The 2016 Canadian Telecom Summit opened this morning at the Toronto Congress Centre.
Here is what my co-chair, Michael Sone, and I said earlier today in our opening remarks. [I have Michael’s words in italics.]
Mark and I thank you and all our speakers and sponsors for the support that you have provided in bringing us to this 15th edition of our conference. GST Conferences was created to produce our inaugural conference in 2002, “Celebrating 10 Years of Long Distance Competition in Canada.”
Next year, Canada will mark 25 years of competitive telecommunications and today’s landscape of services, of providers, of modalities of communication looks nothing like it did in 1992.
- In 1992, Television was analogue and monopolistic.
- Wireless connectivity was an ogopolistic luxury used with the cellular equivalent of the black rotary dial phone.
- Data was best known as the Android character on Start Trek TNG played by Brent Spiner.
- And speaking of Android – there’s another term that’s undergone a complete metamorphosis.
- As recently as a decade ago the phenomenon of social media didn’t exist – Twitter and Youtube were novelties, and Google was still vying with other search engines to see which would emerge dominant.
- An app? What’s an app?
- A cap? What’s a cap other than something worn on the baseball diamond. Actually baseball caps have more to do with Information and Communications Technology than you may think. After all, who ever thought that a Canadian ICT provider would end up as an owner of a major league baseball team?
- Half a decade ago Big Data wasn’t so big, more like Little Data. Well, that’s not exactly true, because of course it isn’t the existence of the data that’s new. Service Providers have, for decades, been repositories of mountains of invaluable information and were always sitting on Fort Knox. Today companies are falling over themselves in trying to harness the power of Big Data. It’s trying to figure out how to sift through it, exploit it, leverage its capabilities that’s new.
These represent just a few of the changes that raise substantive policy issues as service providers try to stay ahead of demand and seek to invest in newer, faster, higher capacity technologies to compete. And competition continues to evolve as consumers shift their methods of connecting with each other and finding new applications, and in many cases, new suppliers for exchanging information and accessing entertainment.Among the subjects we will examine over the next 3 days is creating the right policy framework to attract and incent continued investment in Canadian telecommunications and how to balance the often conflicting demands of national security and personal privacy.
During the recent hearing looking at Basic Services, I smiled when the CRTC chair gave his unusual mid-hearing address. As many of you know, for the past 7 years, I have used these opening remarks to call for the industry to provide the policy leadership to get computers and connectivity into low income households. On April 18, Chairman Blais asked “Should we wait for others to act?” He continued, saying “Every day that goes by without a more robust Canadian broadband strategy means a Canadian who is socially and economically vulnerable continues to be profoundly disadvantaged.”
I have talked about this issue from this stage every year since 2008. Every day that went by meant that thousands of Canadians continued to be profoundly disadvantaged.
Even before Chairman Blais joined my call to action, the private sector stepped up. Rogers and TELUS have made announcements in the past few months that could result in hundreds of thousands of homes being offered affordable connections.
And it isn’t simply policy that’s making headlines. Our sector continues to generate blockbuster news and business deals. In the past year (less, in fact) we’ve seen Allstream become Zayo; WIND Mobile join Shaw and Bell propose to acquire MTS. We are pleased that a number of the new Presidents and CEOs are joining us over the next 3 days. We are, indeed, grateful for their time and insights.
Companies are continuing to push the limits, risking billions of dollars in private sector capital, testing new business models for the digital age, to deliver new services to consumers and gain competitive advantages.
A number of our speakers have returned for several Summits – and we thank them for their support and for the confidence they continue to show in us. As always, we also attempt to feature new speakers and exciting, hot issues.
You can follow what is happening at The Canadian Telecom Summit on Twitter, using #CTS16. Or, you can hurry on over to The Toronto Congress Centre and register on-site.