In a post last month, I referred to a recent policy statement released by Ofcom, “Promoting competition and investment in fibre networks: Telecoms Access Review 2026-31”.

I thought the 39-page Statement by the UK regulator deserved a more serious look, especially in view of a sharp contrast with Canada’s regulatory posture, as set out in its 2024 Telecom Regulatory Policy: “Competition in Canada’s Internet service markets.”

Like the UK and many countries, Canada has set a political objective to extend high-speed broadband service to rural and remote regions. Of course, what the UK considers rural and remote is very different from the challenges faced by Canadian carriers. Officially, Canada defines rural as “areas [that] have populations of less than 1,000, or fewer than 400 people per square kilometre.” Roughly 20% of Canadians live in rural Canada. The UK government defines areas as rural if they fall outside of settlements with more than 10,000 resident population. In Canada’s Far North, we have a population density of just 0.02 per square kilometre. Although the definitions differ, roughly 20% of the population of the UK and Canada live in rural areas.

By the end of 2024, the CRTC shows 90.6% of Canadian households had access to gigabit broadband; Ofcom shows 87% of UK premises by mid-year 2025.

In their policy documents, there are similar opening statements by Canada’s CRTC and the UK regulator, Ofcom:

• CRTC: “the Commission is working to increase competition while ensuring continued investments in high-quality networks.”
• Ofcom: “Our regulation is designed to promote competition and investment in high quality gigabit-capable networks – bringing faster, better broadband to people across the UK.”

The UK’s approach, as laid out in Ofcom’s statement, is an endorsement of facilities‑based competition, with regulations mandating access to passive infrastructure (eg. ducts and poles). Canada used to operate under the premise that facilities-based competition is the most sustainable form; in recent years the CRTC decided to experiment with a hybrid approach, seeking to ensure its wholesale framework “provides equitable regulatory treatment” (as it describes in TRP 2024-180). The divergence is more than just philosophical; it is producing different market structures, and different investment incentives. Canada’s ‘top-down’ regulated wholesale-access policy is applied on wireline and wireless, in sharp contrast to the market-led approach in many other jurisdictions.

In its Policy determination, the CRTC said “Consumers have fewer choices when buying Internet services: in recent years, competition has been declining. By the end of 2022, independent ISPs served significantly fewer customers than they did at the start of 2020. At the same time, several of the largest independent ISPs have been purchased by incumbents.”

This formed part of the rationale for the CRTC’s shift. But there are some strange disconnects in the Commission’s logic. “These facts suggest that the Commission’s prior regulatory approach, which prioritized facilities-based competition, has not brought about sustainable competition that delivers more choice and more affordable services to Canadians, nor has it resulted in universal access to higher-speed Internet services.”

There were two different concepts there. On the first, I would actually argue that there had been greater competitive intensity today among the facilities-based service providers, as evidenced by levels of investment, lower prices, and marketplace rivalry. The fact that independent ISPs – those depending on wholesale access – hold a diminishing share of the market should have been expected as a confirmation that facilities-based service providers were always seen as the most sustainable.

What did the Commission think was meant by sustainable competition? The level of competition should never have been measured by the number of competitors.

As to the second concept (universal access to higher-speed Internet services), coverage cannot be extended by way of wholesale access. Extending coverage requires construction of new facilities, which would seem to imply the need to focus on promoting investment.

The CRTC noted that it had received evidence that “demonstrated how [a decision to mandate wholesale access] could decrease network upgrades and prevent future network deployment. The Commission recognizes that regulatory measures that reduce the incumbents’ revenues can challenge the business case for the incumbents to deploy networks.”

So, the CRTC set up a 5-year “head start” provision as an incentive for telephone companies to extend the reach of their fibre networks. “While the Commission notes that its rate-setting process is designed to be compensatory, it considers that a five-year head start would provide additional incentive for the incumbents to invest in areas where they have not yet built FTTP by giving them an opportunity to more rapidly recoup their initial investments.” At the same time, the CRTC excused cable companies from the obligation to wholesale its fibre, since it only has about 5% of homes with fibre to the premises (as contrasted with 60% of telephone companies).

