As regular readers know, I spend my summers working from my cottage north of Toronto. More than ever before, I rely on Canada’s wireless communications industry for running my business and staying in touch. I dropped my land-line connection to the cottage in the fall of 2012, so we operate with our mobile phones and satellite-based broadband.
However, the switch to 100% wireless connections is not why 2013 will be remembered as the Wireless Summer. Instead, it is the debate triggered by Canada’s policy and regulatory environment in the run-up to the 700 MHz spectrum auction.
In the fullness of time, I suspect there will be numerous interdisciplinary studies that look at this summer and how Canada’s digital economy was influenced by the government’s intervention into the structure of the telecommunications industry. Political science scholars, students of telecom law, economists, communications strategists could all earn doctorates exploring the lead-up and the lasting impact of a single sentence on the blog of the Industry Minister:
I think Canadians know very well what is at stake and they know dishonest attempts to skew debates via misleading campaigns when they see them.
This would be the season-ending cliffhanger if all of this was a TV series, the titles would start scrolling and you would start counting down ’til the next season opened.
I don’t pretend to know how this story will end. All I can predict is that we aren’t close to the end.
Be sure to save the clippings and links from this summer’s papers. You can tell your kids that you were there when it all happened.