Following up on my blog post from last week, I want to highlight a complimentary webinar series that I will be hosting in the lead up to The 2020 Canadian Telecom Summit (virtual edition), taking place November 17 – 19.

The first of the webinars will be taking place next Monday, October 26.

• Webinar: Untapped Horizons For Content Providers
  Date: Monday, October 26th – 2:00pm [Eastern]
  In this session, Adam Lipper, Director of Business Development (Ecosystem) at Huawei Canada Consumer Business Group, will take the audience on a tour of the mobile app marketplace and landscape. With Huawei growing its ecosystem by launching Huawei Mobile Services and Huawei AppGallery in Canada, what are the benefits to both consumers and content providers? Adam will share notable stories of partnerships already built with local Canadian content providers. This session is available now on-demand.

• Webinar: The Urgency to Increase Connectivity
  Date: Thursday, October 29th – 2:00pm [Eastern]
  For millions of Canadians, high-speed Internet remains out of reach. In a world where the Internet has become fundamental to how we live, work and play, this puts too many Canadians at an economic and social disadvantage. In this session, Robert Backhouse, SVP & Chief Technology Officer at Huawei Technologies Canada, will explore the challenges of increasing connectivity in rural and remote areas, and emphasize the need for government to accelerate its plan to connect all Canadians to broadband Internet by 2030. This session is available now on-demand.

• Webinar: Challenges Along an Evolving Cybersecurity Landscape
  Date: Thursday, November 5th – 2:00pm
  In this session, Olivera Zatezalo, Chief Security Officer at Huawei Technologies Canada, will provide a high-level view of current cybersecurity challenges relating to both 4G LTE and emerging 5G technology. In the context of describing the strengths and vulnerabilities of any mobile network, Olivera will offer insights into how Huawei has maintained a flawless security record in Canada, its ongoing working arrangement with Canada’s security agencies, and its commitment to independent third-party testing of its products to ensure their security and integrity. This session is available now on-demand.

and wrapping up with this special session:

• Webinar: The Future of the Internet
  Date: Wednesday, November 11th – 2:00pm
  How will tomorrow’s Internet be shaped by the escalating geopolitical tensions between China and the United States? In the aftermath of the U.S. elections, Alykhan Velshi, VP, Corporate Affairs at Huawei Technologies Canada, will offer insights into what lies ahead for the most important bilateral relationship in the world – and its potential impact on technological progress. What is the legacy – and the future – of Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda? Alykhan will also explore the current state of China-Canada relations. This session is available now on-demand.

As you can likely tell, the webinar series is sponsored by Huawei.

I hope you will join me for some or all of the one hour sessions. Click here to register.

The response to the global pandemic has forced dramatic shifts in the way classes are being taught at all levels, from pre-school through university and ongoing continuing education.

Trust me.

As someone who organized live business conferences for nearly 20 years, the transition to online isn’t an easy one. From a distance, I have watched my grandson entering first grade and having to shift to learning on-line after just one week of learning in-person. His younger brother has meet-ups by Zoom with his nursery school classmates, doing arts and crafts with materials dropped off by his teacher. A friend’s daughter, who finished high school (virtually) in June, entered university last month, without the traditional frosh week festivities and restricted to meeting her classmates in cloud based chat rooms. It can’t be the same immersive university experience that her older sister (who graduated in April) enjoyed. No graduation ceremonies. Diplomas arrived in the mail.

While each of these examples demonstrate a downside to the online experience, there are positive experiences emerging. Professor Mark Lautens of the University of Toronto wrote in Monday’s Globe and Mail, “Online learning can be eye-opening for both teachers and students”:

Professors are a fortunate lot. We get to interact with some of the brightest minds of the future when they are still at their most open and receptive. Traditionally students would travel great distances to gain the best education that was open to them. Now they rearrange their lives in order to learn and interact in real-time.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not a fan of online teaching and would never choose this option if given the choice. On the other hand, it might provide a way to service communities that have historically been underserviced and under-represented.

Life often gives us no choice or two less-than-ideal choices. These students have chosen to be deeply engaged, despite the inconvenience this presents. Our future may be brighter than we often imagine.

I have found time to participate in regular online luncheon learning in my community, thanks to being able to avoid commuting time to the location. More significantly, I was also able to frequently drop into a class being conducted online from San Francisco, joining my son for an hour each week. Over the summer, I participated in a couple sessions hosted by the Public Utilities Research Center at the University of Florida.

