Among the themes being explored at this week’s telemarketing Do Not Call List hearings in Ottawa were ‘who pays’ and ‘how do we charge’? Do you think there will be a charge to people who want to be added to the list, after all, aren’t they the real users, like people who want to have an unlisted phone number?

When it comes to upgrading the emergency service bureaus for 911 calls from VoIP phones, we keep hearing the question of ‘who pays’? Do you think it should be the police departments?

Broadband service for rural markets? Who pays? Should it be telephone subscribers in the cities or regional economic development agencies?

See the trend? In the past, the telecom service providers were able to be a source of social welfare funding. After all, in a fully regulated, non-competitive environment, phone companies could easily act as Robin Hood to do all sorts of good deeds without any impact to the shareholders. Those days are gone.

Despite best efforts to continue to have various forms of cross-subsidies funded by a wider array of competitive service providers, there are too many types of service providers that are able to avoid contributing.

How do we create fair funding?

For more than 3 years, in our discussions around the world, the first question that used to be raised was ‘can you regulate VoIP’? After all, internet technology was considered to be beyond the power of regulators.

After we assured people that there were ways to detect and impose regulation on VoIP, our question back was ‘why would you want to regulate VoIP’? Even when offered by an incumbent, what characteristics are there to justify regulating Voice over IP?

More than a year ago, we offered a solution to the regulatory challenge of how to deal with VoIP. That paper is just as relevant today as it was last year. In the report, we suggest that dial tone service is an application that can be dissociated from the access facilities.

The paper suggests that the key factor for the regulator to examine is whether the access service is competitive or a bottleneck, regulated service. Economic (price) regulation is only required if the customer delivered service combines a regulated access service with the voice application. Using this standard, wireless services and VoIP would be forborne while traditional voice services would attract price regulation until access facilities are found to be competitive.

We wrote the paper as a solution for the CRTC to consider last year. Given the Cabinet direction to revisit the CRTC’s original VoIP Decision, we think our paper is worth looking at again.

As we suggested earlier this week, Cabinet has sent the CRTC’s VoIP decision back for reconsideration.

The Minister may be sending other indications about what he will be announcing next month at The Canadian Telecom Summit.

In addition to considering the progress that VoIP has made in the market, the CRTC will be able to reconsider the decision in light of the detailed work recently completed by the Telecommunications Policy Review Panel…

In order to encourage innovation and productivity, it is imperative that regulatory measures interfere as little as possible with competitive market forces… I look forward to reviewing the CRTC’s conclusions after it reconsiders this important decision.

Recall that the Telecom Policy Review panel released its final report and recommendations in March, making numerous recommendations to change regulation in the telecommunications sector, and to rely [to the extent possible] on market forces to achieve policy objectives.

Bell Canada’s response was swift to applaud the decision and it simultaneously announced that it will be appealing the recent Local Forbearance Decision to Cabinet:

The Minister is expected to respond to the panel’s recommendations in his June 13 address at The Canadian Telecom Summit.

What if the government doesn’t proclaim the Act to implement the Do Not Call List legislation?

The bill has passed – all that remains is an Order in Council to proclaim it. But what happens if the Conservative government gets cold feet (eg. concerns about costs ballooning like the Gun Registry, too much regulation, etc.)?

I’ve been listening to the various financial reports from the major phone companies this week.

Am I the only one who is tired of these boilerplate ‘Safe Harbour’ notices at the beginning of almost every CEO / CFO presentation? On the screen for 2 seconds and then moving on.

I think we all understand the origins. I am sure that we can thank the same litigious law firms that led to McDonald’s putting a warning on their coffee cups saying ‘Contents may be hot’.

I love the phrasing in these Safe Harbour slides:

Translation into plain language? While we want you to listen to this, and pump up our stock price, don’t even think about holding us accountable. What is undue reliance? Is it reasonable to place any reliance on these statements? The message I took from Mark Cuban’s blog is that shareholders need to be more activist. Like reminding companies about who owns who. If shareholders are the owners, shouldn’t management be willing to stand behind the statements they are making?

Why doesn’t the McDonald’s coffee cup say ‘Warning: Contents are hot’? Because then lawyers would file suit in case the coffee ever cooled down. Commitment, folks. Where is the commitment?

Companies: Stop trying to cover your assets so broadly that your warnings are like labels on jars of trail mix, warning ‘May contain nuts’.

The jar better contain nuts – otherwise you’ll be hearing from my lawyer!