For years, I have been writing about concerns that not enough is being done to get devices and connectivity into low income households with school aged kids. An article in the Toronto Star provides a troubling description of the growing digital divide.

Almost 60 per cent of Ontario schools allow students to BYOD — bring your own device — to class, a practice trending across the province despite concerns over a growing “digital divide,” says a new report on technology in education.

The report, “Digital Learning in Ontario Schools: The New Normal” [pdf], was produced by People for Education. The report concludes with 5 recommendations:

• Develop a working definition of digital literacy
• Establish a framework for evaluation of quality and value of ICT investments
• Support teachers’ digital professional development
• Bridge the digital divide
• Develop policy to ensure quality learning resources.

I’ll focus on the question of the digital divide.

The government should change the focus of its broadband programmes. We need to ensure that “affordability” becomes the primary criterion for government subsidies in a national digital strategy. Rural broadband initiatives that give grants based on geography rather than financial need may be politically attractive – the ceremonial cheque being handed to a local MP is certain to get coverage in the local papers and in election campaign materials – but such initiatives fail to address the most substantial digital divide, the divide based on income.

As my regular readers are aware, almost half of all households in Canada’s lowest income quintile lack a home computer. Affordability is keeping a million households from digital connectivity. That is a challenge for both urban and rural Canadians. 

Kids who don’t have access to a connected computing device simply can’t succeed in today’s classrooms with digital curricula.

As Industry Minister James Moore prepares to launch Canada’s national digital strategy, we should be looking for the federal government to be supporting programmes that help ensure that every household with school aged children has access to computers and devices with internet connectivity.

The Royal Society of Canada released its Expert Panel Report on the Review of Safety Code 6: Potential Health Risks of Radiofrequency Fields [pdf] earlier today.

The panel was established in response to a request from Health Canada to examine five key questions to determining whether Health Canada’s proposed changes to Safety Code 6 provide adequate protection from adverse health effects:

• Do the basic restrictions specified in Safety Code 6 (2013) provide adequate protection for both workers and the general population from established adverse health effects from Radiofrequency (RF) fields?
• Are there any other established adverse health effects occurring at exposure levels below the Basic Restrictions in Safety Code 6 (2013) that should be considered for revising the Basic Restrictions and Reference Levels in Safety Code 6 (2013)?
• Is there sufficient evidence upon which to establish separate Basic Restrictions or recommendations for the eye?
• Do the Reference Levels established in Safety Code 6 (2013) provide adequate protection against exceeding the Basic Restrictions in Safety Code 6 (2013)?
• Should additional precautionary measures be introduced into the human exposure limits in Safety Code 6 (2013)? If so, what is recommended and why?

In 1998, Health Canada first commissioned the Royal Society to examine Safety Code 6 to assess consistency with the scientific literature in setting limits to protect the public from adverse health risks. This led to a Expert Panel report in March 1999. While there have been changes made to Safety Code 6 over the past 15 years, public concerns continue to be raised in respect of RF exposure that fall within the limits of the code. So, in 2013, Health Canada once again commissioned the Royal Society to strike an independent expert panel.

At nearly 120 pages plus appendices, it is a hefty read.

The bottom line? A single statement in the Public Summary says it best: “the Panel has concluded that the balance of evidence at this time does not indicate negative health effects from exposure to RF energy below the limits recommended in the Safety Code.”

However, recognizing that research on many of the health effects is ongoing the Panel recommends that Health Canada should continue to monitor the literature and further, that Health Canada should “aggressively pursue scientific research” to clarify the RF energy-cancer issue and further investigate the question of electromagnetic hypersensitivity.

How did the Society answer the questions?

• Yes
• Unable to identify any
• No
• Not quite
• Health Canada should expand its risk communication strategy and incorporate suggestions on practical measures that Canadians can take to reduce their exposure around cell phone use

How competitive is Canada’s telecommunications market?

That question has been one of the more fiercely debated subjects around water-coolers and dinner parties. Pundits and politicians have made telecom competition an issue that stimulated advertising on our TV networks over the past year and figured prominently in the latest federal budget.

So, in cooperation with the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University, The 2014 Canadian Telecom Summit is going to examine “Competition in Telecom” through the eyes of some of the top telecom competition economists on the continent.

Taking place on Monday June 16, the session will be moderated by Dvai Ghose of Canaccord Genuity and will feature:

• Robert Crandall [Senior Fellow, Brookings Institute]
• John Mayo [Professor, Georgetown University]
• Eli Noam [Professor, Columbia University]
• Roger Ware [Professor, Queens University]
• Len Waverman [Dean, DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University]

All of these economists have considerable expertise in the economics of telecommunications and have testified in regulatory and competition proceedings. It should be a fascinating session – entertaining and educational.

One of the many sessions at The 2014 Canadian Telecom Summit, taking place June 16-18 in Toronto.

It is a new budget year. Have you registered yet?

Legislation to force lower wholesale roaming rates is part of Bill C-31, The Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1, which was given first reading in the House of Commons on Friday. The Government’s budget implementation Act, formally known as “An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 11, 2014 and other measures” contains provisions that will change the Telecom Act, among its “other measures”.

As described in the Summary section of the Act,

Division 16 of Part 6 amends the Telecommunications Act to set a maximum amount that a Canadian carrier can charge to another Canadian carrier for certain roaming services.

