Like most of you, I’m tired of spam.

When my phone rings, most of the time my device shows it is “Likely Spam”. In such cases, if the call actually connects, I end up talking to an overseas call centre telling me their air-duct cleaning crews are in my neighbourhood and can offer me a special rate. Or, people claiming to be calling from the “promotions department” of [insert name of phone company], offering deals too good to be true. Or, it is a recording from scammers claiming they are my credit card company (or Amazon) flagging potential fraudulent transactions – ironic, right?

And then there are the emails that get past my spam filters. Somehow, I got added to a US-based medical professional mailing list and I have been receiving all kinds of messages targeting a doctor in the Phoenix area. (As an aside, I wonder if the doctor in Phoenix is receiving telecom newsletters.) That medical mailing list is being sold to pharmaceutical companies, training companies, real estate firms, auto dealers, and anyone else who wants to reach doctors in Arizona. Most of the time, I click unsubscribe and that ends it – but just for one company.

A couple of weeks ago, I received an invitation to a webinar about some new treatments for drug-resistant bacteria. As fascinating as new antibiotics might be, my evenings are tied up. (I just don’t want to miss watching the Stanley Cup playoffs.) Most significantly, there was no ‘unsubscribe’ button. The sender was from a company with a market capitalization measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars. In other words, this was not your classic spam.

In Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) lingo, this was an unsolicited commercial electronic message sent by a company with pretty deep pockets. They should know better. Even in the US, there are rules known as CAN-SPAM that cover these kinds of things.

And like I said, I’ve gotten kind of tired of spam. So, I decided to stop ignoring it. I dealt with the source directly. This is a real company, with revenues that are approximately double the entire Canadian telecom sector. I figure they have an army of lawyers who would not want some renegade salesperson to be harming the company brand.

I called their Canadian customer service line and reached a supervisor who was actually quite sympathetic. From her, I learned the name of the Canadian head of legal, and from the corporate website, I found the name of the global chief legal officer. The company uses a standardized email address scheme which enabled me to send my official complaint in writing.

I had an immediate automated response from the customer service email address with a case number. I heard back from the Canadian legal office within a couple of hours, letting me know that the team appreciated the importance and was investigating. Within a week, I heard from the US-based corporate chief privacy officer, who identified the steps taken to remove my address from various company distribution lists. The company was still working to identify the third-party source that originally provided my information. A few days later, I was updated with the name of the list provider and provided with assurances that my information was removed from their databases.

A review of my past posts about CASL will show you that I was never a fan of the legislation. I continue to think that it has done more harm to legitimate business communications while doing little to reduce harmful and fraudulent spam. Twenty years ago, I wrote how people can take matters into their own hands.

So I did.

No regulatory submission. No fines were issued. I was fed up with the medical / pharma spam, so I dealt with it. At least those annoying health care related emails will slow down, even if not fully come to a stop.

Now, I wonder if I say “yes” to getting my ducts cleaned, could I get those calls to stop for a couple years?

Are regulatory authorities using best practices when assessing competition in telecommunication markets?

In a new paper [pdf, 364 KB], the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) argues that US communications markets are more dynamic and competitive than legacy regulatory frameworks assume. The submission urges the FCC to modernize its analytical approach, emphasizing technological convergence, cross‑platform substitutability, and the centrality of investment incentives in broadband and video markets.

ICLE’s core thesis is that traditional market silos — fixed broadband, mobile, satellite, and video — no longer reflect how consumers behave or how firms compete. Households now switch fluidly among cable, fiber, fixed wireless access (FWA), mobile broadband, and Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite. This substitutability constrains pricing power even in markets that appear concentrated on paper. The rise of FWA is a prime example: T‑Mobile’s Home Internet service has grown to millions of subscribers, directly pressuring cable operators and accelerating churn. Cable’s counter‑move — bundling MVNO‑based mobile services — illustrates how formerly distinct markets now operate as a competitive continuum.

ICLE argues that the FCC’s competition assessments must reflect these cross‑technology dynamics. Market definitions built around legacy service categories risk overstating market power and understating the competitive discipline imposed by emerging substitutes.

While convergence increases competitive pressure, ICLE stresses that it does not change the underlying economics of broadband deployment. High fixed and sunk costs, long payback periods, and economies of scale mean that only a limited number of facilities‑based providers can operate sustainably in most markets. Policies aimed at maximizing the number of competitors may therefore undermine the investment needed for next‑generation networks.

