Backgrounder—Facts About Roaming and Antenna Tower and Site Sharing: Advanced Services for all Canadians

Roaming allows Canadian subscribers to use services from another service provider when travelling outside of the coverage of their service provider's network.

Since 2008, as part of the Government's policies to encourage new competition in the wireless sector, all wireless telecommunications carriers are required to offer roaming on their networks. To support competition and continued access to roaming for consumers, the Government announced in 2013 that it was:

  • extending roaming provisions indefinitely and expanding them to all carriers; and
  • reducing the timelines to trigger arbitration as well as the arbitration timelines applicable to carriers negotiating roaming agreements.

Pursuant to Industry Canada's policy, roaming rates are determined through negotiations between licensees. Conditions of licence provide for mandatory arbitration to set commercial market rates if the parties cannot agree. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has the authority under the Telecommunications Act to examine matters regarding roaming and tower-sharing rates and terms.

In 2008, the Government also mandated antenna tower and site sharing. This policy was introduced to reduce the proliferation of antenna towers and to facilitate the entry of new competition into the wireless market to provide more choice for Canadians. In order to further advance these objectives, changes were announced in 2013 to improve the tower-sharing policies, including the following:

  • strengthening accountability of carriers to increase the sharing of towers and reduce negotiation timelines;
  • improving monitoring of the effectiveness of the policy by requiring regular detailed reporting to Industry Canada on the status of negotiations and towers shared; and
  • reducing the timelines to trigger and complete arbitration.

For more on these improvements to mandated roaming and antenna tower sharing, please see the following documents: