In his address at this week’s Scotiabank TMT conference, CRTC Vice-Chair (Telecom) Adam Scott spoke about the Commission working to promote dynamism in the telecommunications marketplace, “where companies make big bets in new technology… to differentiate their offers and bring new value to consumers”. His address offered a detailed explanation of how the CRTC is thinking about the telecommunications industry and some its recent telecom policy decisions.

The CRTC says telecom needs more “dynamism.” There are many ways the industry has been taking big risks for decades — but as I wrote earlier this week, there are signs suggesting CRTC regulation is cooling investment.

One phrase stood out: the Vice-Chair described the Commission’s decisions as ‘regulatory hypotheses’ that will ultimately be tested by evidence.

We go through proceedings to crystallize issues and identify the strategically important outcomes that our decisions need to promote. And then we take the evidence on the record and use it to form a regulatory hypothesis—that by taking a certain course, we will see a certain type of outcome.

That framing is welcome. Regulatory policy should absolutely be judged by its real-world outcomes.

But the speech also contained a premise that deserves closer scrutiny: the suggestion that telecom companies need encouragement to take bold commercial risks to inject dynamism into the market.

If anything, the opposite is true.

Canada’s telecom sector has always been about big bets. Canada’s telecom networks exist today because companies repeatedly took enormous risks on new technologies.

In the 1980s, operators invested heavily in cellular networks long before there was certainty that Canadians would adopt mobile services. At the time, many observers believed mobile phones would remain a niche product for executives and emergency services.

Fast forward a few decades to see tens of billions of dollars poured into nationwide LTE networks, fibre-to-the-home deployments, and now 5G. The shift from copper to fibre alone represents one of the largest infrastructure upgrades ever undertaken in Canada’s communications sector.

These investments weren’t made because regulators encouraged companies to ‘take risks.’ They were made because companies believed that, if they made the right bets, the regulatory and policy environment would allow them to recover the enormous capital required to build those networks.

That distinction is important.

Telecommunications is one of the most capital-intensive industries in the economy. Networks require billions of dollars in upfront investment with payback periods measured in decades as confirmed by one of the CFOs at the Scotiabank event. Companies only deploy that kind of capital when there is a reasonable expectation of regulatory stability and an opportunity to earn a return on investment.

The issue isn’t willingness to invest — it’s the risk environment associated with those investments.

The Vice-Chair’s speech repeatedly emphasized affordability and competition as policy goals. Few would disagree with those objectives. But, the real balancing act in telecom policy is ensuring that regulator’s competition frameworks don’t undermine the incentives driving facilities-based investment.

Investors pay close attention to regulatory risk. When policy signals suggest that long-term returns could be constrained, capital allocation decisions adjust accordingly. Those signals don’t take years to show up. In fact, as I wrote earlier this week, the CRTC’s own Canadian Telecommunications Market Report (CTMR) demonstrates we are seeing early evidence. Several Canadian carriers have pulled back on capital spending plans.

At the same time, financial analysts have begun openly questioning whether further reductions in capital expenditures (capex) are warranted. For example, analysts at Scotiabank recently wrote “wouldn’t it make more sense for incumbents to materially reduce capex” given the evolving regulatory environment. Those comments didn’t come from industry lobbyists. They came from the investment community that finances telecom infrastructure.

Another theme in Mr. Scott’s remarks was the suggestion that large network operators might prefer a world without wholesale competition. That framing misses the real debate.

Canada’s telecom providers compete intensely every day. They spend billions expanding networks, upgrading technology, and fighting for customers in one of the most capital-intensive sectors of the economy.

The question has never been whether competition should exist.

The question is how to structure competition policy and regulation in a manner that preserve strong incentives to build and upgrade infrastructure.

Facilities-based competition — companies building and operating their own networks — has been the foundation of Canada’s telecom success. Fibre networks, nationwide wireless coverage, and now 5G infrastructure exist because companies – competing companies – invested billions of dollars to build them.

Resale-based competition can play a role in the market. But if it significantly weakens the economics of building networks, the long-term consequences are felt in slower investment and delayed upgrades.

Let’s return to the description of Commission policies as regulatory hypotheses that will ultimately be tested by evidence. As we heard in his address,

We have advanced regulatory hypotheses that now serve as blueprints for the future. The architect’s job is done, and the plans have been handed over to the builder. Might we need to adjust as we go? Sure, that’s normal, prudent, and expected. A good regulator, like a good builder, will adjust to conditions on the ground. We will need to, and are in fact required to, actively gather the evidence that will inform us as we go.

