An interesting new report examining the “Digital Divide in the U.S.” [pdf, 4.1MB] was released late last week by the Purdue Center for Regional Development.

The report found:

• Job and establishment growth between 2010 and 2015 was substantially lower in counties with the highest digital divide
• Digital economy industries and associated jobs increased overall across all areas, including counties with the highest digital divide
• Digital economy establishments — of which 57 percent were nonemployers — increased in the nation and across all digital divide categories. In fact, the largest percent change in digital economy establishments between 2010 and 2015 took place in counties with the highest digital divide

It was this last unexpected finding that caught my eye since it seems counter-intuitive: the greatest increase in digital economy establishments took place in counties with the greatest digital divide. The report observed that most of these “digital economy establishments” had no employees, “the majority of digital economy establishments are entrepreneurs.”

These local entrepreneurs may be strategically leveraging digital platforms for their businesses minimizing costs, increasing efficiency, and reaching new markets. This apparently allows them to “break free” of the otherwise limited labor force and market in their more than likely small communities.

The report also observed that the digital divide is not just a divide between rural and urban areas. “The digital divide is between those that have access, can afford, and apply knowledge to leverage the technology to improve their quality of life versus those that do not have access, cannot afford, or lack knowledge.”

So far, Canada has focused government programs on the geographic digital divide, without federal programs to deal with socio-economic factors that limit digital adoption in urban centres. In January, I wrote “An affordable broadband strategy“, asking if Canada should establish its own Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee to help guide a holistic approach to increase broadband adoption in urban and rural households.

Through the years, I have suggested the need for more research, such as “Do we know what we don’t know?” and “Building a broadband research agenda.” The Purdue report observes that understanding and measuring a problem is a crucial first step for public policy makers before we discuss potential solutions. The development of a Digital Divide Index, such as that described in its report, provides an interesting approach.

As the Purdue report concludes, “A coordinated, robust effort should be made to improve broadband infrastructure throughout the country that are on the wrong side of the divide while at the same time increasing digital literacy and know-how among residents, elected officials, and businesses.”

Bridging the digital divide isn’t just about rural infrastructure. Should Canada expand research to improve our understanding of other contributing factors that limit digital adoption?

When I was growing up, we used to see regular tests of the emergency broadcast system being conducted on American TV stations.

We were told “This has been a test of the emergency broadcasting system. The broadcasters of your area in voluntary cooperation with federal, state and local authorities have developed this system to keep you informed in the event of an emergency. If this had been an actual emergency, the Attention Signal you just heard would have been followed by official information, news, or instructions. This station serves (the name of operational area). This concludes the test of the Emergency Broadcast System.”

Nine years ago, the CRTC had Pelmorex create the National Alert Aggregation & Dissemination [NAAD] System by mid-2010 to serve as the core of Canada’s National Public Alerting System (NPAS). At the time, participation by broadcasters was on a voluntary basis. In 2014, recognizing a lack of voluntary participation, the CRTC required just about all broadcasters and TV distributors to participate in the NPAS. The costs of operating the NAAD System are borne by TV subscribers and will continue to be part of the fees from mandatory distribution of The Weather Channel.

However, with reduced reliance on traditional broadcast programming and increased adoption of advanced mobile devices, the CRTC launched a process to develop a wireless national public alerting system. Later this week, the CRTC is expected to clear the final gate prior to its launch, by approving an industry consensus report for an awareness and education campaign.

The system itself was approved 11 months ago [CRTC 2017-91]. At the time, the CRTC set a 12-month implementation schedule, but referred a number of issues to the Canadian Interconnection Steering Committee {CISC) for resolution. As a result, wireless service providers were told they would “not be required to begin distribution of emergency alert messages until the Commission receives CISC’s final reports and issues a decision on those matters.”