There are two sections of the Telecommunications Act in play, as detailed in Sections 239 and 240 of Bill C-31. For the purposes of setting wholesale caps for voice, text and data, a new Section 27.1 is created, which contains the formula for what Canadian carrier can charge a second carrier. In addition, the budget implementation Act intends to give power to the CRTC to enforce these rates, by adding the new Section 27.1 to a list for which compliance is determined by the CRTC “as a question of fact”, amending subsection 27(3) to read:

3) The Commission may determine in any case, as a question of fact, whether a Canadian carrier has complied with this section or section 25, 27.1 or 29, or with any decision made under section 24, 25, 29, 34 or 40.

The proposed new section 27.1 is lengthy, but it results in setting a ceiling on wholesale rates through a simple arithmetic determination of carriers’ average retail rates:

27.1 (1) The amount charged during a year by a Canadian carrier to a second Canadian carrier for roaming services with respect to the transmission of all domestic wireless voice calls and the domestic portion of all international wireless voice calls shall not exceed the amount determined by the formula A/B where

1. is the first Canadian carrier’s total retail revenues from the provision of wireless voice call services to its Canadian subscribers, for calls both originating and terminating in Canada, for the preceding year; and
2. is the number of minutes provided for those calls for the preceding year.

(2) The amount charged during a year by a Canadian carrier to a second Canadian carrier for roaming services with respect to the transmission of wireless data in Canada shall not exceed the amount determined by the formula A/B where

1. is the first Canadian carrier’s total retail revenues from the provision of wireless data services in Canada to its Canadian subscribers for the preceding year; and
2. is the number of megabytes provided for those data services for the preceding year.

(3) The amount charged during a year by a Canadian carrier to a second Canadian carrier for roaming services with respect to the transmission of all domestic wireless text messages and the domestic portion of all international wireless text messages shall not exceed the amount determined by the formula A/B where

1. is the first Canadian carrier’s total retail revenues from the provision of wireless text message services to its Canadian subscribers, for text messages both originating and terminating in Canada, for the preceding year; and
2. is the number of those text messages for the preceding year.

(4) The Canadian carrier shall not charge the second Canadian carrier any other amount in relation to the provision of the roaming services referred to in subsections (1) to (3).

(5) The amount established by the Commission that a Canadian carrier can charge to a second Canadian carrier for roaming services prevails over an amount determined under any of subsections (1) to (3) to the extent of any inconsistency.

The budget Act has an interesting way to make the wholesale roaming legislation a temporary measure. Each of the two sections of Bill C-31 related to wholesale roaming [239 and 240] have two parallel subsections, (1) and (2). The first subsection gives effect to the changes; the second unwinds the changes. A subsequent Section 241 of the bill is entitled “Coming into Force,” designed to enable the unwinding the wholesale roaming provisions in Section 27.1 at some point in the future “on a day to be fixed by order of the Governor in Council.” The changes to enable the legislation creating wholesale roaming caps will come into force with the passage of the bill; these changes can be repealed “on a day to be fixed by order of the Governor in Council.” No further legislation will be required – effectively, just a cabinet directive.

How will carriers be impacted?

By using the overall average retail rates, the government roaming caps do not appear to be as aggressive as they might have been. Although incumbent carriers will see a reduction in roaming rates, the government could have set an even lower cap – such as by setting the formula along the lines of a most favoured nation clause, requiring that new entrants are charged no more than the best rates charged on a retail basis.

Ultimately, the new wholesale rates should provide improved economics for new entrants to remove off-network differential rates for trans-Canada voice, text and data services to their customers. At the same time, the rates are not so low as to remove the incentive for new entrant carriers to extend the reach of their own network facilities to lower their costs. In all, it appears to be a balanced approach.

This is certain to be the subject of some discussion during the Regulatory Blockbuster at The 2014 Canadian Telecom Summit, taking place June 16-18 in Toronto. Have you registered yet?

With the snow and ice from December still on the ground, it is hard to believe that The 2014 Canadian Telecom Summit is just over 10 weeks away. From June 16-18, the leading stakeholders in Canada’s ICT sector will be gathering in Toronto for three days of high-octane interaction, top-level keynote speakers and thought-provoking panel discussions.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll feature some of the themes being explored by various panels at the event.

This year, in addition to the ever popular Regulatory Blockbuster, we are featuring sessions devoted to:

• The Continuing Evolution of TV;
• Cloud, Big Data and the Transformative Power of the Network;
• Cyber Defense;
• Competition in Telecom;
• Customer Experience Management;
• Converged Business Models;
• The Digitization of Canada’s Economy;
• Rage of the Machine: The growth of NFC, M2M, Mobile Commerce & More; and
• CIO/CTO Roundtable.

Visit the conference website or check out the latest version of the conference brochure.

A visit to the conference website will show you a list of 25 companies that are supporting us with sponsorships that help us stage The Canadian Telecom Summit, which has become the place for Canada’s ICT leaders to meet, interact and do business. We appreciate the support of our sponsors and from all of our attendees.

The snow is melting and warmer weather is sure to be on its way. Time to get to your spring activities: tune up the barbecue and lawnmower; clean up the gardens; check the air conditioner; book your seat at The Canadian Telecom Summit. No need to wait. Why not register for The Canadian Telecom Summit today?