The hypotheses are already being tested and evidence (in the form of the CTMR) is already in the hands of the Commission. Price movements are one piece of evidence, but they are far from the only one. The more important indicators are the signals coming from capital markets and the investment decisions being made inside telecom companies.

When analysts begin advising operators to reduce network investment, that should get policymakers’ attention. Those policymakers might want to explore whether their hypothesis needs to be adjusted, recognizing the “conditions on the ground.”

I’m not convinced the regulator’s job as architect is done and that it is now up to the industry to build.

Ultimately, whether the industry continues building at the pace Canadians expect depends upon the blueprint regulators have drawn.

Telecom operators have never lacked the willingness “to make big bets,” to take risks “to differentiate their offers and bring new value to consumers”.

But, even the most ambitious builders need a regulatory framework that supports long-term investment, not one that makes such investments harder to justify.

How should the CRTC promote dynamism in telecommunications? By architecting a policy framework that supports long-term investment by carriers to build facilities and infrastructure.

For years, I have talked about policy and regulatory impacts on capital spending by telecom carriers. As we have come to learn in the Twitter/X era, government action can enhance or destroy incentives for investment with the simplicity of a late-night Ministerial tweet, or the potential global economic impact of late-night Presidential social media musings.

Last week’s release of the CRTC’s “Canadian Telecommunications Market Report 2026” (CTMR) provides quantitative evidence of a pull-back in telecom investment – reductions that are attributable to regulatory policy. It is notable that the CRTC also released its 2026-27 Strategic Plan last week.

While the facts are laid out clearly in the CTMR, there is only a subtle acknowledgement in the text that regulatory decisions could be influencing capital spending. The report notes reduced investment in landline networks due to “a large pullback by one of Canada’s major operators” — an allusion clearly referring to Bell, which has not been shy in attributing its CAPEX reductions to 2023 and 2025 CRTC decisions.

The CTMR demonstrates how Canada’s largest operators are weighing returns on incremental network investment, resulting in 10% lower capital investment in wireline networks in 2024 compared to 2022. A $500M decline in total 2023 capital investment first noted in last year’s CTMR continued, and it accelerated to a $600M reduction in 2024 versus 2023.

The Monitoring Report says, “Already, operators have signalled that they are moderating their investments in telecommunications networks. This is partly a response to pressure on their revenues and partly because wired and wireless networks now reach virtually the entire population.”

I think a little more introspection by the CRTC is warranted. For years, the regulatory framework — particularly a hands‑off approach to fibre and wireless — created strong incentives to build. Policy favoured the primacy of facilities-based competition.

But that environment is changing. The CRTC’s new wholesale fibre access regime, combined with a more interventionist stance on pricing and competition, introduced uncertainty into the investment calculus. Scotiabank’s Maher Yaghi recently wrote a report asking, “Why continue to heavily invest in infrastructure?”

In an environment where 1) the regulator forces operators to rent their infrastructure to competitors both on the wireline and wireless sides at rates set by the same regulator and not on a commercial basis as seen in the US, 2) any investment in network technology made by an operator provides the same advantage to its competitors, and 3) given the high leverage of companies like Rogers, BCE and TELUS, wouldn’t it make more sense for incumbents to materially reduce capex to levels closer to challengers like Quebecor? Obviously this was not the choice made by either BCE nor Rogers when setting their capex guidelines for 2026, but we believe it is a fair question to ask in the current Canadian regulatory context.

Capital flows toward environments where returns are predictable and policy signals are stable. When those signals become ambiguous, investment pauses, recalibrates, or shifts to lower‑risk categories. Bell framed its CAPEX reduction as a direct response to regulatory headwinds, arguing that mandated access and pricing constraints erode the business case for continued fibre expansion. Whether or not one agrees with that interpretation, the CTMR’s acknowledgement that investment levels are dropping – and the regulator’s potential role – is significant. It states “As the CRTC continues to monitor the market, it will be mindful of the balance between increased competition in Internet services, and ongoing investment in high-quality networks.”

