In the wake of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, Geoffrey Fowler’s recent piece in the Washington Post (reprinted in the Toronto Star) caught my eye. “How gadget-makers have gotten off track, and how tech can be great again” suggests that connected devices need to solve actual problems. “Putting a refrigerator on the internet isn’t in itself useful — it’s just more expensive.”

His article suggests 4 ways to make gadgets great again:

• Respect our time: “I’m heartened to find products starting to explore not how to fill more of our time, but rather help us spend our time better.”
• Security is not our job: “When I buy a car, I don’t have to purchase seatbelts and bumpers on my own — I trust the automaker took care of making it safe. But the electronics industry puts the responsibility for security largely on us, selling way too many smart products that are the equivalent of cars with zero-star safety ratings.”
• Focus on the “Internet of Services,” not the “Internet of Things”: “Putting a refrigerator on the internet isn’t in itself useful — it’s just more expensive.”
• Don’t lock us in: “I’ve got four different talking assistants on various devices in my house, but unfortunately my virtual staff doesn’t communicate well with each other.”

Fowler reflected some overlapping themes about system security that were raised by NY Times writer Zeynep Tufekci [reprinted in the National Post]: “We built our digital world too fast, and cut too many corners“.

Modern computing security is like a flimsy house that needs to be fundamentally rebuilt. In recent years, we have suffered small collapses here and there, and made superficial fixes in response. There has been no real accountability for the companies at fault, even when the failures were a foreseeable result of underinvestment in security or substandard practices rather than an outdated trade-off of performance for security.

He concludes noting that we continue to suffer through hack after hack, security failure after security failure.

If commercial airplanes fell out of the sky regularly, we wouldn’t just shrug. We would invest in understanding flight dynamics, hold companies accountable that did not use established safety procedures, and dissect and learn from new incidents that caught us by surprise.

And indeed, with airplanes, we did all that. There is no reason we cannot do the same for safety and security of our digital systems.

We will be exploring these issues and much more at The 2018 Canadian Telecom Summit, taking place June 4-6, in Toronto. Early bird rates are now available. Save more than $200 by registering before the end of February. Why not register today?

Bell Let’s Talk day is taking place January 31, 2018.

This year, the initiative is encouraging us to hear directly from people impacted by mental illness, talking in their own words; more than 40 people are listed, each one telling their story.

Each testimonial evokes a common message: What do people impacted by mental illness look like? Like any one of us. Mental health affects all of us.

It is a powerful collection: some are text; others combine text and video. Here is one example, Stephanie Richardson:

Tyler Simmonds says that when he was a rock bottom, a woman at the community mental health office looked at him and just gave him a hug, a small gesture that showed him that he was going to be OK.

As a member of Canada’s South-Asian community, where mental health issues can often be considered taboo, Shreya Patel speaks of the importance of removing the stigma:

One in five Canadians will suffer from mental illness at some point in their lifetime. One of the biggest hurdles for anyone suffering from mental illness is overcoming the stigma.

By attaching its brand to mental illness, Bell is helping to normalize the conversation around mental illness and raise awareness. Recent research has found that 4 in 5 Canadians are more aware of mental health issues than 5 years ago, 70% think attitudes about mental health have changed for the better, and over half believe the stigma around mental illness has been reduced.

On January 31, you can be part of the conversation and help, using Facebook, Twitter or other channels described here.

On January 31, tweet a message with #BellLetsTalk .

I spend a lot of time thinking about unintended consequences that emerge from telecommunications regulations.

A year ago, I wrote a piece asking “Will regulation inhibit innovation?”

That article was looking at technology solutions to deal with unsolicited calls from telemarketers. In response to a CRTC notice of consultation asking “what regulatory measures, if any, should be established,” at the time I observed, “Each time a regulatory measure is introduced, there are limits imposed on the degrees of freedom for innovation.”

Twenty years ago, permission-less innovation, sometimes in the form of spoofed calling identifiers, helped bring down the cost of delivering international long distance calls using line side connections. If caller ID had been verified, many low cost calling arrangements may not have emerged.

I continue to be troubled by the CRTC’s decision on differential pricing practices (Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2017-104) issued last April. The language in the decision seems to ignore the potential for interference in service innovation. For example, the CRTC provided a specific direction, explicitly favouring certain types of innovation over others: “Rather than implementing marketing practices such as zero-rating, ISPs in the retail Internet access services market should focus on innovating by enhancing, for example, the speed, coverage, capacity, security, and reliability of their existing networks, for the benefit of Canadians.”

Early in the decision, the CRTC quoted a witness who asserted “that differential pricing practices would end the era when entrepreneurs are free to innovate without permission, which is a core net neutrality principle that has fostered innovation up until now.”