The last outstanding issue to be resolved is public awareness and education for the alerting system. In its decision last year, the CRTC asked CISC to examine:

90. A WPA awareness and education campaign should be a coordinated effort between SOREM [Senior Officials Responsible for Emergency Management Federal/Provincial/Territorial Public Alerting Working Group], federal, provincial, and territorial EMOs [emergency management officials], WSPs [wireless service providers], the NAAD [National Alert Aggregation & Dissemination] System administrator, and the Commission. However, the Commission did not receive fulsome responses regarding certain elements of an awareness campaign, such as the content of the campaign, the timeline, delivery mechanisms, and funding. Considerable coordination among all stakeholders will be required and, therefore, the Commission is of the view that CISC would be the most appropriate forum to address this issue.
91. Accordingly, the Commission requests that CISC report back to the Commission, with a progress report by 5 July 2017, and a final report by 3 October 2017, with recommendations on a WPA awareness and education campaign. The reports should include the following information:
    • who should be responsible for the campaign;
    • what material the campaign should include;
    • how the campaign should be funded;
    • how the campaign should be delivered; and
    • when the campaign should start.
92. The Commission encourages EMOs and SOREM to participate in the CISC process.
93. Given that the obligation to distribute alerts only applies to LTE networks, the Commission directs WSPs, as part of the campaign, to notify their subscribers with non-LTE-compatible handsets that they will be unable to receive emergency alert messages on their mobile devices.

Wireless alerts can be an effective way to communicate with citizens. The FCC recently reported that its system has been been used over 33,000 times since 2012, including 4 times in response to wildfires in Northern California, 16 times during the wildfires around Los Angeles and in areas affected by hurricanes last year, including 21 alerts sent in Puerto Rico alone. But wireless alerts caused a panic in Hawaii less than two months ago when human error during a drill resulted in a message being broadcast warning of an incoming ballistic missile. An FCC investigation found “A combination of human error and inadequate safeguards contributed to the transmission of this false alert.”

In his statement about the Preliminary Report on Hawaii False Emergency Alert, FCC Chair Ajit Pai said “The public needs to be able to trust that when the government issues an emergency alert, it is indeed a credible alert. Otherwise, people won’t take alerts seriously and respond appropriately when a real emergency strikes and lives are on the line.”

The telecommunications industry can implement the capability for messages to be broadcast to enabled devices, but emergency management officials will need to create and maintain confidence in the system. As the CRTC wrote, “Alerts on mobile devices will warn Canadians about dangers to life and property in a timely manner so that they can take appropriate action.”

Canadians need to learn how to recognize alerts in order to respond to warnings. Too many tests, or use of the system for trivial events can result in a form of alert fatigue, rendering the system useless.

Watch for the ads and for the first test of the emergency cell broadcast system. In case of a real emergency, your device will provide you with official information, news, or instructions. I’ll miss the preface of the old US broadcasters’ attention signal.

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[Update: March 8] The CRTC gave its approval to the awareness and education plan in a Decision today, clearing the way for Canada’s Wireless Public Alert systems to begin operations April 6.

We have added a new panel to the agenda for The 2018 Canadian Telecom Summit, exploring “The Evolution of Emergency Communications: NG-911, Wireless Public Alerts.” Visit the conference website to check the full agenda.

The Canadian Telecom Summit will take place June 4-6, 2018 in Toronto. Have you registered yet?

From June 4-6, the leadership of Canada’s telecom, broadcast & IT industries will be in Toronto for The 2018 Canadian Telecom Summit. Join your peers, suppliers, policy makers, regulators, customers and competitors in attending the industry’s most important gathering.

Now in its 17th year, The Canadian Telecom Summit has become the place for Canada’s ICT leaders to meet, interact and do business. As in past years, this year’s event will feature high-octane interaction, top-level keynote speakers and thought-provoking panel discussions.

