal whether alternatives are assessed by their existence, their commercial usability or both.

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