While the decision claimed to establish an ex-post complaints based regulatory regime for evaluating differential pricing innovations, it simultaneously established a regime for service providers to have the regulator pre-authorize innovations:

If an ISP is unsure as to whether a differential pricing practice would be consistent with the framework, it may file an application seeking a Commission determination prior to implementing the practice in question.
…
to encourage ISPs to seek a determination in advance of offering a differential pricing practice as appropriate, the Commission, in dealing with a complaint about a differential pricing practice and in accordance with its powers under section 72.003 of the Act, may consider imposing an administrative monetary penalty.

I sense an imbalance in permission-less innovation. In the early days of smart phones, differential data plans were the norm, with offers of low priced, flat rate access to popular applications intended to get people to try out mobile internet. None of these plans needed to be reviewed in advance by the regulator. We might want to consider whether any would have survived a review under the current Canadian regulatory framework. Yet, did the practice of favouring certain social media and messaging applications reduce incentives or opportunities for entrepreneurs to innovate without permission?

Hardly. These pricing practices encouraged more people to get online.

Can we do better anticipating the risks and opportunities that arise from intervention in the marketplace in order to avoid unintended consequences? Can regulators avoid the temptation to intervene and allow the marketplace to decide which business models will succeed?

How can policy makers ensure Canadians have the opportunity to derive the full benefits from innovation and disruption in an increasingly digital economy?

The theme for The 2018 Canadian Telecom Summit [June 4-6, Toronto] is “Innovation and Disruption in ICT: reinventing and securing our business and personal lives.” Save more than $200 by registering before the end of February. Why not register today?

Earlier this week, The Globe and Mail carried an article in which Conservative leader Andrew Scheer said his party supported “the concept of net neutrality” and the newspaper portrayed this as being in contrast to his Innovation critic, Maxime Bernier.

Mr. Scheer added that his party supports the concept of net neutrality, the rules that require all internet traffic be treated equally. This comes in contrast to his innovation critic and former leadership rival, Conservative MP Maxime Bernier, who publicly advocated against it in favour of less government control and more free competition.

Are these positions really in conflict with each other?

Every so often, I like to refer back to the report of the Telecom Policy Review panel [pdf, 1.6MB]. While that panel reported back to parliament more than 11 years ago, most of its work still holds up today. Recall, the panel defined net neutrality in terms of “the right of Canadian consumers to access publicly available Internet applications and content of their choice by means of public telecommunications networks that provide access to the Internet.”

The panel said:

Given the complexity of this area, the rapid evolution of technologies and the market dynamics, the Panel believes the regulator here should have more discretion than in other areas of regulation. However, the Panel also believes this discretion should be exercised with a view to encouraging reliance on market forces and customer choice as much as possible. For example, there may be situations in which a customer wants an ISP to block access to particular applications or content. In addition, some customers may be willing to accept a reduced degree of access in exchange for a lower price. Such consumer choices should be respected.

In the Panel’s view, the purpose of a customer access rule should be consumer protection, and there should be a strong emphasis on ensuring that customers have the information required to make informed choices. In this way, the rule would promote the efficient operation of market forces.

Recall, this was a panel originally created by a Liberal government, that ultimately delivered its report to Maxime Bernier, the Conservative party Industry Minister at the time.

It is possible to support the principles of net neutrality, “the concept”, and still support the implementation of rules that encourage “reliance on market forces and customer choice as much as possible.”

We should not presume that supporting the concept of net neutrality is inconsistent with a light touch regulatory approach to its implementation.

Which posts resonated with my readers in 2017?

Looking at the analytics, these 5 blog posts had the most individual page views:

1. “Driving innovation in healthcare” [October 30]
2. “Parting is such sweet sorrow” [June 8]
3. “Deconstructing the CRTC” [May 8]
4. “A mandate letter for the new CRTC Chair” [June 23]
5. “25 years of telecom competition” [June 12]

Thanks to links from other sites, that October 30 post (Driving innovation in healthcare) has become the single most viewed post since I started my blog nearly 12 years ago.

Like last year’s list, an honourable mention goes to a post from way back in 2006, “Knock-down versus knock-out,” which talked about challenges chasing illegal content off the internet. I find it fascinating that this post continues to attract attention, perhaps because recent news articles have raised the discussion of blocking internet sites that host pirated content.

I had one tweet that attracted more attention than any other – it was a re-tweet of something posted by CNN, with me simply highlighting one of the quotes in the article:

Thank you for following me here on this blog (and on Twitter) and engaging over the past year. Let me extend to you the very best wishes for health, happiness and peace in the year ahead.

Happy new year!