The Commission’s Strategic Plan says it will “Promote competition for Internet and cellphone services while supporting continued investment in reliable, high-quality networks by allowing competitors to access telecommunications infrastructure at fair rates and on fair terms.”

The CTMR stopped short of drawing explicit conclusions, but we need to be concerned about the tangible impact on investment behaviour from regulatory decisions. The market is indicating that what the CRTC considers “fair rates” is unable to support the same levels of “continued investment in reliable, high-quality networks”.

The next few years will test whether Canada can maintain its infrastructure leadership while pursuing competition policy based on government intervention. The Monitoring Report states up front:

Telecommunications – especially high-speed Internet and cellphone services – have never been as central to Canadians’ daily lives and livelihoods as they are now. Canadian telecommunications networks have never been as extensive or advanced as they are today. These are undeniable successes, attesting to Canadians’ embrace of digital technology, to innovation and investment by the telecommunications industry, and to policy frameworks that support better network quality, coverage, and service. As we look ahead, however, the market is shifting, and the Canadian industry is facing significant challenges.

Through the years, government policy has promoted a focus on Quality, Coverage, and Affordable Prices. The CTMR acknowledges that “Canadians believe telecommunications services have become more affordable, or that they have the opportunity to switch to more affordable or suitable options.” With the drive toward affordability in hand, more attention is needed on the regulatory impacts on investment – investment that drives quality and coverage.

The CTMR shows that 96.4% of Canadian households had access to the national objective broadband service (50/10 Mbps unlimited) by year-end 2024. But there is work to be done to provide coverage for one in six rural households, a third of households on First Nations reserves, and 30% of residences in the Territories. The report shows wireless networks covered 99.5% of Canadians by the end of 2024, but that needle hasn’t moved much since the capital investment peak in 2022, leaving 10% of those on First Nations Reserves.

Speaking at the 2011 Canadian Telecom Summit, former TELUS CFO Robert McFarlane warned attendees that nothing changes the profitability of a carrier faster than the stroke of a regulator’s pen. Going forward, will the regulatory framework provide enough certainty to keep investment flowing into Canada’s networks?

For more than two decades, much of the telecom policy conversation has revolved around a challenge: closing the digital divide. We’ve debated broadband targets, technology toolkits, rural funding models, affordability programs, and spectrum policy — all with the goal of ensuring that every Canadian can get online.

To be clear, that work isn’t finished. But, as access improves and connectivity becomes nearly ubiquitous, a new divide is emerging. The next digital divide isn’t about who is connected. It’s about how we use the time we are connected. How our attention is being shaped, fragmented, and monetized.

The new divide won’t be solved with fibre builds, radio spectrum, satellites or subsidy programs. It can’t be solved by money being thrown at engineering and construction.

In the early 2000s, the internet was a scarce resource: limited speeds, limited coverage, limited devices. The policy challenge was straightforward: if we build more, we will connect more and deliver more.

Scarcity has flipped. Connectivity is now abundant. We have choices of technologies, choices of service providers, choices of speeds.

Attention is the scarce resource. Every platform, app, and service is competing for the same finite cognitive resource. Unlike bandwidth, attention can’t be expanded. It can only be redistributed — often in ways that can leave users overwhelmed, distracted, or exhausted.

There is a growing body of evidence challenging the wisdom of pushing kids and schools toward being online all the time. A couple weeks ago, in my post “The bedroom problem”, I referenced testimony in front of the US Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, showing stagnation or decline in literacy, numeracy, problem solving, creativity, and general cognitive performance among adolescents, correlated with classroom environments undergoing digital transformation. A recent article in The Sunday Times looks at how reading test scores fell in Sweden, coincident with the country’s move to screen-based learning.

Earlier this week, an article on Fortune was entitled “The U.S. spent $30 billion to ditch textbooks for laptops and tablets: The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents”. The author says “Rather than empowering the generation with access to more knowledge, the technology had the opposite effect.”

These results have implications for policymakers, telecom service providers, and families.

Service providers traditionally defined their role around access: build the network, deliver the service, keep it reliable. But as the recent Rogers screen‑time study showed, families are increasingly concerned not just with how much connectivity they have, but what that connectivity enables. Parents aren’t asking for faster speeds. That study suggests they’re asking for help managing digital life.

That’s a fundamentally different expectation — one the industry needs to explore.

