As the year spins by, it is traditional to reflect on the past year and look forward to brighter days, making resolutions for the year ahead.
What a year it has been!
There has actually been progress on a resolution I made 2 years ago.
As was announced at the opening of The Canadian Telecom Summit, Rogers launched a pilot program to get affordable connected computers into low income households. As Rob Bruce said at the time:
It’s unfathomable that Canadians are living without internet access today because they simply cannot afford it. With Connected for Success we’ve taken the first step to connect youth and we urge our competitors, our partners and communities to work with us to bridge Canada’s digital divide.
There is still a long way to go. More areas of the country need to work on the demand side of the equation for broadband adoption. Kids have to have access to broadband connectivity and home computing in order to succeed in school. Let me reiterate Rob’s call for Rogers’ competitors, partners and communities across the country to work to bridge the divide.
I wrote 132 blog posts this year, down slightly from 139 in 2012. Too many of these were written during the summer, the summer of wireless discontent. There has been a lot of misinformation and name calling over the past six months; I think it is time to move forward on constructive dialog to build a more digitally enabled Canada.
There is a rabbinic tale of a man who spread tales about another. Feeling regret, he asked his rabbi how to make amends. The rabbi sent him out to store to buy a bag of seeds, telling him to go to an open field to scatter the seeds into the wind and then return a week later. The man did as he was told, and when he went back a week later, the rabbi told him “Now, go back to that field and pick up all the seeds you spread.” The man told the rabbi that he would never be able find all the seeds, let alone recover them. With that, the man understood that the damage from his words, spread far and wide, might never be fully undone.
As Joni Mitchell sang, “We can’t return, we can only look behind from where we came.” Still, as the carousel goes round and round, we can raise the level of the debate, stop the name calling, deal in issues at an appropriate level of depth and analysis, far beyond what can be captured in a 140 character tweet.
In the coming year, we need to ensure that the right policy framework is in place to encourage the private sector to make multi-billion dollar investments in digital infrastructure. We need to address issues of digital adoption and increase digital literacy among low income Canadians and small and medium sized businesses. We need serious discussion of serious issues including better analysis of potential unintended consequences.
And I still need to lose 20 pounds.
Have a safe, healthy and peaceful holiday season. I look forward to engaging with you in 2014. Together, hopefully we can exceed all our targets.