Unrestricted by the cost and time associated with travel and being able to avoid expensive accommodations, we now have the ability to participate in sessions around the world. You can pop into a class hosted in Florida in the morning and another in California for lunch.

I have started to participate in the webinar series offered by the International Telecommunications Society, gaining a global perspective on a wide variety of policy issues. The sessions are scheduled in the morning for the East Coast of North America, making it mid-afternoon in Europe and late night viewing in Asia. There was a global round-table on COVID notification apps last month, and coming up in the next few weeks, there are a couple sessions of interest to readers of this blog:

• The Future of Remote Work, October 23, 10:00am – 11:00am Eastern
• ICT Cybersecurity: Industrial Strengths and Weaknesses, October 28, 9:00am – 11:45am Eastern
• AI: International Impact on Economy and Society, November 19, 8:00am – 9:30am Eastern

And of course, The Canadian Telecom Summit (virtual edition) is coming up next month, November 17-19.

In an environment with budgetary challenges due to the economic impact of the pandemic, virtual learning provides affordable access to global leaders. In the case of the ITS webinar series, registration is free.

As Professor Lautens wrote, given the choice I would prefer to engage with my colleagues face-to-face, up close and personal. But in the meantime, take the opportunity to undertake some continuing education. You just may find there can be advantages to learning online.

In a recent article in Cartt.ca, economists Mark Meitzen and Nick Crowley of Christensen Associates said “Canadian costs are estimated to be 83% higher than average Benchmark Country costs” for carriers providing mobile services.

“The economic illusion of high wireless prices in Canada” describes the results of their analysis, comparing various factors driving carrier cost differentials in peer nations (United States, Japan, Germany, France, UK, Italy, and Australia). The study was commissioned by TELUS.

The first phase of their work, released last February, measured differences in key mobile cost drivers between Canada and a set of benchmark countries. A newly released report on the second phase of their research determines the aggregate impact of these cost differences on prices.

The economists wrote in Cartt.ca:

As government competition authorities around the world have long recognized, it is simply not possible to draw any meaningful conclusions about the “competitiveness” of markets without benchmarking prices against the underlying costs of providing the services in question.

To do otherwise may serve to fuel populist sentiment, but it does not establish that market forces in Canada are exerting less competitive discipline than those in Benchmark countries.

In fact, our analysis may well suggest that precisely the opposite is true. Because the price differences between Canada and these benchmark countries are presumptively less than the measured cost differences, market forces are actually exerting more competitive discipline in Canada than they are in peer countries to which Canada is compared.

The studies found Canadian costs are about 83% higher than average benchmark country costs, and 34% higher than costs in the US. Assuming 75-80% of costs get passed through, these would translate into Canadian rates having roughly a 2/3 higher price differential compared with the average of the benchmark countries and having about a 1/4 price differential with the US.

According to the authors, “cost differences such as these are an essential consideration.”

The report claims that higher costs mean that mobile wireless prices in Canada could be higher than those found in benchmark countries “without raising concerns that the exercise of market power in Canadian mobile wireless markets is problematic relative to the exercise of market power in peer countries.”

As the authors warn, “Any comparison of prices that fails to take this cost dimension into account cannot be credibly relied upon to inform public policy.”

We all want lower prices for everything, but lower prices can come at a high cost.

In the face of “internet infrastructure… riddled with gaps and bottlenecks,” an article from Bloomberg last week described a shift in thinking emerging from European policy makers, where the prevailing principle had previously been “that more competition leads to better services.”

The Bloomberg article says that European telecom companies are not prepared to fund network investment due to low returns. “So governments are starting to rethink whether consumers are best served by price wars and caps on investment returns that erode the profits companies need to invest in better services.”

If you can’t trust the data in a simple Thanksgiving tweet by Statistics Canada, whose data can you trust?

Nobody.

I always look at numbers with a critical eye.

Yesterday, in a tweet taken down this morning, Canada’s official government statistical agency wished its followers a Happy Thanksgiving and included some “fun facts” about turkeys.

Only thing is, the numbers in the Tweet weren’t correct. The production figure of 165.17 tonnes is off by three orders of magnitude. It should have been 165,170 tonnes. That is an awfully big difference.

The source data appears to be from a Statistics Canada table entitled “Production, disposition and farm value of poultry meat (x 1,000)”. Apparently, that paranthetic notation in the title was missed by the graphic production team and the error slipped through whatever review processes are in place for government social media accounts.

