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.

Australia’s NBN has been the subject of numerous posts on these pages. NBN Co’s latest half‑year results [pdf, 2.1MB] offer a clear signals that Australia’s long (and often messy) transition from copper to fibre is finally tipping into a new phase. The headline numbers are solid enough (revenue up 2%, EBITDA up 5%), but a hidden story lies beneath the financials, where we see a behavioural shift by Australian broadband users. It’s a shift that echoes themes I’ve written about before: the disconnect between the price of telecom services and service provider ARPU (Average Revenue Per User).

The most striking figure in the report is the tenfold jump in customers on 500 Mbps and above, from 3% to 31% in just twelve months. That’s not incremental growth; that’s a structural pivot in how households consume connectivity. It validates what I argued in earlier posts about the NBN’s design compromises: Australians were never “satisfied” with slower speeds — they were constrained by the economics of a network built around copper bottlenecks. Once the value equation changed, behaviour changed with it.

This is where the economics get interesting. NBN Co’s Accelerate Great initiative effectively boosted speeds for a third of customers at no additional wholesale cost. In other words, effective prices fell, yet residential ARPU rose by $3 to $52. That’s the paradox I’ve highlighted before in the context of Australia’s NBN and other wholesale fibre markets: when you give customers more for the same price, they don’t simply pocket the savings, many migrate up the value chain. Faster tiers become the new baseline, usage expands, and the network becomes more central to daily life.

This is a dynamic we’ve seen in other markets, including Canada: increasing speeds with the latest technology results in a better value proposition and it delivers more value to consumers and network operators alike. Lower operating costs, fewer faults, and a multi‑decade asset life create room for service providers to improve value without undermining revenue. NBN Co’s 7% drop in operating expenses and 15% reduction in direct network costs are dividends of replacing copper with glass.

The milestone of three million FTTP customers — and one million copper‑to‑fibre upgrades completed — marks a symbolic turning point for Australia’s NBN. A decade ago, fibre‑to‑the‑node was sold as a pragmatic compromise. Today, it’s being quietly retired, with 47,000 premises upgrading every month and the final 622,000 FTTN lines scheduled for completion by 2030. Australia’s political debate may have faded, but the engineering logic of increased investment has prevailed.

What’s equally notable is the shift in business demand. Nearly half of business customers are now on high‑speed tiers, driven by cloud workloads, AI tools, and the growing need for symmetrical bandwidth. The download‑to‑upload ratio for business is already 2:1—far closer to enterprise patterns than residential ones. That’s another indicator of a market moving up the curve, not down.

All of this reinforces a broader lesson: when networks remove friction — whether technological or economic — customers respond with higher engagement, higher usage, and indeed, higher ARPU. ARPU goes up, not because the price increased, but because customers are seeing greater value from the lower prices for the next tier. It’s a reminder that affordability and revenue growth are not mutually exclusive.

That phenomenon applies in Canada as well. At the recent Scotiabank TMT investor conference, TELUS CFO Doug French said success is based on being relevant to customers. As the NBN data demonstrates, value, not headline price, drives broadband behaviour. When networks deliver more speed, more reliability, and more headroom for emerging applications, households and businesses naturally migrate upward. The result is a healthier revenue mix, lower operating costs, and the financial ability for network operators to invest in platforms that can sustain the next decade of digital demand.

Canada is already deep into this transition to fibre, but there is a need to ensure the government policy environment encourages continued network investments. Yesterday, Ofcom (the UK telecom regulator) released a policy statement, “Promoting competition and investment in fibre networks: Telecoms Access Review 2026-31”. Most significantly, at paragraph 2.12, it states, “Our strategy is to promote investment in gigabit-capable networks through network competition in areas where this is viable. We consider that network competition brings potentially significant benefits to consumers, compared to competition based on regulated access to wholesale services provided by a single network.”

It continues in paragraph 2.12, “Network competition creates stronger incentives to attract and retain customers by offering them the services they want, and so is a more effective spur for innovation and investment in high quality networks than access-based competition. This is because network providers have much greater scope for product differentiation and can strive to win customers and generate higher margins by offering a better service than their competitors.”

The Ofcom policy statement, promoting competition and investment in fibre, will be worth further examination. I have already expressed concerns that Canada’s current regulatory framework is inhibiting investment. In a blog post yesterday, Ted Woodhead noted “there is a net reduction in total industry Capex which is a trend that Canadians hoping for better service, or any service at all, should find deeply disturbing.” A report from Scotiabank yesterday repeated previous advice for incumbents to materially reduce capital expenditures given the current regulatory climate.

Fibre is more than just a technology upgrade. It is an enabler for an economic reset, helping align network capabilities with customer expectations and needs for an AI-driven digital economy.

As we’ve seen in the results from Australia’s NBN, that alignment is where quality, coverage, affordability, and investment can coexist.