CRTC

Industry Canada is telling its Minister, Maxime Bernier, that Canada’s telecom industry has become too complacent and comfortable. In its briefing to the new Minister, there are signs that the federal department believes that Canada’s competitiveness has fallen behind in a number of important areas, including investment, innovation, broadband penetration, telecom prices and mobile wireless services.

The Inukshuk joint venture between Rogers and Bell is cited as an example of how the industry is enjoying a softening in competition and entering into a comfortable oligopoly.

The briefing notes suggest that liberalizing foreign ownership restrictions may be one way to re-energize the industry’s competitiveness. The department also suggests that there is a dampening in the investment climate due to regulatory uncertainty in respect of New Media and its overlap with Broadcasting.

The top 6 challenges from the perspective of Industry Canada:

• Improve opportunities for foreign investment in telecommunications
• Address specific concerns over foreign investment in cable TV companies
• Facilitate competition in telecommunications services
• Address specific issues of rural and remote areas
• Provide certainty regarding the policy and regulatory framework applicable to internet and “on-demand” services
• Manage spectrum to encourage new services and greater competition

The briefing may be providing some interesting foreshadowing for what we can expect to see from the Telecom Policy Review panel, which is releasing its report in a couple weeks.

One of my pet issues has been looking at ways to keep illegal content off the internet.

I am concerned with two classes of illegal content: child exploitation and hate. To that end, I have been working through KINSA: the Kids Internet Safety Association and Canadian Jewish Congress to look at ways to make the internet a safer place.

At this point in time, the Canadian internet service providers have taken the position that they will knock illegal content off their servers, if it is hosted in Canada, but they will not block sites that are hosted off-shore. Their view is that users should install blocking software and they are working to enhance user education.

Both suggestions are good but I don’t think they go far enough. I think this is an area that warrants additional government action. After all, when we are concerned about airline safety, we go beyond telling passengers that they should bring a parachute.

British Telecom has been blocking illegal content for more than a year now under their Project Cleanfeed. Despite early criticism of its overtones of censorship, BT’s efforts have received widespread acclaim.

Carriers are not being asked to be censors. Canada already has laws that forbid certain types of content. If the illegal content is in printed form, our customs agents confiscate it at the border. If these existing laws are to have meaning, we should be taking steps to close the digital loophole.

We are hosting a session at The Canadian Telecom Summit to look at these issues. Panel members will include Det/Sgt Paul Gillespie of the Toronto Police Child Expoitation Unit; Bernie Farber, CEO of Canadian Jewish Congress; former Ass’t Crown Attorney David Butt; and, Kirsten Embree. It should be a lively session.

The CRTC’s Decision last week for the Deferral Account was a gift for Bell and TELUS capital budgets. The Decision takes money that had been accumulating and requires that the incumbent carriers spend 95% on expanding broadband access to underserved territories and take the rest to improve access for the disabled.

BC and Ontario should be the biggest winners – Alberta already spent tax dollars on its SuperNet project; Quebec’s remote territories, in general, don’t belong to Bell. We’ll want to watch to see what happens with Fixed Wireless.