As it turns out, that 5-year head start isn’t proving to be enough of an incentive. Over the past couple of months, I have written frequently [such as here and here] that capital expenditures are down, measurably down, with carriers pointing blame at the CRTC framework. The Commission’s own monitoring report shows annual drops in capital spending in 2023 and 2024 since levels peaked in 2022. Public company reports are pointing to nearly 10% lower capex in 2025, and projections to fall another 15% lower in 2026.

That should be no surprise to the Commission. The CRTC was warned, as it acknowledged in the Policy determination at ¶34: “The incumbents submitted that a Commission decision to mandate aggregated HSA is likely to reduce investment in high-speed networks.”

Investment impacts quality and coverage – factors that are important for consumers. Contrast sharply falling investment in Canada with Ookla’s latest report on the US market, “Aggressive U.S. Broadband Expansion in 2H2025 Narrows Digital Divide”. “The U.S. broadband landscape underwent a big shift in the latter half of 2025. Thanks to record-breaking new fiber builds, the aggressive expansion of SpaceX’s Starlink, and the growth in fixed wireless access (FWA), broadband availability achieved some new milestones.”

The Commission’s decision to exempt cable companies from mandated fibre wholesale due to low share might also serve as a disincentive for cable companies to invest in fibre. In the Policy, the CRTC said that it was excusing cable from mandated fibre wholesale because the cable companies had such a low percentage of premises with fibre: “by the end of 2022, the cable carriers’ FTTP reached just 5% of the homes they pass nationally, compared to over 60% for the ILECs… Mandating the cable carriers to provide aggregated FTTP services would be costly to implement relative to the benefits it may bring to Canadians. It may also result in a loss of cable carriers investment.”

The Commission warned, “A significant increase in the percentage of homes passed by the cable carriers’ FTTP may prompt a Commission review of whether the cable carriers should begin providing aggregated FTTP services.” This was very strange wording in my view – effectively threatening increased regulation if the cable companies invest too much in fibre.

In his speech at the Scotiabank TMT Investor Conference, CRTC Vice Chair Adam Scott described the Commission’s decision-making process as “we take the evidence on the record and use it to form a regulatory hypothesis — that by taking a certain course, we will see a certain type of outcome.”

In the case of capital investment levels arising from its fibre wholesale policy, the CRTC is clearly not seeing its anticipated outcome. How should the Commission respond?

I noticed an interesting phrasing in the Ofcom document with respect to capital expenditures: “We also recognised that the long-term nature of network investments requires regulatory stability and therefore set expectations about future regulation to 2031 and beyond.”

No one wants to see a return to Canada’s Calvinball approach to regulation. “The only permanent rule in Calvinball is that you can’t play it the same way twice.”

If we want to create appropriate incentives for private sector investment in telecom, we can’t keep changing the rules. But first, we need rules that actually encourage investment.

Connecting Canada promises to be a timely forum for an evidence-based dialogue in telecom policy.

Let’s face it. Canada’s telecommunications landscape is at a pivotal moment. Questions around slower industry growth, investment, resiliency, and policy direction have never been more central to our national conversation. That’s why the upcoming Connecting Canada event, taking place May 20, 2026, at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, is especially timely for industry leaders, policymakers, and anyone invested in the future of our connected nation.

This free event is presented in collaboration with the Canadian Telecommunications Association and the GSMA, Connecting Canada will be bringing together voices from across the sector to examine the performance, pressures, and priorities for Canada’s telecommunications sector.

Canada is one of the most geographically challenging – and therefore among the most capital-intensive – markets in the world for building and operating telecommunications networks. The telecom sector continues to face scrutiny on prices, competitive dynamics, and gaps in rural connectivity. But, meaningful progress needs more than a simple recitation of all-too-familiar talking points.

What we need is a fact-based dialogue, acknowledging there are necessary compromises inherent in policy decision-making, reconciling public expectations with economic realities, in order to deliver world-class infrastructure.