Innovation and Disruption in ICT: reinventing and securing our business and personal lives
How does Canada stake out a world-leading position in an increasingly digital world? What kinds of communications infrastructure is needed to provide Canadians with a platform to excel?
What kind of policy framework will encourage investment and foster the development of innovative new applications and technologies to deploy in Canada and offer around the world?

The Canadian Telecom Summit has something for everyone! Hear from senior executives from across the industry. Meet with your suppliers, customers and peers for 3 full days of thought provoking interaction.

Reserve your place today
Save more than $200 by registering by February 28. Book your place today!

Special Networking Event
All participants are invited to join us for our annual cocktail reception Monday evening, June 4, sponsored this year by Cogeco.

Continuing Professional Development
Lawyers: The time spent attending substantive sessions at The Canadian Telecom Summit can be claimed as “Substantive Hours” toward the Law Society of Upper Canada’s Continuing Professional Development (CPD) requirements.

I am the family cynic, a title I wear as a badge of honour.

As I have written before, I am often asked to check out a story being shared on Facebook, an email being circulated, a link from Twitter. Is it true?

I tend to read the news with a critical eye. I subscribe to newspapers with opposing viewpoints and frequently read opinion pieces that make my blood boil. And I tend to follow links and check footnotes to see if references and studies are being accurately portrayed.

In other words, I seek information from outside the echo chamber. Unfortunately, most people don’t. A couple years ago I wrote about this in “Reading just what we want or what we need?” At the time (a few months before the last US election), I observed “In the absence of opposing viewpoints, partisanship continues to be amplified. People watch just the programs that serve up the same viewpoints; read articles from sources that reinforce the opinions already held.”

Social media networks have been forensically examining the use of their platforms by foreign actors to determine how political outcomes in elections and referenda may have been influenced, including the last US presidential election and the Brexit vote in the UK.

This is not really a new phenomenon; propaganda has gone digital and propagandists have learned how to succeed in generating messages that go viral using the same techniques that get hundreds of millions views overnight for some videos.

The digital world has lowered the cost and accelerated the spread of propaganda, but have we done enough to teach people how to recognize the tell-tale signs of misinformation?

Wikipedia says “fear uncertainty and doubt” (FUD, for short) is “a disinformation strategy used in sales, marketing, public relations, politics and propaganda. FUD is generally a strategy to influence perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false information and a manifestation of the appeal to fear.”

Today’s highly partisan social networks are filled with countless examples of FUD and other propaganda techniques, such as those we see deployed by a number of shell organizations masquerading as advocacy groups online.

Media releases and twitter streams of certain groups often show tell-tale signs of some of these techniques (among others):

• Loaded language: use of words with strong emotional implications to influence the audience
• Managing the news: sticking to a few points and repeating them over and over
• Ad nauseam: tireless repetition of an idea such that it may begin to be taken as the truth
• Name calling, Demonization of the enemy: Making those who support the opposing viewpoint appear to be subhuman
• Ad hominem attacks: attacking one’s opponent, as opposed to attacking their arguments

While a number of democracies are examining how they can control the use of social media platforms in order to limit the influence of foreign states in domestic affairs, we need to keep in mind that propaganda doesn’t have to come from foreign actors to have negative influence on domestic democratic institutions. Clictivism, fueled by calls to action by the propaganda practitioners, attempt to influence politicians and generate overwhelming volumes of submissions in regulatory consultations, as though quasi-judicial hearings are meant to be determined by popular vote.

Media awareness training can help train the public to watch for the use of these (and other) propaganda techniques being practised by those manipulating and mobilizing public opinion on social networks.

Last summer, the Canadian government announced $50M in funding for CanCode, a program to give 500,000 students from kindergarten to grade 12 the opportunity to learn computer coding skills. Yesterday, the government announced almost $30M to fund a Digital Literacy Exchange Program.

The Digital Literacy Exchange program will invest $29.5 million to support initiatives that teach fundamental digital literacy skills to Canadians who would benefit from participating in the digital economy. The program aims to equip Canadians with the necessary skills to engage with computers, mobile devices and the Internet safely, securely and effectively.

