Some of the most influential leaders of the Canadian & International ICT industry will gather in Toronto next week at The 2019 Canadian Telecom Summit.

No other event matches The Canadian Telecom Summit for the depth and breadth of topics covered and issues debated.

No other event presents as complete a picture of current and expected trends & developments.

You will see why The Canadian Telecom Summit has become the only must-attend conference for service providers, hardware and software suppliers, regulators, professional services organizations, the financial community and other industry professionals.

With more opportunities than ever to learn, network and do business, if you are involved with or impacted by Canadian telecommunications, broadcasting and information technology, you need to be at The 2019 Canadian Telecom Summit.

Join your colleagues for 3 days of spirited discussion and outstanding networking opportunities, including our Monday evening Cocktail Reception.

Register today for The 2019 Canadian Telecom Summit. Register by May 31 to save $250.

Don’t be fooled by pretenders. The 2019 Canadian Telecom Summit is the ONLY event where you can hear from such an array of industry luminaries.

For the complete conference agenda, visit the conference website.

The 2019 Canadian Telecom Summit | June 3 – 5 | International Centre | Toronto

Today, Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) Minister Navdeep Bains is launching a Digital Charter for Canada, including an initial set of measures to “build trust in the digital economy, and boost competitiveness in the data-driven knowledge economy.” The Digital Charter appears to be a followup to the National Digital and Data consultation from June, 2018.

The 10 principles set out in the Digital Charter are aimed at restoring and building “public trust in the data and digital environment”:

1. Universal Access: All Canadians will have equal opportunity to participate in the digital world, and the necessary tools to do so – including access, connectivity, literacy, and skills.
2. Safety and Security: Canadians will be able to rely on the integrity, authenticity and security of the services they use and should feel safe online.
3. Control and Consent: Canadians will have control over what data they are sharing, who is using their personal data and for what purposes, and know that their privacy is protected.
4. Transparency, Portability and Interoperability: Canadians will have clear and manageable access to their personal data and should be free to share or transfer it without undue burden.
5. Open and Modern Digital Government: Canadians will be able to access modern digital services from the Government of Canada, which are secure and simple to use.
6. A Level Playing Field: The Government of Canada will ensure fair competition in the online marketplace to facilitate the growth of Canadian businesses and affirm Canada’s leadership on digital and data innovation, while protecting Canadian consumers from market abuses.
7. Data and Digital for Good: The Government of Canada will ensure the ethical use of data to create value, promote openness, and improve the lives of people – at home and around the world.
8. Strong Democracy: The Government of Canada will defend freedom of expression and protect against online threats and disinformation designed to undermine the integrity of elections and democratic institutions.
9. Free from Hate and Violent Extremism: Canadians can expect that digital platforms will not foster or disseminate hate, violent extremism or criminal content.
10. Strong Enforcement and Real Accountability: There will be clear, meaningful penalties for violations of the laws and regulations that support these principles.

ISED intends for the Digital Charter to set a standard against which the government will measure the modernization of Canada’s privacy laws, competition rules and government programs. The Charter also contains principles intended to address Government digital services, disinformation, as well as hate speech and violent extremism online. These latter elements may prove to be the most controversial elements, as the government wrestles with limits on Canadian speech freedoms.

Among the planned reforms are a modernization of Canada’s privacy law, PIPEDA – The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, with measures intended to address issues around privacy, security, algorithmic transparency, consent, control of data, and enforcement. The Government is understood to be considering how to modernize its 20-year old policy and regulatory framework to protect privacy while supporting innovation. At the same time, the Minister appears to have recognized the administrative burden for small and medium sized companies (SMEs) compared to large corporations who have more resources to dedicate to compliance. ISED is proposing to simplify personal information protection requirements, so that SMEs are not disadvantaged while ensuring individuals’ personal information is still protected.

An initiative being led by the Department of Justice and the Treasury Board Secretariat is studying potential reforms to the Privacy Act, which governs the handling of personal information by federal institutions.

The Minister may want to look at whether Canada’s Anti-Spam Law (CASL) warrants a fresh look, in view of its administrative burden and whether its restrictions are contributing to or detracting from competitiveness in a digital economy.

Nine years ago, the Harper government launched a consultation for a national digital strategy, with Industry Minister Tony Clement, and Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development Diane Finley, joining Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages James Moore for a process that dragged on for 4 years, culminating in the release of what I have called a pamphlet, not a national strategy.