ICLE warns that fragmentation — especially in markets with modest density — can reduce per‑firm revenues below sustainable levels, deterring fiber upgrades, 6G deployment, and rural expansion. The organization argues that the FCC should prioritize sustainable competition: lowering deployment costs, streamlining permitting, and ensuring merger policy accounts for investment benefits, not just static concentration metrics.

In video, ICLE contends that broadcast ownership rules and retransmission‑consent frameworks no longer match market realities. Broadcasters now compete with national streaming platforms unconstrained by ownership caps, yet broadcasters remain subject to legacy restrictions rooted in spectrum scarcity—an economic rationale ICLE argues is obsolete.

Retransmission consent, originally designed to counter cable bottlenecks, now creates bargaining asymmetries that can inflate fees and distort negotiations. ICLE recommends comprehensive reform: either phasing out retransmission consent entirely or pairing ownership deregulation with safeguards that reduce blackout risks and limit fee escalation.

ICLE wants the FCC to modernize its analytical framework when assessing competition to reflect converged markets, cross‑platform competition, and the investment‑driven economics of broadband. Interventions by regulators should avoid distorting markets that are already delivering lower prices, improved quality, and greater choice. The role of the regulator is to promote predictable, investment‑supportive policy. “The agency’s guiding principle should be to reduce regulatory distortions, preserve investment incentives, and allow competition — not legacy silos — to discipline communications markets.”

There is much in the ICLE’s paper that is relevant for Canadians. It is worth a look.

Canadian telecom investment is slipping, as I have been writing over the past few months. After years of sustained capital spending, operators are now pulling back. At the same time, expectations placed on networks — economic, social, and security‑related — are rising sharply.

A new report from PwC [pdf, 2.6 MB] lands at this important moment for Canada’s telecommunications sector. The report warns that Canada’s digital ambitions are resting on infrastructure that is increasingly taken for granted, and the conditions required to sustain investment are eroding.

The data-filled report tells a compelling story. Since 2021, Canadian operators have invested roughly $59 billion in networks, enabling faster speeds, broader coverage, and meaningful affordability gains for consumers. Wireless CPI has fallen 45.5% since 2020, and wireline CPI is down slightly over the same period. It is an extraordinary contrast to rising costs in shelter, food, and transportation. Canadians are paying less while getting more, making telecommunications services a rare bright spot in an otherwise inflationary environment.

These outcomes didn’t happen by accident. They were funded by some of the highest capital intensities in the world. Between 2021 and 2024, Canadian telecoms invested an average of 18% of revenue back into their networks — higher than peers in the US, UK, and Australia. The report shows that investment delivered near‑universal access to 50/10 Mbps broadband, gigabit availability to 90% of households, and a 410% increase in average mobile data usage since 2017.

But, despite the sector’s performance, the investment trend is now moving in the wrong direction. The PwC report confirms capital expenditure trends I discussed a couple of weeks ago. Annual capex has fallen from $12.5 billion in 2022 to $10.9 billion in 2025, a decline driven by moderating telecom revenue growth, rising regulatory costs, and a policy environment that increasingly prioritizes short‑term affordability optics over long‑term infrastructure resilience.

The report highlights a striking figure: in 2024, operators paid $2.5 billion in government and regulatory costs — an amount equal to 58% of their combined net income. Layer on top of that more than $30 billion spent on spectrum over the past decade (including some of the highest mid‑band 5G prices in the world), and the investment squeeze becomes even more obvious. Every dollar directed to taxes, fees, and spectrum is a dollar not available for rural builds, network hardening, or next‑generation upgrades.

This matters because telecommunications is no longer just a consumer service. It is the enabling layer for Canada’s economy, public safety, and digital sovereignty. The report catalogues the sector’s expanding role: supporting emergency services, powering digital supply chains, enabling remote work, and underpinning AI adoption across industries. In 2025, telecom contributed $86 billion to GDP and supported 611,000 jobs across the economy. These spillovers depend directly on sustained capital investment.

The disconnect is growing. Writing about the PwC report, TD Securities said, “The regulatory environment has already caused a reduction in privately funded infrastructure investments, which could have helped Canada’s economy and competitiveness in the future.”

Policymakers continue to treat telecom as a utility to be cost‑controlled, while simultaneously expecting the sector to function as critical infrastructure — resilient to extreme weather, secure against cyber threats, and capable of supporting data‑intensive national priorities. The Senate’s recent warning on copper theft, the rollout of NG9‑1‑1, and the federal focus on supply chain resilience, underscore how essential networks have become. But, essential infrastructure cannot be maintained on shrinking investment.

