TORONTO (Reuters) - BCE Inc has backed away from a plan to charge its wholesale Internet customers on a per-user basis, following a public outcry that sparked political intervention.
Instead BCE, which operates under the Bell brand, says it will aggregate the amount it charges wholesalers that lease bandwidth on its network based on the total amount of data they use. It will also lower the access fees it charges them to use its newest fiber network.
Canada's minority Conservative government had said it would block a regulator's decision to support BCE's move to charge small ISPs in a way that would have forced them to pass along Bell's excess charges.
The government position in turn pushed the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to announce it would reconsider its decision.
"Wholesale UBB (usage-based billing) was quite controversial," said BCE's senior vice president for regulatory and government affairs, Mirko Bibic.
"What we're trying to do is move on and come up with the right pricing model for the user, for small ISPs, for ourselves and our shareholders quite clearly, and for investments," Bibic said.
Small wholesalers such as TekSavvy offer cheaper Internet packages with much higher usage caps than established operators.
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Under the new pricing structure, Bell will charge small Internet providers by the total volume of data they use, charged in C$200 per terabyte increments, or 19.5 Canadian cents per gigabyte.
Bell also said it would be lowering the fee it charges to access its fiber network, while for its slower legacy network it will provide an aggregated 41 gigabytes per user free.