The Digital Charter will raise concerns from a variety of quarters as Canada navigates the issues associated with government intervention on speech freedoms, whether it is the role of government in moderating content it considers to be ‘disinformation’ or applies hard restrictions on hate speech and extremism. These are important matters to be discussed and debated meaningfully. As such, it is encouraging to see the Digital Charter raise the level of dialog on such substantive issues.

Minister Bains will be delivering the closing keynote address at The 2019 Canadian Telecom Summit, taking place June 3-5 in Toronto. Have you registered yet?

Last Wednesday, President Trump declared a National Emergency and issued an Executive Order on Securing the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain. Although not mentioned by name, those of us who have been following the industry clearly understood that Huawei was the prime target of the directive prohibiting:

any acquisition, importation, transfer, installation, dealing in, or use of any information and communications technology or service (transaction) by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, where the transaction involves any property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest

Terence Corcoran wrote about the Order in the weekend Financial Post in “Call a Trump ‘National Emergency’! America isn’t No. 1 in 5G!”. He observes that Canada has (so far) taken a calm and more “measured approach” to assessing and dealing with security risks associated with the implementation of 5G.

Ottawa is right to avoid jumping aboard Trump’s panic wagon over Huawei. The underlying American motives for declaring a telecom emergency include valid national security concerns, but the real driver of the anti-China and anti-Huawei campaigns is the very real possibility that America is not winning what Trump refers to as “the race to 5G.”

In the meantime, the move also targets Huawei devices, the latest of which (the P30 Pro) is regarded by some as having the best camera in a phone. A report from Reuters says Google has suspended some of its business with Huawei, such as access to updates to the Android operating system as well as popular apps such as Gmail, YouTube and the Chrome browser. On Sunday evening, Google issued a statement on its compliance with the Executive Order:

In response, Huawei has stated that it “will continue to provide security updates and after-sales services to all existing Huawei and Honor smartphone and tablet products, covering those that have been sold and that are still in stock globally.”

As Terence Corcoran writes, “the 5G security issues appear to be another form of old-fashioned corporate nationalism”; technology issues can be fixed, but not “the insistence on national industrial and economic dominance”.

Robert Hannigan, former director of Britain’s security agency, said recently that “blanket bans on Chinese tech companies make no sense.” If there are security risks, then solutions can easily be incorporated into British telecom networks — as surely they could be into American and Canadian networks.
…
If the U.S. wants to be No. 1 in 5G, it should be able to get there by competing, without knocking out other countries.

Olivera Zatezalo, Chief Security Officer at Huawei Canada, recently spoke to media in Markham during a company open house to showcase the company’s latest products and solutions. At that event, she stated: “Huawei believes that the establishment of an open and transparent security assurance framework will be conducive to a sound and sustainable development of the entire industry and technological innovation.” She added that Huawei has built, and plans to continue to invest in, end-to-end global cyber security assurance systems.

Olivera Zatezalo, and Dr. Wen Tong, CTO of Huawei Wireless, will be speaking at The 2019 Canadian Telecom Summit, taking place June 3-5 in Toronto.

Have you registered yet?

As regular followers know, I travel to Israel a couple times a year. My daughter has a mobile plan that has ridiculously low prices for a huge data bucket and calling to 56 countries; I have a couple add-on SIM cards that cost an additional $10 per month for me to use or share with friends and family when they are travelling to the region.

Obviously, consumers love paying low prices. As I have written before, we all want lower prices for everything, other than our own wages.

Israel’s mobile market is a relevant case study. At least one observer says Israel’s experience “is a tale of short-sighted regulatory decisions that destroyed the profitability of the cellular market and undermined the ability and motivation of the facilities-based service providers to invest in infrastructure”. Yossi Abadi heads the telecommunications and media practice for one of Israel’s largest law firms. He prepared evidence on “The Israeli MVNO Experience” for the CRTC’s “Review of mobile wireless services” (TNC 2019-57). In his evidence, he asserts that low mobile service prices have led to operators “struggling with massive financial pressures that impact their ability to invest in new infrastructure… Mobile broadband subscriptions per capita have declined from #4 in the OECD in 2010 to #29 in 2017. For cellular network speeds, Israel is ranked 64th with an average download speed of 23.63 Mbps while Canada is ranked 2nd with an average of 65.90 Mbps.”