The PwC report also highlights the implications for rural and Indigenous connectivity. While progress to date has been meaningful — 50/10 access on First Nations reserves has risen from 39% to 66% since 2020 — gaps remain substantial. Closing them requires capital, and capital requires a stable, predictable investment environment. Without it, the pace of progress will slow.

If investment continues to decline, Canada risks compounding its already weak productivity performance.

Canada’s digital future depends on reversing an investment decline already underway. That will require a regulatory and fiscal framework that recognizes telecommunications as critical infrastructure, not merely a consumer product. Policy makers must ensure the networks upon which Canadians rely remain robust, resilient, and ready for the demands of the next decade.

The PwC report is a reminder that strong outcomes we enjoy today do not guarantee strong outcomes tomorrow. Sustaining Canada’s digital advantage will require policy choices that support and encourage — not undermine — the investment engine driving a 21st century economy.

Canada’s broadband ambition has been defined as having high-speed (50/10) connectivity available to all Canadians by the year 2030. I wonder if it may be time to declare victory.

Various broadband funding programs (Universal Broadband Fund – UBF, Connect to Innovate, provincial initiatives, the CRTC’s Broadband Fund, etc.) have collectively pushed high‑speed connectivity deeper into rural and remote regions than ever before. Fibre builds now reach thousands of communities once considered uneconomic, and fixed wireless has filled many mid‑density gaps. Yet despite billions invested, a stubborn last 1–2% of households remain unserved, particularly in the North and in the most sparsely populated rural pockets.

This is where Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite networks should be added to the broadband connectivity toolkit. Indeed, we might consider whether direct satellite-to-device is a satisfactory mobile solution for those remote communities currently lacking terrestrial-based coverage.

LEO systems operate a few hundred kilometres above Earth, far closer than traditional geostationary satellites. This enables low‑latency, high‑throughput broadband rivalling terrestrial options. Starlink, the most mature LEO provider, now offers:

• High‑speed service with typical download speeds ranging from 45–280 Mbps.
• Low latency (25–60 ms), suitable for video calls, cloud apps, and real‑time services.
• Global availability, including remote and northern regions.

Why isn’t Starlink considered to be an obvious choice to fulfill Canada’s broadband ambition? For households beyond the economic reach of fibre or microwave backhaul, LEO solutions eliminate the need for towers, rights‑of‑way, or construction seasons. A dish, a clear view of the sky, and power are enough.

Based on publicly available coverage maps and service availability data, Starlink’s constellation covers all populated regions of Canada. The service is marketed as globally available across 150+ countries and territories, with Canada included in the active service footprint.

Where availability issues arise, they are typically due to temporary local capacity constraints, obstructions due to trees, terrain, or building orientation, or weather‑related installation challenges. These are all easily solvable problems, at a cost far less than the $10-20,000 (and more) per household being spent for terrestrial solutions in some communities. Using LEO, we could (but shouldn’t) provide a permanent subsidy to equalize the prices paid by rural subscribers to those being paid in urban centres.

We need to think carefully about subsidies for rural broadband broadband expansion.

I have written extensively on issues of affordability. I think subsidies should be based on financial need, not based on geography. There are people in urban centres who need lower cost everything, and people in rural and remote communities who do not need financial aid. For example, a little over a year ago, I observed “Median household incomes in the north are considerably higher than in the rest of Canada.”

Canada’s broadband strategy is reaching the point where the remaining unserved households are no longer an engineering challenge, but one of adoption. LEO solutions provide full national orbital coverage and can close the final connectivity gap quickly, affordably, and sustainably. One might say that we have walked the last mile of last mile connectivity.

The challenge now is integrating LEO into regulatory and policy frameworks, to preserve private sector investment incentives, while engaging partnerships with social service agencies and training facilities to ensure no Canadian household is left offline.

How will the CRTC respond to evidence that its regulatory hypothesis is failing?

Recall, two months ago I wrote about CRTC Vice Chair Adam Scott speaking at a Scotiabank investor conference, where

We go through proceedings to crystallize issues and identify the strategically important outcomes that our decisions need to promote. And then we take the evidence on the record and use it to form a regulatory hypothesis—that by taking a certain course, we will see a certain type of outcome.

His address stated “we understand that advancing consumer interests also means supporting investment: in high quality services, resilient networks, excellent customer service, and all the other elements required of a strong telecommunications service provider.”

When the CRTC finalized its wholesale fibre to the home rates a few weeks ago, the final lines of its media release stated: “The CRTC will also closely track industry progress in investing to connect more Canadians to high-speed Internet and other communications services. In doing so, the CRTC will follow the evidence and act quickly to adjust its approach if necessary.”

