CRTC Telecommunications Industry Data Collection
Frequently asked Questions - 2005
Internet Access Forms (25X)
FAQ Index
Form 25X – Internet Access Forms
- We sell Internet access to ISPs. Should I report those accounts as "Wholesale" subscriptions?
- We sell mobile Internet service. I don't see any box on this form for mobile Internet; does that mean you don't want to know about it?
- We sell wholesale DSL to ISPs, who then utilise it to provide DSL Internet services. We do not bundle Internet Access with it. Should we be reporting it under Wholesale?
- We sell WiFi or dial-up access by the hour/session/etc. How do we report our user numbers and revenues?
Form 252 – Internet Access Revenues by Type of Facility
- We sell accelerated dial-up. Is this considered to be dial-up or other on forms 252/253?
- We sell a product that bonds multiple dial-up connections to form a large connection. Is this dial-up or other?
Form 253 – Internet Access Subscriptions
Form 255 - Internet Access - DSL and Cable
- What are you looking for on this form?
- So you want to know about residential plans only?
- But our plans changed a lot during the year. Which ones should we show?
Form 256 - Residential High-Speed Internet Access Coverage
- We had overall telecom revenues of over $10 million in 2003. But our high-speed subscription base is quite small. Do we really have to fill this form out?
- This seems like a lot of information. What do you need it for?
- So you want me to type out all of my customers' postal codes?
- Do you want to know which postal codes I sell Internet to, or how many customers there are in each postal code?
- I don't have postal code records for my customers -- I bill them online and they use one-time credit card payments -- and my provisioning records don't store postal codes, either. What should I do?
- I can't break my residential customers out from total high-speed customers, because I don't track which are residential and which are business customers. What should I do?
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Form 25X Internet Access Forms
We sell Internet access to ISPs. Should I report those accounts as "Wholesale" subscriptions?
No. Revenues earned for connecting ISPs to the Internet, and for connecting BGP-speaking customers (including ISPs) to the Internet, are treated as Internet transport, not Internet access, and should be reported on Form 261. Wholesale Internet access refers to items sold to service providers in the Internet access segment -- dial POPs, tariffed DSL Internet that is bundled with internet access, and similar items.
No. We do want to know about it -- but not on this form. All mobile Internet subscriptions should be reported on Mobile Form 277, rows 4 through 6.
We sell wholesale DSL to ISPs, who then utilise it to provide DSL Internet services. We do not bundle Internet Access with it. Should we be reporting it under Wholesale?
Under the new forms, these services are now considered data-link services, and should be reported on the data-link services forms.
We sell WiFi or dial-up access by the hour/session/etc. How do we report our user numbers and revenues.
Report all revenues in Form 252, and, in addition, report the pay-per-use revenues separately in a note. Please provide details about hours, sessions, etc in a note to form 253.
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Form 252 – Internet Access Revenues by Type of Facility We sell accelerated dial-up. Is this considered to be dial-up or other on forms 252/253?
This product should be counted under dial-up.
We sell a product that bonds multiple dial-up connections to form a large connection. Is this dial-up or other?
Account for it under “other”. Since this technology behaves in much the same manner as a dedicated high speed Internet connection, it should not be accounted for as dial-up.
Form 253 – Internet Access Subscriptions
Form 255 - Internet Access - DSL and Cable What are you looking for on this form?
The different products and pricing plans through which you sold your high-speed cable and DSL Internet services in 2003. Cable and DSL Internet are by far the most popular high-speed Internet access technologies that use Canada 's incumbent copper networks.
So you want to know about residential plans only?
No - show the business plans as well as the residential plans through which you sold cable and DSL Internet. Each row should describe a different plan, including specials; on each row, please indicate whether that plan was a residential or a business plan, by marking an X in the appropriate box.
But our plans changed a lot during the year. Which ones should we show?
Whichever plans were available to customers on a standardized basis and through which you earned cable or DSL Internet revenues. That means that, if you changed a product's pricing four times throughout the year, then you will have four separate lines.
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Form 256 – Internet Access (Residential High-Speed) We had overall telecom revenues of over $10 million in 2003. But our high-speed subscription base is quite small. Do we really have to fill this form out?
You are only required to fill out this form if you had revenues over $10M, and > 1000 residential, high-speed Internet subscribers.
This seems like a lot of information. What do you need it for?
Our mandate involves reporting on the status of competition in Canadian telecommunications markets, including Internet access, and on the deployment and accessibility of advanced telecommunications infrastructure and services in urban and rural areas in all regions of Canada .
The data collected here help us do both those things. Through detailed geographic information, we will be able to analyse the availability as well as the take-up of high-speed Internet services in Canada . And because this information will be looked at across providers, we will also be able to show where competition has taken hold for high-speed Internet access and where, on the contrary, very little competition exists.
So you want me to type out all of my customers' postal codes?
Not at all. We do ask you to export the postal code field from your billing database, though. We settled on postal codes because they offer a good level of geographic precision, but also because they are ubiquitous: if you send bills to your customers, you need a postal code to send them to.
Do you want to know which postal codes I sell Internet to, or how many customers there are in each postal code?
Number of customers by postal code. Again, though, you shouldn't have to count -- just query your database for the address records of all customers taking residential high-speed Internet products; output their postal codes to an ASCII file; and forward it on to us.
I don't have postal code records for my customers -- I bill them online and they use one-time credit card payments -- and my provisioning records don't store postal codes, either. What should I do?
If you have no record of your customers' postal codes, then we can work with you to find an alternative. One way to do this, for example, might be by using the area code and first three digits of their phone number (NPA/NXX).
I can't break my residential customers out from total high-speed customers, because I don't track which are residential and which are business customers. What should I do?
If it is too difficult to break out residential from total high-speed Internet access subscriptions, then report blended figures with both residential and business. We will combine the residential/business split you reported on Form 520 with market-wide geographic patterns on business Internet locations in order to infer the residential portion.
Date Modified: 2005-02-18 |