Mr. Abadi’s evidence examines the market reforms introduced in Israel in 2009 that were designed to stimulate competition and reduce mobile prices, changes “mainly driven by short-term political considerations: to cause rapid reductions of prices by increasing the number of players.”

Between 2010 and 2018, revenues for Israel’s 3 incumbent carriers, fell 61% (from ₪18.9B to ₪7.3B). “As revenues sank, the three wireless incumbents were forced to slash spending and lay off workers. Total sector telecom employees fell from 49,700 in 2010 to 25,900 in 2017, a 48% decline.” Per capita capital spending fell more than 12% at a time when OECD average spending increased by 5%; Canada’s per capita investment increased by more than 21% over the same period.

According to the evidence, as a direct result of its policies, “Israel now lags behind other OECD countries in communications infrastructure.”

Israel rolled out fourth-generation mobile networks several years behind most OECD countries. Israeli 4G represented just 14% of total mobile subscriptions as of December 2017. By contrast, in Canada, 4G comprised 62% of mobile subscriptions as of December 2017. Population coverage in Israel of 4G is about 89%. This is surprisingly low for a country with a population density of 433 persons per square Km. In contrast, Canada has 4G coverage to 99.4% of the population, and a population density of just 4 persons per square Km (less than 1/100th of Israel’s).

In 2016, the director general of the Communications Ministry told reporters, “We have a problem with the implementation of the reform because the companies don’t have enough money to invest in infrastructure.” As a result, Mr. Abadi sees difficulty for Israel’s mobile industry to invest in 5G.

His evidence concludes that Israel’s experience “is a cautionary tale that any regulator should examine before introducing MVNOs in order to reduce retail mobile prices.”

Prices did fall, but so did the quality of the networks. The massive reductions to revenues caused major reductions in capital expenditures, network roll-out and expansion, market capitalizations of the participants and even the number of employees.

The short term consumer benefits from policies driving low mobile prices may lead to higher and broader economic costs in the long run.

Yossi Abadi will be speaking about Israel’s mobile experience on June 5 at The 2019 Canadian Telecom Summit. Have you registered yet?

In an IT World article, Howard Solomon wrote about the chairman’s statement that emerged from a recent 5G Security Conference that took place last week in Prague. The 2 day meeting of officials, representing 32 countries, did not reach any binding conclusions, but the chair issued a 20-point set of “proposals”.

In the preamble, the statement observes the following characteristics of 5G networks:

• Cyber security not only a technical issue
• Both technical and non-technical nature of cyber threats
• Possible serious effects of 5G networks disruption
• Nation-wide approach
• Proper risk assessment essential
• Broad nature of security measures
• No universal solutions
• Ensuring security while supporting innovation
• Security costs money
• Supply chain security

The proposals were categorized under 4 headings: Policy; Technology; Economy; and, Security, Privacy, and Resilience.

The Prague Proposals represent an interesting statement, based on principles that could apply beyond the realm of 5G; many could be considerations for securing the internet of things, as we begin to understand the security implications of connecting devices that may not have been designed to operate in an open network environment.

Although Canada is reported to have participated only as an observer, the Prague Proposals are an inventory of the kinds of considerations that may be underway as carriers continue investing in the next generation of network evolution. Significantly, the Prague Proposals state “Every country is free, in accordance with international law, to set its own national security and law enforcement requirements, which should respect privacy and adhere to laws protecting information from improper collection and misuse.”

The challenge for many assessments is to develop a set of policies and principles rooted in objective measures, separate and devoid of political considerations. Too frequently, good policy may not make for good politics.

What path should Canada follow?

On Monday June 3, Christine Dobby from the Globe and Mail will be moderating an important panel at The 2019 Canadian Telecom Summit, Cyber Security: Protection, Pre-emption & Privacy in the Age of Bad Actors. The panel includes Dr. Ann Cavoukian, Privacy by Design Centre of Excellence at Ryerson University; Kevin Isacks, Vice President Edge Products, Ribbon Communications; Olivera Zatezalo, Chief Security Officer, Huawei Technologies Canada; and Zubaer Raja, Chief Information Security Officer, Iristel.

Have you registered yet?