A month ago, in a post entitled “Foreign ownership restrictions in turbulent times”, I asked “In view of the current international trade tensions, what are your thoughts on foreign ownership restrictions in Canadian telecom?”
While there were a couple comments on that post, as well as a few emails, I noticed a relevant entry on Ted Woodhead’s blog post last week:
Last year, I proposed a review of the Canadian ownership and control regulations for telecommunications and broadcasting companies. I have revisited the view that a more liberal approach to those regulations could spur further investment and technology transfer than the currently more restrictive regime. I now would recommend that any future government tread carefully in revisiting the restrictions. No one, a year ago could have reasonably foreseen the chaos and upheaval that would be wrought by the bad actor activities of the United States. I do not believe for the foreseeable future that we can allow foreign control of these strategic industries and networks.
A year ago, who would have thought that “bad actor” would be an appropriate phrase to attach to the United States?
He goes on to recommend that whichever party leads the next government of Canada, it should ratchet up the broadband objective to 100/10 Mbps from its current target of universal access to 50/10 Mbps service, and place a priority on funding fibre to the home projects over other technologies.
I have no issue with increasing the target speeds for access, but I prefer to have technology neutrality in government funding programs. There are some communities that simply cannot be served by wireline facilities as I described in a recent post.
If the target broadband objective gets raised, do we need to place a priority on projects that deliver 100/10 to communities that are below 50/10, or do we put upgrades on a similar footing as those delivering initial broadband?
I have long said that “some broadband” is better than “no broadband”. This is why I continue support the use of wireless solutions as part of a broadband toolkit.
Ted notes that the Liberals and Conservatives are both pledging increased investment in infrastructure and both promise to reduce the regulatory red tape. This is promising, as long as the government recognizes that we are not yet done with making affordable digital connectivity available to every household.
Should government broadband subsidies consider the ownership structure of funding recipients?
Should funding be limited to Canadian owned and controlled entities?