The FAQ page for the Digital Literacy Exchange Program indicates that the target audience are new computer users, or people who are not online today, such as: Persons with disabilities, Indigenous people, Individuals who have not completed high school, Residents of rural and remote areas, Language Minorities, low income individuals, seniors and newcomers to Canada.

Are we doing enough to provide citizens of all ages with digital literacy skills, helping them recognize problematic content on the internet? The vision of Media Smarts is to provide children and youth with “the critical thinking skills to engage with media as active and informed digital citizens.”

We need to ensure that such skills are developed in adults as well. All Canadians need to be able to apply critical thinking skills when engaging with the types of disinformation that have become pervasive on social media platforms.

Coding skills might be useful for some of our kids; basic digital literacy skills are important for the Canadians who are not yet online. But there are other, more fundamental online literacy skills that need to be mastered by everyone in a modern digital democracy. Learning a little more cynicism; teaching how to read with a more critical eye. Helping people detect when stories simply don’t seem right; helping them develop a more sensitive ‘smell test’.

I have asked before, “How do we encourage reading alternate perspectives, consideration of dissenting viewpoints, and engaging in cooperative dialog?”

In a modern democracy, people of all ages, and from all walks of life, need “the critical thinking skills to engage with media as active and informed digital citizens.”

For 3 days (June 4-6), the leadership of the telecom, broadcast & IT industries will converge in Toronto for The 2018 Canadian Telecom Summit. Join your peers, suppliers, policy makers, regulators, customers and competitors in attending the industry’s most important gathering, to discuss the key issues and trends that will impact this critical sector of the economy.

Other conferences promise but don’t deliver. Only The Canadian Telecom Summit allows you to hear from the leading ICT executives and influencers and provides the opportunity for you to interact with them and your colleagues. Don’t be disappointed by attending imitation events.

For 17 years The Canadian Telecom Summit has been the place for Canada’s ICT leaders to meet, interact and do business. As in past years, this year’s event will feature high-octane interaction, top-level keynote speakers and thought-provoking panel discussions.

Innovation and Disruption in ICT: reinventing and securing our business and personal lives
How does Canada stake out a world-leading position in an increasingly digital world? What kinds of communications infrastructure is needed to provide Canadians with a platform to excel?
What kind of policy framework will encourage investment and foster the development of innovative new applications and technologies to deploy in Canada and offer around the world?

As always, The Canadian Telecom Summit features cutting-edge topics. This year, we are featuring sessions devoted to:

• Cyber Security: Securing your data; protecting your privacy
• Customer Experience Management
• The 5G journey: IoT, connected cars, mobile video and more
• Regulatory Blockbuster
• Network Innovation & Service Delivery: Transforming networks & applications for nexgen services
• Cultivating an Innovation Economy
• Artificial Intelligence: Should we embrace or fear what’s coming</li>

The Canadian Telecom Summit has something for everyone! It leaves no stone unturned in bringing you the most substantive and comprehensive line-up of speakers and topics. Hear from senior executives from across the industry. Meet with your suppliers, customers and peers for 3 full days of thought provoking interaction.

Reserve your place today
Save more than $200 by registering by February 28. Book your place today!

Special Networking Event
All participants are invited to join us for our annual cocktail reception Monday evening, June 4, sponsored this year by Cogeco.

Continuing Professional Development
Lawyers: The time spent attending substantive sessions at The Canadian Telecom Summit can be claimed as “Substantive Hours” toward the Law Society of Upper Canada’s Continuing Professional Development (CPD) requirements.

Canadian ICT Employer of Choice
The “Canadian ICT Employer of Choice” award program is now accepting applications. Don’t miss your opportunity to get recognized at The 2018 Canadian Telecom Summit as one of the best in the industry. For more information visit the awards website, or call Jeff at +1.416.886.7007