Connecting Canada provides a forum for such an informed and constructive conversation.

The conference promises a thoughtful exploration of:

• The state of Canadian telecommunications industry – from financial fundamentals to looking at the sector through a global lens
• Canada’s connectivity reality check – the realities of connectivity, including coverage gaps, adoption challenges, priority setting, and new technologies
• Network resiliency – realistic approaches to risk reduction and lessons learned
• Beyond retail: the telecom sector’s role in driving productivity and innovation across industries, and its growing strategic importance underpinning Canada’s national security, economic resilience, and sovereignty
• Canada’s 6G Future
• Protecting Canadians from fraud and scams
• The future of telecom

These aren’t just abstract debates. There are real tensions and trade-offs associated with these issues shaping the sector today. As the event’s organizers note, the aim is to move beyond headlines and assumptions toward an evidence-based dialogue grounded in the operational realities of the industry.

Connecting Canada coincides with the 6G Global Summit, being held at the same venue the following two days. While registration is separate, it reinforces that Ottawa will be a hub for global and domestic telecom policy conversations throughout the week. Together these two events highlight the growing interplay between national policy and international technology roadmaps. Discussions at Connecting Canada will set the stage for broader conversations about spectrum, standards, and next generation networks.

If your work touches telecommunications, whether from an industry, policy, regulatory, academic, or technology perspective, this event is worth your time. The agenda promises thoughtful keynotes, candid panel conversations, and a welcome emphasis on grounding policy in real-world data and operational experience. You can learn more or register for the event here.

The CRTC website – https://www.crtc.gc.ca – has been down for the past three days because someone forgot to renew its security certificate. It may be back up by the time you read this, but otherwise, try https://web.crtc.gc.ca.

To me, the frequent internal website failures should be embarrassing for the regulatory body chosen by Parliament to manage and oversee so much of Canada’s digital world. I count at least 13 days of planned and unplanned outages since mid-August of 2025:

• Scheduled: August 22-24, 2025
• Scheduled: September 20-21, 2025
• Scheduled: October 3-5, 2025
• Unplanned: November 5, 2025
• Unplanned: December 10, 2025
• and now, unplanned: April 4-6, 2026

That is barely 1 nine performance, 95% uptime, in a world where we target non-stop resilience.

Last November, I wrote “Network resilience in competitive telecom markets”, acknowledging that all networks will fail at some point.

Improving network resilience helps ameliorate the situation when a failure condition exists.

Increasingly complex network architectures, coupled with more extreme environmental conditions, will lead to the potential for more network failure events, with even greater impact.

How do service providers build more resilient networks? How does the industry collectively create a more resilient national infrastructure? What is the role of government regulatory authorities, policy makers, and emergency preparedness organizations?

Last September, the CRTC issued a decision requiring reporting of service disruptions by telecom service providers. Seeing the duration of the CRTC website failure on a holiday weekend, I have to wonder if anyone at the CRTC would read or respond to a telecom carrier failure outide normal business hours.

My November blog post talked about two consultations that were launched that same day:

1. “Development of a regulatory policy on measures to improve the resiliency of telecommunications networks and the reliability of telecommunications services” [TNC CRTC 2025-226]; and
2. “Consumer protections in the event of a service outage or disruption” [TNC CRTC 2025-227].

I made a number of comments about the value of a more consultative approach to improve network resilience, exploring how the Commission can contribute to the proactive planning and coordination across all branches of government. Indeed, the Commission could benefit from learning how to get the CRTC website to be more resilient.

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Update (April 7, 7:45am): The CRTC website just came back online after nearly 75 hours.

Has the CRTC boxed itself in with a familiar tension: promoting competition while preserving incentives for investment?

I frequently talk about the tension that exists with wanting to promote competition today, without undermining the incentives to invest for tomorrow.

Recent disputes over network decommissioning and fibre upgrades suggest the CRTC may be running up against the limits of its own framework—at a time when investment trends are already moving in the wrong direction.