When nearly half of youth smartphone use happens in bedrooms, the network is no longer just a pipe. It’s an environment that influences habits, sleep, socialization, and wellbeing. Is the public redefining digital responsibility?

Historically, the idea behind “the stupid network” was that communications services providers were responsible for connectivity, and platforms were responsible for content. Users were responsible for their own behaviour online. Those boundaries have always been blurry.

The emerging digital divide is no longer between those who have broadband and those who don’t. It’s between those who can manage digital distractions and those who are overwhelmed by them. It is a next level form of digital literacy: consider it to be “Graduate level” digital literacy.

Which families will be left to navigate the attention economy alone? It is a divide much harder to measure than download speeds, but its impacts — on mental health, productivity, education, and civic engagement — may be far greater.

Is this a role for communications services providers? Connectivity providers are not the same as content companies. They don’t design algorithms, or curate feeds, but they build and operate the infrastructure upon which it all rides.

So what is reasonable to expect? Will the sector evolve from focusing on more speed, and more data to lead development of enriched digital experiences, with healthier digital habits?

Which service providers will offer tools, like usage dashboards, with time‑of‑day insights, and device‑level breakdowns? The tools would need to be simple optional controls to help households set their own boundaries.

This isn’t about paternalism. It’s about acknowledging that connectivity now shapes users’ cognitive environments, and those users need support navigating these environments.

If the first digital divide required infrastructure investment, the next one will require interdisciplinary thinking: Public health; Education; Technology and User interface design; Privacy; Consumer protection.

The original digital divide was about access. The next one is about attention. While communications services providers didn’t create the attention divide, the sector is being pulled into the conversation about how to manage it.

The service provider sector may not need to own this issue, but it will need to be part of its solution space — whether by choice or by expectation.

There is a national consultation underway to develop Canada’s AI strategy. A few weeks ago, a summary of the submissions was released.

Canada’s AI capabilities are having a moment, but not what we might necessarily brag about. For years, we’ve celebrated an AI research pedigree while quietly ignoring the infrastructure gap beneath it. A recent Policy Options article by Joe Rowsell frames the issue clearly: Canada is talent‑rich but compute‑poor.

That’s more than just an inconvenient detail for the tech sector; we might ask if it could be a national strategic vulnerability.

Rowsell describes a reality that many in the telecom and digital infrastructure space have seen coming: Canadian researchers routinely ship their workloads — and often their data — to American‑based hyperscale facilities because domestic compute capacity isn’t there.

In other words, we may have built a world‑class AI research ecosystem, but it is riding on top of others’ servers.

More than a question of performance, it raises questions about sovereignty. When the computational infrastructure is outside our borders, so is operational control. And, when AI begins to underpin the operation of critical infrastructure — energy, communications, transportation, health — control matters.

The paper highlights another tension: AI’s global energy appetite is exploding. Servers optimized for AI workloads can consume ten times the electricity of conventional machines, and global demand could rival Japan’s power consumption by 2030.

That’s a major electric grid planning problem.

Canada is in a better position than most countries to solve it. More than 80% of Canada’s electricity is considered non-emitting, powered primarily by hydro and nuclear, and supplemented by solar and wind. Canada’s climate naturally reduces cooling loads. These are significant structural advantages over the US and Europe, if we build on them.

Rowsell proposes a framework built on three pillars:

• Sustainable-by-design: Build data centres that start efficient rather than retrofit later.
• Sovereign-by-design: Keep Canadian data, models, and operational control inside Canadian infrastructure.
• Responsible-by-design: Bake governance, safety, and Indigenous data sovereignty into the architecture itself.

A compelling argument in the article is for AI to be a grid asset, not simply an “energy hog”. With carbon aware scheduling, and waste‑heat capture, data centres can actually strengthen the grid rather than strain it.

From a telecom perspective, this conversation is overdue. AI workloads will reshape network demand patterns, data‑centre siting, spectrum planning, and cloud‑edge architectures. If Canada wants sovereign AI, it will need sovereign transport, sovereign interconnect, and sovereign cloud.

Compute without connectivity is useless. Connectivity without compute is a missed opportunity.

These lines stuck with me: “AI will not run out of code or chips, but it will run out of clean electrons. Electrons are the new currency of intelligence, and unlike most of the world, Canada’s supply is clean.”

