Parliamentarians on the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology (INDU) have mustered faux outrage in their undertaking of a study on “Accessibility and Affordability of Wireless and Broadband Services in Canada”.

So far, the Committee has questioned witnesses from Quebecor / Videotron, the Competition Bureau, the CRTC, Bell, Rogers and TELUS. The Quebecor / Videotron panel was led by CEO PK Peladeau, but the Committee wanted the CEOs of the other major carriers to appear before them. Instead, the designated witnesses were a Chief Financial Officer, the President of the Wireless business unit, and the Executive Vice President of legal and regulatory affairs.

In other words, the carriers were represented by the kinds of experts equipped to answer questions related to the study. That was clearly the approach used by the Competition Bureau and the CRTC. Both agencies sent representatives responsible for areas expected to be the focus of the study. The CRTC Chair didn’t appear; the Commissioner of the Competition Bureau wasn’t there. No summons to appear were issued to the leaders of the agencies.

But the INDU members displayed faux outrage at the corporate CEOs who sent mere mortals to actually respond to questions, when the parliamentarians wanted their faces, if not their heads.

A couple years ago I wrote, “Giving elected officials the chance to ask questions of regulators is an important part of our democratic process. It can be very informative when used wisely. Unfortunately, the opportunity is wasted if Committee members are unprepared or do not have a solid understanding of the industries they are overseeing.”

The same can be said when MPs are armed with flawed or seriously outdated information. Rather than relying on official government data from ISED, the CRTC, or Statistics Canada, MPs were citing deeply flawed and widely discredited reports from Rewheel Research to mistakenly charge that Canadian mobile prices are the highest in the world. Recall, the International Center for Law and Economics referred to Rewheel as a “careless mish-mash of data points from which no reliable conclusions can be drawn.”

It simply isn’t true that Canadian prices are the highest in the world. Not by a long shot. Last November I wrote about a PwC study laying out a fact-based narrative on telecom affordability in Canada, painting a very different picture from the conventional wisdom.

MPs acknowledged that Canadian prices are coming down (as you have been reading here), but claimed prices are falling slower than in peer markets. That is also not true. In fact, prices have been going up in the US, the UK, and Australia (as well as many other countries).

MPs confused ARPU (a proxy for monthly bills), with prices – a mistake about which I write too frequently.

Witnesses have delivered information that is actually relevant to the study. That Canadian government fees for spectrum are the highest in the world, adding $5 per month in extra cost to mobile phone bills. That capital intensity by Canadian carriers is among the world’s highest, delivering high quality service across a challenging geography. That prices have fallen more than 15% in the past 12 months, roughly 50% in the past 5 years, despite price increases of close to 20% over the past 5 years in the overall Canadian economy. That the industry has created (and fully funded) targeted affordability programs to deliver home internet, mobile services, and devices to vulnerable communities.

The information that demonstrates the “Accessibility and Affordability of Wireless and Broadband Services in Canada” is available to members of INDU. Hopefully, we will see the MPs shed their faux outrage and open their minds to the answers being shared at the next meeting.

Yesterday, the CRTC released its annual industry monitoring report for the communications sector. Some of you may be thinking, “two months after year end is pretty good timing.” And it would be heroic timing if indeed the CRTC was reporting on 2023 industry data.

Unfortunately, the report was “Annual highlights of the telecommunications sector 2022” [also available as pdf, 910KB]. That’s right, 2022 data getting released 14 months after year-end.

Among the interesting data in the report is the official tally of Canadian telecommunications industry revenues: $57.2B. As noted by the CRTC, this means that foreign ownership restrictions (under Section 16 of the Telecom Act) only apply to carriers with telecommunications revenues exceeding 10% of that total (ie. $5.7B). In practice, this means Bell, Rogers and TELUS remain the only carriers that must be Canadian owned and controlled.

This was the 23rd edition of the CRTC’s communications industry monitoring reports. Back in the summer of 2000, Cabinet issued Order-in-Council 2000-1053:

Order requiring the CANADIAN RADIO-TELEVISION AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION to report to the Governor in Council, once a year for the next five years, on the status of competition in Canadian telecommunications markets and on the deployment and accessibility of advanced telecommunications infrastructure and services in urban and rural areas in all regions of Canada, and to submit its first report no later than September 28, 2001.

Beating the deadline by one day, on September 27, 2001, the CRTC issued its first annual Communications Monitoring Report [pdf, 8.9MB] covering data from the year 2000.

Following the first 5 years that were issued in response to the Cabinet directive, the CRTC continued publishing annual data. I started blogging in 2006 and I have included looks at the reports ever since.

