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But the Liberal cabinet rejected its petition in May, citing a desire to increase higher-speed broadband coverage and support retail competition.

Since then, both small Internet providers that want access, such as TekSavvy and VMedia Inc., and incumbents that have spent billions deploying fibre-to-the-home in anticipation of data-hungry technologies such as 4K TV and connected homes, such as BCE Inc. and Telus Corp., have been waiting on guidelines dictating how the wholesale regime will work.

The new rules require a switch from aggregated wholesale access to an entire network to disaggregated wholesale access. Smaller competitors will still buy wholesale access to connections from a telco’s central office or cableco’s head-end to the end customer’s premises, but they’ll have to separately lease or build their own transmission facilities within these locations.

The CRTC believes the new system will enhance facilities-based competition and give smaller competitors more control over their costs. It will also, however, make it more difficult to implement due to variations in network architecture between cablecos and telcos. (Incumbents generally opposed disaggregation due to fears of network complications.)

The CRTC plans to roll out the new regime first in Quebec and Ontario where demand is strongest, according to its initial decision in July 2015.

Bell’s petition stated its annual investment in fibre-to-the-home could decrease by up to $384 million in those provinces alone due to the CRTC’s new rules, but it’s not clear how much it has changed investment tactics since its petition fell through this spring. Telus, on the other hand, announced this summer that it would speed up capital spending on fibre due to consumer demand.