The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has released a list of about 350 communities in British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec that are in line for improved services paid for from funds collected by the successors of former regional monopolies in their areas.
Last July, the CRTC issued a partial list of uncontested communities to get broadband service.
Last week's ruling covers the contested communities, which include B.C.'s Beaver Valley and Duncan Lake, Alberta's Stirling and English Bay, and Manitoba's Nelson House and Roseau River.
In a bid to improve competition in the telephone business by encouraging smaller upstarts, the CRTC set a price cap on local residential phone rates for the country's biggest phone companies.
Under the price cap formula, the big phone companies were prevented from cutting rates, which would possibly undermine smaller competitors.
Instead when their costs dropped due to efficiency improvements, the telephone companies were directed to hold the extra cash in special deferral accounts, which nearly reached $1 billion at one point.
The CRTC decided that $650 million from the special accounts would be spent to improve high-speed Internet services for rural communities and accessibility for disabled Canadians.
But some argue the regulator has no right to decide how money from the fund is doled out.
Michael Janigan, executive director of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, an Ottawa-based research group, said telephone customers should get back money that was taken from them in the first place.
