Summary

  • The CRTC found that an Ottawa agreement made with SRDP continued to govern specified transmission equipment after its rights were assigned and the equipment later passed through corporate reorganizations to Videotron.
  • Because that agreement placed municipality-requested relocation costs on the carrier, the CRTC denied Videotron’s request for about C$300,000; the result rests on the agreement and record in this case.

Analysis

A fibre asset can change hands while the public ground beneath it remains subject to an older bargain. That is the practical significance of Telecom Decision 2026-251. The CRTC did not decide that Videotron’s ownership was doubtful. It decided that ownership alone did not replace the municipal access agreement that had governed the equipment before the acquisition chain began.

Ottawa signed one 2008 municipal access agreement (MAA) with Société de Réseaux Dédiés Privés inc. (SRDP) and a separate agreement with Videotron. The difference mattered. Videotron’s own agreement required Ottawa to compensate it for certain municipality-initiated relocations. The SRDP agreement did not provide the same payment. P2P, an SRDP subsidiary, installed the equipment at Montreal Road and near Algonquin Station between 2016 and 2020. Rights and obligations under the SRDP agreement had already been assigned to P2P; later, corporate transactions involving SRDP, Fibrenoire and Videotron moved ownership of the equipment to Videotron.

When Ottawa required the equipment to move in 2021, Videotron completed the work the following year. Quebecor, on Videotron’s behalf, asked the CRTC in 2024 to direct Ottawa to pay roughly C$300,000. Quebecor argued that Videotron’s agreement applied to equipment Videotron now owned. The City argued that the SRDP agreement still controlled. Rogers and TELUS supported Quebecor’s position. The Commission reviewed additional information from both sides before deciding which agreement governed the equipment.

The CRTC found that the SRDP MAA bound the City and SRDP’s successors and assignees. Its Article 6.3 also kept the agreement applicable to the equipment regardless of who owned the supporting infrastructure. The Commission read those provisions with the agreements as a whole, the commercial context and the expected life of physical equipment. It concluded that the parties had intended the SRDP agreement to follow the installed plant for its useful life. The agreement was not displaced merely because later corporate transactions changed the equipment’s owner.

That conclusion depended on the text and record. It was not a general rule that any municipal agreement attaches to every cable, duct or network asset forever. Nor did the CRTC rewrite either MAA. It had authority under sections 42 to 44 of the Telecommunications Act to resolve the access dispute and identify the applicable agreement. Once it found the SRDP MAA applied, Article 8.1 put the relocation costs on the carrier. The request for compensation was denied.

A second issue drew a different boundary. Ottawa asked the Commission to require Videotron to pay for redesigned conduits that the City had built at Videotron’s request for the Montreal Road project. The CRTC dismissed that request because the Act did not authorize it to award that kind of compensation. That was a limit on the Commission’s remedial authority, not a finding that the work was free or that the City had no other possible avenue.

The case clarifies a distinction that asset inventories often obscure: the owner of the equipment and the agreement that governs its presence can be different questions. In an acquisition, the buyer may receive the fibre, customer relationships and maintenance obligations while the access terms remain rooted in an agreement signed by a predecessor. If that agreement allocates future relocation costs, the cost exposure may survive a change of corporate name, subsidiary structure or control.

The broader policy background is not a substitute for that contract chain. The CRTC has described cost neutrality as the general starting point for municipal rights-of-way: costs directly related to a carrier’s infrastructure are generally borne by the carrier. It has also recognized that a municipality’s relocation request can justify a different allocation. In Decision 2026-251, the specific MAA supplied the answer. The issue was not a fresh balancing of the merits of municipal construction; it was which signed terms had followed the plant.

For buyers, the due-diligence object is therefore not only a map of ducts, poles and fibre. It is a linked record: location and equipment identity; the original MAA and schedules; assignment and successor clauses; amendments and notices; the party responsible for permits; relocation triggers and compensation formulas; and the estimated useful life used when the contract was made. A network map without the governing agreement can understate exposure. A contract folder without equipment-level links can be just as incomplete.

For municipalities, an acquisition may change the counterparty without changing the terms already attached to installed plant. That makes reliable asset and agreement registers valuable before a road project is designed, not only when invoices are disputed. Where a contract includes successor language, the practical question is whether the parties can trace each affected facility to the relevant agreement and its amendments. A stopped invoice or a notice from a new owner did not, on the record here, establish mutual agreement to substitute a different MAA.

There is an asymmetry between the two parties’ requests. Videotron’s payment claim could be decided by identifying the MAA and applying its relocation clause. The City’s conduit claim fell outside the particular compensation remedy available under the Act. The decision therefore did not produce a general accounting of all costs from the Montreal Road project. It resolved one agreement-based claim and dismissed the other for want of authority. Keeping those outcomes separate prevents a narrow jurisdictional ruling from being mistaken for a merits judgment.

The practical monitoring question is whether operators and public authorities preserve the agreement-to-asset link as networks are bought, merged, relocated and upgraded. Future disputes may turn on whether equipment falls within a defined category, whether an assignment transferred obligations, whether later conduct showed mutual consent to amend, and whether the requested remedy sits within the regulator’s statutory powers. The decision provides a case-specific answer, not a template that eliminates those questions.

The irreversible risk is accepting an acquisition price or approving a municipal project while treating the network as a clean physical asset, then discovering that its location carries decades-old contractual obligations that were never connected to the current inventory. The safeguard is documentary continuity: each asset should remain traceable to the agreement that authorizes it to occupy the public right-of-way and allocates the cost if that occupation must change.

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