Rowsell ends with a warning: Canada’s clean‑energy advantage won’t last forever. Other countries are racing to decarbonize their grids and scale their compute. Canada has those clean electrons — now. If we don’t move quickly, we could lose this significant structural advantage.

Earlier this week, an editorial in the Globe and Mail warned us to “Pay attention to what’s behind the AI curtain”.

The loudest proselytizers for artificial intelligence like to present the technology as inevitable. That may be so. However, we all need to be sensible enough not to fall for tech-bro bravado. Exaggerating what AI has actually achieved cannot be a way to convince people that this future has already arrived.

When the government released its summary of submissions, Michael Geist wrote a review, “What the Government Isn’t Saying About the Results of its AI Consultation“. He found the Government’s official summary softened some of the expert panel’s key messages. “The experts are trying to sound the alarm on the risks to Canada if it fails to act but that isn’t the message the government seemingly wants to communicate.” The summary of submissions may be less of “What We Heard”, and more like “What We Wanted to Hear”.

Canada’s AI research capabilities and talent are well known. Will we move quickly enough to build the necessary infrastructure to retain that talent at home.

Buried inside the recent Rogers’ screen‑time report is a statistic that merits more attention: 46% of youth smartphone use happens in the bedroom.

Not kitchens. Not living rooms. Not shared family spaces.

Bedrooms.

This single data point should drive a serious conversation about youth screen time, with implications well beyond parenting.

Last month, the United States Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee heard testimony from experts on the impact of screen time on children and young adults. Neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath told the Committee that Generation Z – those born roughly between 1997 and 2012 – is the first generation to underperform across every cognitive measure. [pdf, 631 KB]

His testimony showed stagnation or decline in literacy, numeracy, problem solving, creativity, and general cognitive performance among adolescents, correlated with classroom environments undergoing digital transformation.

Over half of our children now use a computer at school for one to four hours each day, and a full quarter spend more than four hours on screens during a typical seven-hour school day. Unfortunately, studies suggest that less than half of this time is spent actually learning, with students off-task for up to 38 minutes of every hour when on classroom devices.

Dr. Cooney Horvath isn’t calling for us to eliminate technology for our kids in schools and at home. “It is a question of aligning educational tools with how human learning actually works.” How do we protect children’s developmental needs? How do we balance technology and innovation with an objective to “maximize the cognitive capacity and long-term flourishing of the next generation”?

Moving from school to home, note that the Rogers study didn’t set out to highlight the shift to the bedroom, but the data demonstrates an interesting phenomenon. Private space connectivity is becoming the default. For years, we’ve talked about “the connected home”; with higher resolution, we can see “the connected bedroom” emerging.

A few forces have converged to make this inevitable: Smartphones are personal, portable, and always on; Wi‑Fi coverage in homes has improved dramatically; Social life for teens increasingly happens online — and privately; Bedrooms are the only space in the house where youths can feel fully autonomous.

The result is a shift from shared digital spaces to private digital ecosystems. If nearly half of youth screen time happens behind closed doors, then coverage, speed, latency, and device prioritization will all be part of the family dynamic. Parents may not articulate it this way, but Wifi performance and the connecting network can shape intra-household behaviour.

Further, bedroom usage complicates parental screen‑time management. Device‑level controls are relatively easy for teens to bypass, app‑level controls can be inconsistent (if available at all), platform‑level controls vary wildly. This is precisely why parents are looking to telcos for help. A teen spending two hours on a phone in the living room is a different scenario than six hours alone in a bedroom. Once a teen is in their room with a smartphone or tablet and a strong wireless signal, parental negotiations become psychological, not technical.

The Rogers Screen Break data hints at this: higher screen time correlates with lower sense of belonging and lower levels of physical activity. Location may be part of that story. If the bedroom is the new digital hub, telcos may need to rethink how home WiFi systems are marketed, how parental controls are structured, how usage dashboards visualize where time is spent, and whether room‑based profiles need to become a feature.

This isn’t necessarily a matter of surveillance. How can service providers give families visibility into patterns they currently can’t see? Youths are using their devices in private spaces because that’s where their social lives, entertainment, and autonomy reside. The question is not how to reverse this trend — it’s how to help families navigate it.

For service providers, this is an opportunity to evolve from being the invisible utility in the background to a partner in managing the modern connected home, or bedroom.

As legislators examine the effects of apps and technology on youth education and social development, parental tools will be an important part of the conversation.