Over time, the annual publication was revised to embed fewer tables, instead accompanying the text with a rich assortment of Open Data downloadable spreadsheets. The CRTC boasts over 400 datasets are available, many of them updated more frequently than once per year. A change log is maintained to help identify updates.

In 2021, the Commission rebranded the statistics as Communications Market Reports. The Market Reports are divided under 5 headings:

• High-speed broadband
• Mobile wireless
• Broadcasting
• Economic indicators
• Other telecom services

These online tables are more current than the annual summary, but there is much room for more timeliness. My records show that 2008 annual data was published in August 2009. The data for 2009 and 2010 were published in July of the subsequent year. Dates started to slide to September 2012 for 2011 data, then November 2017 for 2016 data. And now, the 2022 data took until the very end of February 2024, fourteen months after year-end.

Looking back over nearly a quarter-century of industry monitoring reports, isn’t it reasonable to have expected improvements in delivery over time? Sure, we have more detailed data and open access to some of the data, but collaboration tools should have enabled reporting speeds to improve dramatically.

Notably, as of last week, most public companies have already delivered official financial reports for year-end 2023.

Where do you go for timely telecommunications industry monitoring reports?

Is it time to tame “technology authoritarianism”?

Is that even possible?

Yesterday, the Canadian government introduced its long-promised Online Harms Act, with the promise of a focus on protecting children and youth from the “dangers of the internet”. I’ll have more on some of the specifics as the text of the legislation works its way through committee review.

From some of the earliest days of this blog, I have been writing about “Taming the wild west” of what I called the anarchy of the internet. At the time, I had a particular concern with the “fine balance between the right to free speech and the right of individuals not to be the objects of hate and violent speech”.

A recent article in The Atlantic caught my eye. In “The Rise of Technoauthoritarianism”, Adrienne LaFrance claims the technocrats of Silicon Valley are “leading an antidemocratic, illiberal movement” and government intervention is required.

She writes that she long believed that regulation was unnecessary, “in part because I was not (and am still not) convinced that the government can do so without itself causing harm… I’d much prefer to see market competition as a force for technological improvement and the betterment of society.”

in recent years, it has become clear that regulation is needed, not least because the rise of technocracy proves that Silicon Valley’s leaders simply will not act in the public’s best interest. Much should be done to protect children from the hazards of social media, and to break up monopolies and oligopolies that damage society, and more. At the same time, I believe that regulation alone will not be enough to meaningfully address the cultural rot that the new technocrats are spreading.

Why the epipheny? Why can’t market forces provide sufficient discipline? LaFrance reminds us that Silicon Valley “attracts many immensely talented people” (including half of my kids), working to do good.

Even the most deleterious companies have built some wonderful tools. But these tools, at scale, are also systems of manipulation and control. They promise community but sow division; claim to champion truth but spread lies; wrap themselves in concepts such as empowerment and liberty but surveil us relentlessly.

Read the full article.

I don’t agree with every claim made by LaFrance, but it is a well written, thought provoking piece. “Many Americans fret — rightfully — about the rising authoritarianism among MAGA Republicans, but they risk ignoring another ascendant force for illiberalism: the tantrum-prone and immensely powerful kings of tech.

Two weeks ago, US Congress summoned the CEOs of leading technology firms to discuss “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis.” Pressured under questioning, at one point Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized to victims. “No one should have to go through the things that your families have suffered.”

Although Canada has not yet introduced its long-promised Online Harms legislation, it has passed two of the bills promised under its Digital Charter:

• C-11: “The Online Streaming Act modernizes the Broadcasting Act and helps ensure Canadian stories and music are widely available on streaming platforms to the benefit of future generations of artists and creators in Canada.”
• C-18: “The Online News Act aims to ensure that dominant platforms compensate news businesses when their content is made available on their services.”

But, as I asked last Fall, are we “Losing sight of the target”.

And, if indeed it is time to tame “technology authoritarianism”, how do we tame them?

To what extent has the regulatory world been influenced by our choice of jargon and terminology?

Our choice of words, our use of language is often geared toward influencing opinion. But to what extent have we seen regulators influenced by terminology that is non-neutral or even pejorative?

I was reading an article by Eric Fruits of the International Center for Law and Economics that drew my attention to this issue. “The Curious Case of the Missing Data Caps Investigation”, is a recent about the FCC’s lack of action on the use of “data caps.” The author notes that what the FCC calls “data caps” aren’t really caps at all. Professor Daniel Lyons, associate dean of academic affairs and a professor of law at Boston College Law School, notes:

the phrase “data caps” is a misnomer. A cap implies a hard limit on the amount of data a customer may consume each month. That’s not an accurate description of most UBP [usage based pricing] offers, which are perhaps better characterized as pay-as-you-go plans. Customers pay in advance for a certain amount of data, and if they exceed that amount, they can purchase an additional amount. In other words, customers on these plans have unlimited data—they just pay for what they consume, just as they do with most other goods in society.

