I’ll be taking a little time off over the next week as my family celebrates Passover, the feast of freedom.
Part of the holiday includes major feasts, called “seders“, on Monday and Tuesday evenings, reading from the Hagaddah – an organized retelling of the biblical story of the exodus from Egypt – wrapped with stories to ensure family members of all ages are kept interested throughout the evening. The number “four” figures prominently during the evening. We have four cups of wine, the youngest child asks 4 questions about why this evening is different from all the other evenings. In another part, we speak of the questions asked by four types of children: wise, wicked, simple and one who doesn’t even know how to ask.
I consider this section to be an form of audience segmentation, helping the leader of the ceremony market to different members of the population gathered around the table.
Relating all of this to telecommunications, one might say (if you will permit me to stretch the metaphor) that as Canadians, we have been wandering through a digital desert for some time, looking for guidance toward a promise of a digital economy.
As I scan the latest federal budget, the only references to digital strategy types of issues seem to be references to “connectivity and broadband” as being eligible investments under a provincial / territorial Building Canada Fund, providing $14B over 10 years “to support infrastructure projects of national, regional and local significance.” Other eligible categories for the fund includes: highways, public transit, drinking water, wastewater, and innovation.
We continue to be willing to spend billions to subsidize the supply of broadband to less than 1% of the population, while failing to address the 20% of the population that isn’t making use of the broadband sitting at their front door.
In keeping with the tradition of the Passover seder, I’ll let you come up with other questions to ask the leader.
As we look toward the promise of a digital strategy, we hope that it considers market segmentation. As described in the Hagaddah, there are 20% of us who don’t know how to ask.