OpenMedia Calls on CRTC to Rein In Big Telecom’s Marketing Spin

OpenMedia testified at the CRTC to demand honest, accessible information on Internet and mobile performance for Canadian consumers.

On June 11, 2025, OpenMedia’s Senior Campaigner, Jenna Fung, appeared before the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC, or “the Commission”) public hearing in Gatineau, Quebec. She was joined by David Fewer, General Counsel at the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) for proceeding CRTC 2024-318 on making it easier for consumers to shop for Internet services. We had a very simple message for the CRTC: when people in Canada are buying home or mobile Internet, we should be told what speed and performance we’re going to get!

We’ve been fighting for pro-consumer reform in telecom policy and for honest speed reporting for years now. We fought hard for the legislation that got us here, including Bill C-299 (2021) and Bill-288 (2022), and even took your voice to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science, and Technology before Bill-288 passed unanimously into law in June 2024.

But with the law passed, it’s up to the CRTC to decide how well speed reporting will work in practice. That’s why we showed up at the Commission to keep the pressure on — to ensure the regulator is taking real action to hold Internet service providers (ISPs), especially telecom giants like Rogers, Bell, and Telus, accountable. Our demand? That they provide clear, accessible service performance metrics in an easy to read package, so everyday Canadians like you can make informed choices when shopping for Internet services.

In our testimony, we made it clear: the lack of transparency in telecom marketing leads directly to financial harm, unnecessary stress, and a reduced ability to make informed decisions for ALL of us! We voiced our strong support for standardized “labeling” of Internet services — clear, comparable information about service performance, and called for the same standards to apply to mobile services. After all, for many people in Canada, mobile is their primary or only way to access the Internet. And the problems they face with deceptive and poorly performing mobile or home Internet are virtually identical.

We stood firm and rebutted the excuses from ISPs directly when they actively claimed that metrics like latency, packet loss, and jitter are “irrelevant” to their customers, when consumer groups made it crystal clear these metrics matter. We called out these same telecom giants –– some of the most profitable telecom companies in the world, controlling over 83% of Canada’s wireless and Internet revenue, pulling in nearly $50 billion in 2023 alone –– for claiming they can’t afford to provide basic, standardized, and fair information about the services we all pay for and rely on. Customers in the UK and the US have this kind of honesty: why shouldn’t Canadians?

Honest consumer labelling reforms in telecom aren’t just nice-to-haves — they’re an essential baseline. They bring fairness. They bring accountability. They help Canadians make informed decisions and push ISPs to compete based on the speeds and performance they actually deliver, not just flashy marketing slogans. It's time for Canada’s  telecom industry to start being honest — and for consumers to finally get the respect and service we deserve.

To learn more about our intervention, you can read our written submission, full text of our opening remarks submitted to the CRTC, and the official transcript of our appearance. Since our intervention in CRTC-2024-318 builds significantly on points raised in our previous submission to CRTC-2024-293, you may also wish to review our written submission to that proceeding HERE.