In case you weren’t there (or you were there but wanted to see what we said), the following were the opening remarks delivered by my co-chair, Michael Sone, and me at The 2015 Canadian Telecom Summit.
GST Conferences was created to produce our inaugural conference in 2002, “Celebrating 10 Years of Long Distance Competition in Canada.”
Twenty three years of competitive telecommunications and today’s landscape of services, of providers, of modalities of communication looks nothing like it did in 1992. A generation of Canadians has no idea what it was like gathering around the phone on Sundays to place long distance calls to out of town grandparents or other relatives, because long distance calls could cost an hour’s pay for each minute on the phone.
In fact, in many ways, with wireless still an expensive novelty and Internet usage in its infancy, telecom of the early-‘90s had more in common with the analogue environment of 1950s and ‘60s than it does with the all-digital, hyper-connected, socially-networked world of 2015. The Internet of Everything is the reality that cuts across and impacts, well, everything. And we’ll hear all about that this week.
Each year, we observe that wireless services flourish with new gadgets and a never-ending stream of new apps and services raising connectivity and instantaneous communication to new heights.
Each year we continue to increase our consumption of bits, of radio spectrum, of fiber capacity.
This trend continues to raise substantive policy issues as service providers – new entrant and incumbent alike – try to stay ahead of demand and seek to invest in newer, faster, higher capacity technologies.
Among the subjects we will examine over the next 3 days is creating the right policy framework to attract and incent continued investment in Canadian telecommunications.
On both sides of the river, our regulator and policy makers in Ottawa and Gatineau continue to disappoint many of us by failing to provide the leadership needed to guide the development of Canada’s digital economy. Neither the CRTC Chair, nor the Minister of Industry have stepped up to seriously address the challenge of getting low income Canadians online. It is perhaps the most glaring omission from Canada’s so-called digital strategy.
I will repeat what I said last year: “Kids need computers at home to do homework.”
Six weeks ago, south of the border, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel wrote:
Students who lack broadband access at home are unable to complete basic schoolwork. They have trouble keeping up in the classroom. More than that, they are holding our educational efforts back.
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The homework gap is the cruelest part of the digital divide. But we can take steps now to tackle it — steps that will help students get their schoolwork done, help expand access to the Internet, and help grow our digital economy.
Canada’s Digital Strategy, follows the politically attractive path that continues (and expands) the subsidy systems based on geography. Hundreds of millions of dollars have flowed to subsidize rural and remote regions without regard to the actual financial needs of consumers.
In the most recent example, a couple of weeks ago, Industry Canada announced that it has exceeded its initial target of connecting 280,000 rural, remote and northern households at minimum speeds of 5 Mbps by more than 75,000, and said that “most” other projects will be done within the next two years – in time for Canada’s Sesquicentennial in 2017.
The minister said, over 98 percent of Canadian households will be able to subscribe to new or improved high-speed Internet services by that time.
While we applaud programs aimed at increased connectedness to everyone, even if this latest objective is met, we wonder if the speeds offered will be sufficient for many of today’s common online tasks. The service providers will only deploy where there is a good business case for doing so and, therefore, universal broadband depends on creative approaches – whether financial or technical – for delivering a positive return. And second, most of Canada’s digitally challenged citizens are in the urban areas.
Low income Canadians, who tend to be concentrated in urban areas across the country, have no programs to help them pay for service. Prices that may seem affordable to most Canadians, are out of reach for those who are living from week-to-week, let alone month-to-month. All of us may complain about the price of service – who wouldn’t like lower bills for everything – but more than 80% of us have computers at home connected to the internet. As I have written many times, there are too many low income households that don’t even have a computer, let alone a broadband connection.
Isador Rabi, the 1944 Nobel Prize winner in Physics credited his mother for making him a scientist. Each day, instead of asking him what he learned in school, she asked him if he asked a good question today. In its Basic Service public notice, I am concerned that the CRTC didn’t ask the right questions. Questions were based on “where” the CRTC should act, pointing to a pre-disposition to continue the patronizing but politically expedient rural subsidy regime. We should first be asking “who”. Who doesn’t subscribe? And then move on to “why”.
Canada needs to make changes to its approach if we want to bridge the gap between those who can and those who cannot afford to participate in a digital economy.
We will be heading into an election this fall. To what extent will digital issues play a part in party platforms?
What should we be looking for to drive a greater degree of digital inclusiveness for all Canadians, young and old, urban and rural, regardless of their economic station?
- We need programs that increase digital literacy and promote connectivity for economically disadvantaged Canadians.
- We need to set a goal of having a connected computer in every home with a school aged child. Every household with school aged children needs to be digitally connected. We need to eliminate the Homework Gap.
- We need to drive increased adoption of Information and Communications Technology in business
- We need to improve ICT adoption in all dealings with government, and government funded agencies, especially in improving the quality and efficiency of health care delivery.
- We need our customers to be confident that they can engage online securely and with their privacy safeguarded.
Let’s see if Digital Canada 150 can be more than a slogan in the October election.