At issue are cases where smaller, facilities-based carriers and cable operators are upgrading legacy copper or coaxial networks to fibre, while wholesale-based competitors are seeking continued access during the transition. Examples in Ontario and Nova Scotia have brought this into sharper focus.

The CRTC’s wholesale fibre framework was intended to strike a balance. On the one hand, it aimed to expand competition by enabling wholesale access. On the other, it sought to preserve incentives for facilities-based investment, particularly among smaller regional carriers. That balance was always going to be difficult, but it was a central premise of the policy.

Early on, the framework was already showing signs of strain. By allowing the largest carriers to access competitors’ fibre networks, the decision blurred the line it was attempting to draw. Rather than reinforcing the competitiveness of smaller facilities-based players, the Commission created conditions where they could face competition from much larger players who enter their market using the fibre of another large competitor. For larger operators, mandating wholesale access for competitors of all sizes to rely on their fibre networks inevitably weakens the business case for expanding fibre footprints. That outcome sits uneasily with the objective of sustaining investment incentives.

More recent disputes over decommissioning bring a second layer of tension. When a carrier upgrades to fibre, retiring its legacy copper infrastructure is a logical step. Maintaining parallel networks is costly and inefficient, particularly as traffic shifts to newer technologies. Yet wholesale-based competitors, who rely on those legacy facilities, are understandably resistant to losing access.

The Commission is now being asked to intervene, and the emerging responses appear to present two options. One is to require carriers to keep legacy networks in operation longer than planned. The other is to require access to the newly upgraded fibre networks.

Both approaches create problems. Extending the life of legacy networks increases operating costs and delays the transition to more efficient infrastructure. Those costs are not theoretical; they directly affect investment decisions and, ultimately, the pace and scope of network modernization. Alternatively, mandating access to new placements of fibre runs directly counter to the five year wholesale holiday, set out in the fibre access decision as a way of protecting investment incentives.

This is where the policy tension becomes more apparent.

The earlier framework sought to limit wholesale access to encourage investment by regional providers and cablecos. Now, in the context of decommissioning, there are pressures to expand access or constrain network evolution to preserve retail competition. These are not easily reconciled objectives. Attempting to do so may contribute to a broader chill on investment.

So, has the CRTC boxed itself in?

By expanding wholesale access in ways that the Commission sought to avoid in its wholesale fibre decision it risks pulling policy in conflicting directions. As network modernization accelerates, similar disputes are likely to become more common.

The question is whether the CRTC can re-establish a clear and coherent framework that resolves the underlying tension between service-based and facilities-based competition, while reinforcing the conditions needed for sustained investment.

This is not just a theoretical concern. We are already beginning to see warning signals. After years of sustained investment to expand and upgrade networks, capital spending is declining and investments are gravitating to areas where returns on investment are more predictable. While multiple factors are at play, policy signals that weaken expected returns or introduce new risks cannot be ignored.

If the policy goal is to sustain facilities-based competition and the long-term benefits it delivers in terms of coverage, quality, resilience, and sustainable competition, then carriers need clear and credible signals that investments in network modernization will not trigger new obligations that undermine the business case. Carriers also need the ability to retire outdated infrastructure efficiently and redeploy capital to next-generation networks.

If every upgrade comes with new obligations, it should not be surprising when upgrades start to slow.

At some point soon, the Commission will need to decide whether preserving incentives for investment is just a talking point, or a fundamental policy objective. Because the two should look the same in practice.

On May 11, the Ivey Business School is convening a half‑day workshop in Toronto that cuts directly to the heart of these questions: AI Governance: New Tradeoffs for Sovereignty, Trust and Sustainability. It’s the latest in a long‑running series of telecom and digital policy workshops that have become important convening opportunities for Canada’s policy, academic, and industry communities.

Canada is entering a decisive moment in the evolution of artificial intelligence. The conversation is no longer just about models, innovation, or regulation in isolation. AI is becoming infrastructure—built on data, compute, networks, and energy systems—and the choices we make now will shape our economic resilience, our competitiveness, and our sovereignty for decades.