What if the evidence is already showing that the current regulatory framework isn’t supporting investment? We started seeing signs that investment was beginning to decline when the CRTC released its annual monitoring report, showing an industry-wide drop of 10% between 2022 and 2024.

In the government’s Spring Economic Update [pdf, 8.2MB], the government’s headline Sovereign Wealth Fund includes “Leading Canadian companies will help build our energy, transportation and telecommunications infrastructure and future economy.”

However, Canada’s leading telecommunications companies are announcing dramatic reductions in their plans for investment in infrastructure.

A few weeks ago, we saw further evidence when Rogers cut its capital guidance by 30% for 2026, with strong statements issued by the company Chair and by its CEO at the 2026 Annual General Meeting. CEO Tony Staffieri said:

We operate in a capital-intensive sector, a sector that requires long-term investment cycles and regulatory policy that supports them.

Yet, at every turn, we face changing regulatory decisions that undermine investment – decisions that increase costs, reduce revenue, and create market uncertainty.

Decisions that reinforce an uneven playing field, and don’t reflect smart, modern regulation that ensures companies like Rogers can compete fairly and equitably.

As we look to the next few years, we have sharpened our strategy to reflect these market realities.

Executive Chair Edward Rogers said:

companies like Rogers need a modern regulatory regime that rewards investment and ensures fair and equitable competition. The opposite is happening today. The current approach is antiquated and creates an uneven playing field. It makes it hard for companies to plan, build, and invest long term.

This is a capital-intensive business with a long horizon for a return. We do not think in terms of months, or a few years, but in the next 5,10 to 20 years.

Regulatory certainty and stability matters.

Today’s telecom markets have never been more competitive, but we have also never been more regulated.
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Rules that penalize innovation and investment in Canada have never worked and will never work. Investment slows, jobs are lost, network quality and innovation suffer.

Rogers has since announced significant job cuts.

Bell’s first quarter 2026 results reflect reduced capital spending on Canadian telecom; the company’s guidance for 2026 forecasts a shift in capital spending toward investments in AI data centres, not in its core telecom infrastructure. As Bell CEO Mirko Bibic stated during the first quarter investor call, Bell will “focus capital investment on higher return opportunities.” He noted that capital expenditures have fallen from $5.1B in 2022 to less than $3B in 2026 and said that Canadian telecom investment will continue to decline given the current environment.

Whether or not it’s the kind of more kind of micro rules that are coming out, wireless that you refer to, or the bigger kind of more policy oriented fundamental rules like fiber access, put all those together, and clearly it’s having an impact on investment in the industry.
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If you just look at the capital investments over that short period of time in our industry on an annual basis, there’s literally multiple billions of dollars of annual CapEx that are no longer being invested.

Last week, 2026 investor guidance pointed to a 10% forecasted reduction in capital spending by TELUS.

Together, we have seen capital investment reduced by more than $3B annually. Yes, annually.

Prime Minister Carney recently announced an investment summit. “At a time of unprecedented trade disruption, our bold mission to unlock $1 trillion in new capital will create growth, good jobs, and long-term prosperity for Canadians.”

Commenting on the current regulatory environment, in February, Scotiabank asked, “wouldn’t it make more sense for incumbents to materially reduce capex”? A few weeks ago, when the CRTC issued its decision setting final rates for fibre-to-the-premises, various financial analysts assessed the impact of the rates when compared to the interim rates. Bank of America Global Research wrote, “More concerning is the recent steps the CRTC is taking to force changes in fees the providers can charge. The CRTC is adept at finding new areas to dictate how the providers can operate in the market.”

When he addressed the Scotia investor conference, CRTC Vice Chair Scott said “A good regulator, like a good builder, will adjust to conditions on the ground. We will need to, and are in fact required to, actively gather the evidence that will inform us as we go.”

It is worth repeating what I stated a few weeks ago: The regulatory environment doesn’t just shape competition — it shapes the network Canadians will have a decade from now.

The conditions on the ground are showing that the regulatory framework is failing to support investment, let alone incentivize investment. The CRTC typically moves at speeds that could be described as a somewhat glacial velocity (the final wholesale fibre rates decision followed a decade of CRTC processes).

The editorial in yesterday’s Globe and Mail called for “Ottawa to remove the obstacles that currently deter companies from investing in this country.”

When will the CRTC take a fresh look at how its regulatory hypothesis is impacting capital investment?