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Telecom Order CRTC 2025-253

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Gatineau, 29 September 2025

Public records: Tariff Notices 602 and 673

TELUS Communications Inc. – Removal of print directory obligation

Summary

The Commission received applications from TELUS Communications Inc. (TELUS) proposing changes to its General Tariff to remove the requirement to provide a printed telephone directory to customers. TELUS also proposed to modify language in certain items so that the conditions that apply to phone directories would apply to all forms of phone directories and not be limited to printed versions.

In this order, the Commission approves TELUS’s applications. The tariff revisions will remove terms and conditions that are no longer required following the Commission’s elimination of the basic service objective in Telecom Regulatory Policy 2016-496. The Commission’s determinations in the proceeding that led to Telecom Regulatory Policy 2016-496 were in part based on comments from parties which noted that directory information can now be more readily found by digital means.

The changes will therefore ensure that the company’s tariff accurately reflects the Commission’s previous determinations and the current tariffed services that are available to customers. They will also create consistency between the conditions that apply to printed directories and all other forms of phone directories.

A dissenting opinion by Commissioner Bram Abramson is attached to this order.

Applications

  1. On 9 May 2025, the Commission received applications from TELUS Communications Inc. (TELUS) proposing changes to Item 116 – General Terms of Service and Item 522 – Analogue Private Line Services of its General Tariff to remove the requirement to provide a printed telephone directory to customers. TELUS’s applications also proposed changes to the language of Items 113, 117, 407, and 1.02 of its General Tariff so that the conditions that apply to phone directories would apply to all forms of phone directories and not be limited to printed versions.
  2. TELUS noted that the Commission approved similar applications in Telecom Order 2024-220 and granted interim approval of a similar application in Telecom Order 2025-3.
  3. TELUS requested an effective date of 9 June 2025.
  4. The Commission did not receive any interventions regarding the applications.

Commission’s analysis

  1. In Telecom Regulatory Policy 2016-496, the Commission eliminated the basic service objective, which included a requirement to provide printed directories to customers in regulated areas upon request. The Commission had noted that there was almost universal access in Canada to the level of service set out in the basic service objective and that the intended goal of the basic service objective had been achieved.
  2. In coming to its determinations in Telecom Regulatory Policy 2016-496, the Commission sought comments on what changes, if any, should be made to the basic service objective, which included the requirement to provide printed directories upon request. During that proceeding, while some parties highlighted the importance of printed directories, many parties submitted that the Commission should no longer mandate the provision of printed directories, and that directory information can be more readily found by digital means. Furthermore, technology has evolved to focus more on mobile and broadband services,Footnote 1 and the Commission recognized that it was appropriate to transition its regulatory frameworks and measures from being voice-centric to broadband-centric. Accordingly, among other measures, the Commission eliminated the basic service objective and the requirement to provide printed directories.
  3. The proposed tariff revisions would eliminate terms and conditions that are no longer required, as a result of the Commission’s determinations in Telecom Regulatory Policy 2016-496, and create consistency between the conditions that apply to printed directories and all other forms of phone directories. These revisions would ensure that TELUS’s tariff pages accurately reflect the Commission’s determinations and the offerings available to customers. Therefore, the Commission finds the proposed revisions to be appropriate.

Conclusion

  1. In light of all of the above, the Commission approves, by majority decision, TELUS’s applications.
  2. Revised tariff pages are to be issued within 10 calendar days of the date of this order. Revised tariff pages can be submitted to the Commission without a description page or a request for approval; a tariff application is not required.

Secretary General

Related documents

Dissenting opinion of Commissioner Bram Abramson

  1. Most Canadians live in regions where most homes are served by both a mobile provider and two communications lines. They have the opportunity to “focus more on mobile and broadband services.”Footnote 1
  2. Others do not. In some rural and remote regions, the one-wireless, two-wireline test that Cabinet set in 2007 for deregulating local phone service still is not met.Footnote 2 Mobile coverage is less ubiquitous. Wireline competition is limited. Broadband roll-out, often, lags.
  3. Wireless and broadband service will, surely, improve in these communities over time. But until then, should we not make an effort to hear from those most likely to depend on phone books?
  4. My colleagues on the Telecommunications CommitteeFootnote 3 have not responded in the affirmative. Instead, they have participated in what is a very gradual farewell tour. Phone companies’ obligation to provide phone books to phone-dependent communities is being phased out based on a curious assumption: that, in communities still underserved by mobile and broadband competition, those very services have displaced the need for phone books.
  5. Administrative tribunals like the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (the Commission) need not make decisions on curious bases. On the contrary. We can, and should, require that applicants come to the table with evidence. We can, and should, exhort members of the public to likewise weigh in on how applicants’ proposals will affect them. For matters affecting the public interest, as this one surely does, that is the better path. It lets a substantive issue be dealt with definitively. It focuses stakeholders on the issue at hand. It can create a focal point that draws in algorithms, journalists, and the play between them to connect the public with the Commission’s processes.Footnote 4
  6. The majority has, in my view, left the better path behind in favour of a more winding, if more travelled, one. Rather than hold a well-exposed public proceeding to gather and weigh evidence from those who reside in phone-dependent communities, the Commission’s Telecommunications Committee instead finds itself reviewing a sixth rehearsal of the opaque processes by which we process tariff applicationsFootnote 5 en route to a sixth majority decision on the same thingFootnote 6—with more, surely, to come.
  7. Not only does this now-worn path fall short, then, of our responsibility to test the public interest: it is not even efficient. Worse, the majority justifies this inefficiency by layering curious reasoning onto a misreading of our own regulatory history:
    • The majority contends that Telecom Regulatory Policy 2016-496 heard from “many parties” that even, presumably, in phone-dependent communities, directory information is readily accessed digitally, and is being displaced by mobile and broadband anyway.
    • It goes on to imply that this ongoing retreat from the phone book obligation in non-forborne exchanges was effectively settled in 2016.
  8. Not so. Few parties addressed, and fewer raised, the issue.Footnote 7 Those who did were not focused on phone-dependent communities. Nor did we, in 2016, come to a final determination. On the contrary: we expressly noted that future public process would address such obligations—precisely through the tariff applications that have paraded before us.Footnote 8
  9. Withdrawal applications on services that affect the broad public interest should be addressed through a notice of consultation. Doing so would have marshalled the evidence that ought to be before us and allowed for a more systematic examination. For instance, we could have more fully considered the related fates of printed directories, digital stand-ins, and the name-based Basic Listing Interchange File obligations that bind dozens of local exchange carriers in a privacy-conscious, Internet-first era. That would have been more efficient. It would also, in my respectful view, have been more fruitful.
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