Three forces are converging in ways that demand fresh thinking:

• AI Sovereignty — As AI systems consolidate around global platforms, Canada must decide what it needs to control—data, compute, models, or something else—to remain a credible middle power in a shifting geopolitical landscape.
• AI Trust — With agentic AI accelerating, business models and regulatory frameworks must evolve to ensure transparency, accountability, and public confidence.
• AI Sustainability — AI’s energy and carbon footprint is rising fast. Grid resilience, climate alignment, and sustainable infrastructure design are no longer side issues—they’re core to long‑term viability.

These are the new fault lines shaping investment, innovation, and Canada’s national AI strategy.

The workshop will explore issues that telecom and digital policy leaders are already grappling with:

• How should Canada translate AI governance principles into practical levers for sovereignty, trust, and sustainability?
• What does a “Canadian profile” in AI governance look like between the U.S.’s industry‑driven approach and the EU’s risk‑management model?
• How should business models adapt as trust becomes a competitive differentiator?
• What are the real risks of an AI‑driven productivity paradox—and how do we avoid locking in the wrong infrastructure choices?
• How should we measure sovereignty, trust, and sustainability in the AI stack?

These are just some of the questions that could define the next decade of telecom, digital infrastructure, and national competitiveness. This workshop provides an opportunity to hear global perspectives through a Canadian lens and shape the conversation on AI governance.

It is worth noting that the White House released its National AI Legislative Framework last Friday. This framework addresses six key objectives:

1. Protecting Children and Empowering Parents: Parents are best equipped to manage their children’s digital environment and upbringing. The Administration is calling on Congress to give parents tools to effectively do that, such as account controls to protect their children’s privacy and manage their device use. The Administration also believes that AI platforms likely to be accessed by minors should implement features to reduce potential sexual exploitation of children or encouragement of self-harm.
2. Safeguarding and Strengthening American Communities: AI development should strengthen American communities and small businesses through economic growth and energy dominance. The Administration believes that ratepayers should not foot the bill for data centers, and is calling on Congress to streamline permitting so that data centers can generate power on site, enhancing grid reliability. Congress should also augment Federal government ability to combat AI-enabled scams and address AI national security concerns.
3. Respecting Intellectual Property Rights and Supporting Creators: The creative works and unique identities of American innovators, creators, and publishers must be respected in the age of AI. Yet, for AI to improve it must be able to make fair use of what it learns from the world it inhabits. The Administration is proposing an approach that achieves both of these objectives, enabling AI to thrive while ensuring Americans’ creativity continues propelling our country’s greatness.
4. Preventing Censorship and Protecting Free Speech: The Federal government must defend free speech and First Amendment protections, while preventing AI systems from being used to silence or censor lawful political expression or dissent. AI cannot become a vehicle for government to dictate right and wrong-think. The Administration is proposing guardrails to ensure that AI can pursue truth and accuracy without limitation.
5. Enabling Innovation and Ensuring American AI Dominance: The Administration is calling on Congress to take steps to remove outdated or unnecessary barriers to innovation, accelerate the deployment of AI across industry sectors, and facilitate broad access to the testing environments needed to build and deploy world-class AI systems.
6. Educating Americans and Developing an AI-Ready Workforce: The Administration wants American workers to participate in and reap the rewards of AI-driven growth, encouraging Congress to further workforce development and skills training programs, expanding opportunities across sectors and creating new jobs in an AI-powered economy.

Kristian Stout of the International Center for Law & Economics released a commentary on the Truth on the Market blog, calling it “a welcome set of guidelines … a light-touch federal approach, grounded in existing legal doctrines, and focused on harms rather than speculative risks. Whether Congress can translate that posture into durable legislation remains an open question. But as a statement of direction, the framework gets more right than wrong.”

Join me for AI Governance: New Tradeoffs for Sovereignty, Trust and Sustainability, on the afternoon of Monday May 11, 2026 at Ivey’s Donald K. Johnson Centre in downtown Toronto. Registration is open now.