But in the spirit of the Thanksgiving holiday, let’s be thankful for this teaching opportunity. It provides an opportunity to reiterate a the importance of taking a careful look at the data, before you gobble up erroneous factoids.

As I wrote a few months ago, “It’s very easy to look at a chart on social media, nod one’s head, and retweet or reply without bothering to look beyond the headline.”

Always, always, always, look at the source data, regardless of the source of the data.

Even government statistical agencies can make mistakes.

In a recent interview, Rogers CEO Joe Natale describes life in the pandemic as “obviously the worst of times, but it’s also the best of times, in terms of unleashing imagination and reinvention,” projecting an optimistic outlook for the “revolution going on in wireless and Internet and 5G, which will change the country and change the world.” He forecasts 5G networks creating opportunities and capabilities “at the speed of thought.”

In a Public Policy Forum (PPF) podcast, PPF CEO Edward Greenspon and Joe Natale discuss the impact of billions of dollars of annual investment by Canada’s communications carrier in digital infrastructure and take a look at broader economic opportunities arising from continued investment in Canada’s digital infrastructure, with networks that are among the world’s best.

As PPF writes about its podcast, Natale “joins Policy Speaking to share his vision for the future of mobile tech, bridging the digital divide, and how industry can partner with government to bring Canada together as a nation.”

The conversation covers a wide range of topics including some important messages that often seem to be forgotten by many engaging in digital policy discussions at all levels of government.

[Joe Natale] In our industry, 70 percent of our network efforts are civil engineering efforts. The technology is 30 percent of the endeavor, but a lot of it is boots on the ground with shovels, getting rights of way from hydro companies, getting attachment rights to go under the streets, through ducts and rights of way that exist in every municipality.

In every municipality, for every project, is a bit of a puzzle because it requires multilateral negotiation with all the different players that are out there. And, you know, sometimes you just get frustrated to a point where you say, “You know what, it’s too hard in this particular area, or municipality, or this part of Canada. Let’s just go on the next one.”

The podcast also spoke of the challenges associated with multiple levels of (and sometimes confusing) regulations. For example, two identical cedar poles, each carrying telephone and electric wires, are regulated differently, depending on the entity that owns the pole. Attachment to a pole owned by a phone company is regulated by the CRTC; if the same pole is owned by an electric company, it is provincially regulated.

Although courts have repeatedly confirmed the supremacy of federal jurisdiction over telecommunications undertakings, municipal governments and local land use authorities have an ability to accelerate or inhibit investment decisions by the proponents of digital infrastructure investments, whether it is for siting new wireless towers or using municipal roadways. At all levels of government, policies and regulations can shift the timing or even the overall project economics for new services being made available to a community. The timing of broadband delivery can be impacted by a single bureaucrat’s pen stroke.

How many investments in rural broadband have been delayed or cancelled due to slow-moving municipal permit processes?

The discussion included examining conditions that create a favourable climate for investment.

[Edward Greenspon] If there was one issue you wanted to focus on, one message you wanted to impart, what would that be?

[Joe Natale] Consistency. Stability in the regulatory environment and therefore the partnership with government. We’re public companies, a number of us in this industry, with big balance sheets because we have to make these multibillion dollar investments every year.

We go to the capital markets across the globe to encourage investors to put their faith in us, from all kinds of countries of places. And, the number one question invariably that we start talking about is, “what will the regulatory environment look like in Canada in the years ahead?” And, “can we rely on that partnership with government? Can it be consistent and somewhat predictable? Because it’s hard for us to give you money and invest in the future if we’re not sure with what that looks like from a certain stability point of view.”

And so, that partnership needs to be long lasting, if we’re making investments that have 10, 15, 20 year paybacks

Natale speaks of a promise of 5G that arises from its speeds, bandwidth and low latency, capabilities that will enable “engineers and innovators to dream up things that were never before possible.” He says the promise of 5G is not a competition among companies, but rather a competition between nations. “It goes back to nation building. Canada has the opportunity to be first and be the greatest. As it relates to 5G. And that will that will stimulate innovation. That will create jobs, that will create an environment that will help Canada seize the future.”

He sets out a positive vision for the future: Opportunities at the speed of thought.

Which countries will create policy and regulatory environments that create a favourable environment for investment? What steps is Canada prepared to take to create an environment to “seize the future”?