Me? I have long prefered the term “usage tier” for that very reason. As I wrote in 2016, such tiers enable lower-priced options for consumers who don’t need (or don’t want to pay) for a higher priced unlimited plan. Usage tiers have proven to be very popular in mobile services.
The recent article demonstrates that neither consumers nor service providers want true data caps. “Not only are hard caps subjectively ‘bad’ for consumers, but they are also bad business, because they leave money on the table. There’s no need to ban hard caps, because the market has already banned them. Consumers don’t want hard caps and providers don’t want to impose them.”

Over the years, jargon and terminology have changed in regulatory proceedings. Non-facility based service providers have found the term “reseller” to be a pejorative term. Back in the olden days, the resale and sharing of telecommunications services was a hard fought regulatory battle (you’re welcome). Even for small pieces of telecom facilities that were combined with other components and billions of dollars of infrastructure, service providers recognized that resale was resale. Resale was governed by wholesale regulations and tariffs approved by the CRTC or negotiated with the underlying carrier. To this day, the terms “reseller” and “wholesale-based” appear in official regulatory filings in a somewhat passive aggressive manner.

There are many other examples of jargon and terminology used in a manner to elicit negative feelings. Are early termination fees (ETF) a form of “junk fee”? Some argue that an ETF is a quid pro quo: the consumer pays a lower monthly price in exchange for a contractural promise to keep purchasing over a specified time period. The ETF is the cost of breaking that contract. While such fees are normal in mortgages, in insurance, hotel bookings and countless other industries, in telecommunications we have effectively eliminated the ETF.

The elimination of early termination fees was an effort to lower the cost for consumers to switch service providers prior to the end of a contract. Has there been any research to test the effectiveness of this regulatory measure or its impact on prices?

What other telecom terminology and jargon do you find being used in a not so neutral manner?

The Globe and Mail ran a story today that confused cellphone prices with mobile bills.

Prices aren’t the same as bills. I first wrote about that precisely 9 years ago.

The print edition headline was “Statscan figures on falling phone bills clash with other data”. The online headline was “Statscan says cellphone bills are plunging – the truth is more complicated”.

The story lede reads, “As households struggle with the largest bout of inflation in four decades, Statistics Canada says consumers are getting some relief from what is often a source of frustration: cellphone bills.”

The problem? Statistics Canada doesn’t say “cellphone bills are plunging”. The story is about the mobile services component of the consumer price index (CPI), not your cellphone bill. There is an important distinction. Consumers’ total monthly bills are measured in a different Statistics Canada report, the Survey of Household Spending, which is conducted annually (at best).

But, aren’t bills the same as prices? No, they aren’t.

Let’s say you are looking at renting an apartment. A building has a 1000 square foot 1-bedroom unit on the fourth floor available for $1500 per month, and the building has a 2 bedroom penthouse unit on the 30th floor with 360 degree views of the city for $2500 per month. You choose the 1-bedroom. A year later, the landlord has started including bundling heat into the rent, and you learn that the penthouse is now available for $2000 per month. You decide to upgrade. Your monthly rent bill went up but prices clearly came down.

In the mobile world, there are lots of elements that make up the total bill. Do you have limited or unlimited calling? Nationwide or regional? US calling? Reduced international calling? How much full speed data is included? Do you have limits on text or multi-media messaging? What voice mail features do you have? Those kinds of factors are described in the Globe and Mail article as quality adjustments.

The apartment case is obviously a hypothetical, since rents in Canada have been going up. Indeed, one of the only components of the CPI that has been showing regular decreases has been the Communications Services component, especially the mobile services sub-component (as I wrote about last month here and here).

The Globe story quotes National Bank Financial analyst Adam Shine saying “All or nearly every Canadian could have found a better-priced plan in 2023”.

Personally, I have talked with my carrier twice in the past 12 months to discuss my own mobile plans. I cut my monthly plan price by 43%, and I now get more than 5 times the data and cross-border roaming. I helped a close friend lower her bills more modestly just before taking a week-long vacation to the US. She had 3 lines with 10-32GB of data; now they share 450GB and they have US and Mexico borderless service. Per line she is now paying 10% less. They migrated from a flanker onto the main brand. And, they are getting far more for less money, while incurring no roaming fees on their vacation this week.

“Statscan says cellphone prices are plunging – and they are.” There, I fixed the Globe’s headline