FTTM

FTTMYou have heard of FTTN [fibre to the node], FTTC [fibre to the curb], FTTH [fibre to the home]. How about FTTM: Fibre to the Moose?

The Telecom Policy Review panel has endorsed broadband access to be ubiquitously available by the year 2010. Their definition of ubiquity is for broadband access to be as available as the telephone. It is a noble objective but it may prove to be costly.

One of the questions, of course, is what kinds of technology are considered to be broadband. Is satellite good enough? If not, this has a risk of being a prohibitively costly initiative.

I note that Sasktel, an incumbent carrier owned by its provincial government, has had an aggressive program to roll-out broadband to every community greater than 200 people and every school, police station, etc. Yet Sasktel’s broadband still misses about 20% of their population.

We’ll be hearing from Sasktel and other regional broadband initiatives at The Canadian Telecom Summit.

TPR statements on Network Neutrality

The Telecom Policy Review panel report weighed in on many issues, including Net Neutrality. While it seeks to allow the marketplace to be able to settle many such consumer issues, the report suggests that the regulator be able to intervene.

The Panel believes in most cases network operators and ISPs will have little or no incentive to interfere with customer access. However, open access is of such overriding importance that its protection justifies giving the regulator the power to review cases involving blocking access to applications and content and significant, deliberate degradation of service.

The report seems to balance the interests of consumers to have open access with economic realities of ISPs that do not have infinite capacity to provide wide open access to everybody all the time.

While the report acknowledges that certain illegal content should be able to be blocked, its resolution: “the Panel believes that blocking access to content and applications should not be permitted unless legally required.” In practice, it is unclear how this would be operationalized. In order to block illegal child exploitation images, would a separate court order be required for each instance or could a Canadian version of Internet Watch Foundation or other tribunals such as the Canadian Human Rights Commission be legally empowered to create a list of illegal content?

Will Conservatives endorse more bureaucracy?

On the surface, the report of the Telecom Policy Review panel looks for sweeping changes in the way telecom is regulated in Canada. Less price regulation, faster decision making, responsive to consumer complaints.

But the way it gets there is by adding some new Ottawa bureaus. Watch for new acronyms like the TCT (Telecom Competition Tribunal) and the TCA (Telecom Consumer Agency). Certain spectrum functions from Industry Canada are recommended to be shuffled across the river to the CRTC.

It isn’t clear to me that the functions proposed for these two new organizations could not be handled under the existing organizations.

TPR Report Today

It is going to be a busy evening… the report from Canada’s Telecom Policy Review panel will be released at 4:00pm. We will be posting highlights and, of course, a little commentary later in the day and this evening.

Recall that the panel was struck almost a year ago by Industry Minister Emmerson, who at the time was part of the Liberal Government. The report is now being delivered to Industry Minister Maxime Bernier.

Keep in mind that nothing will change when you wake up tomorrow. This report will contain recommendations for reforms – not legal, policy or regulatory determinations. It is uncertain if and when any of these recommendations would be implemented, especially in view of the minority government and its current list of stated priorities.

Watch this space for more information.

Net Neutrality or Open Access?

I’m not crazy about the terminology being used in the discussions about Network Neutrality. On the surface, there is something seductively attractive about a concept like Network Neutrality. Of course users should be able to have any application they want ride across an open IP network, without limitations and interference from the carrier.

But I think we need to look at what is meant by that kind of statement. In an ideal world, no one would interfere with anyone else’s service; all the bandwidth capacity I ever need would be available whenever I needed it. But I don’t believe that is true. I know that my service degrades when my kids get home and start power-gaming or use some bandwidth hogging application.

I have seen our web site slow down when another company hosted with our shared server runs a promotion that drives too much traffic.

Isn’t it reasonable to have some shaping of the traffic to match the requirements of the application? Is there really an evil ‘bandwidth monopolist’ at work if my ISP throttles back traffic destined for file sharing in order to let me access my bank records a little faster – or to allow instant messenger services to be closer to instant messages?

The concept of a truly ‘stupid network’, where networks are unaware of the application, is an interesting academic theory, but I think it ignors economic realities. It only works if either capacity is unlimited or applications self-adjust to allow priority traffic to pass through.

Capacity can’t grow without economic conditions that encourage network development. And communism doesn’t work because human nature motivates individuals to try to try to provide advantage to themselves. In other words, people will always try to grab as much as they can for as little as they can – demand approaches infinity when the price approaches zero.

Rather than consider ‘stupid networks’, I prefer to think of Irrelevant Networks. Applications that can be developed independently of the underlying network facilities. Application developers can develop their own roaming and compensation schemes to address the issue of how they provide universal access to end users.

I am convinced that there are language issues: Network Neutrality versus Open Access. Over-the-top applications versus roaming… I think there is a common ground to be reached, but people have to start talking without the ‘manifesto’ type language getting in the way.

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