Followers of this blog know that I have sometimes used this space to promote The Canadian Telecom Summit (taking place June 3-5, 2013 in Toronto). OK – so maybe it would be more accurate to say that I frequently use this space to promote The Canadian Telecom Summit. (Did I mention that we are starting to put together the program for 2013?)

But let me mention an important upcoming event taking place December 2-5 in Toronto, organized by CITIG – the Canadian Interoperability Technology Interest Group. CITIG was created to improve Canadian public safety communications interoperability. The organization is managed in partnership by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP), the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs (CAFC) and Emergency Medical Services Chiefs of Canada (EMSCC).

CITIG is hosting The Sixth Canadian Public Safety Interoperability Workshop to develop a mutual understanding of the key voice and data interoperability issues facing today’s public safety sector.

The Workshop will have hands-on sessions exploring such issues as:

• 700 MHz Broadband for Mission Critical Public Safety Data and related spectrum management issues
• Trends in interoperability technology, including both voice and data related issues
• National and cross-border interoperability planning
• Provincial, regional and local interoperability strategic planning
• Interoperability and the challenge of governance
• Practical advice on running interoperability training & exercises
• Situational awareness, common/user defined operating pictures, GIS systems and blue force tracking
• 3D In-Building Location and Tracking for Fire Fighters and public safety responders
• Converging Mission Critical voice and data network

Be sure to check out the program for CITIG’s Sixth Canadian Public Safety Interoperability Workshop, taking place December 2-5, 2012.

And of course, make sure you mark June 3-5, 2013 into your calendar. You won’t want to miss The 2013 Canadian Telecom Summit.

Last April, the Washington Post reported on a partnership between the FCC, police and the wireless industry to develop a centralized database to combat theft of wireless devices. At the time, I tweeted:

.@ctia: US Wireless Industry Steps to Deter Smartphone Thefts, Protect Consumer Data j.mp/IfYVN9 Where’s Canada on this? #CDNtech

— Mark Goldberg (@Mark_Goldberg) April 10, 2012

The CRTC opened a file on the issue, writing a letter to Canada’s wireless industry association on July 17, asking for:

1.  statistics on the number of mobile devices reported stolen or lost to its members, broken down by province;
2. a description of what “initiatives the wireless industry is undertaking to protect consumers from becoming victims of mobile device theft”; and
3. a description of international initiatives for addressing mobile device theft.

The CWTA replied on August 13 [zip], but as Cartt.ca first reported, the CRTC has indicated that it was not happy with the quality of the answers it received. In a letter dated September 28, the CRTC has given the association 2 months to provide greater detail. Indeed, there is an ominous tone to the end of the Commission’s follow-up letter:

It should be noted that if the Commission is not satisfied by the response of the Canadian wireless industry to this issue, the Commission will investigate what further regulatory action needs to be taken to provide the necessary tools to help consumers in this regard.

The exchange between the association and the CRTC is fascinating to observe on many levels. Here are a few thoughts, in no particular order:

• Membership in the CWTA is not a condition of operating as a service provider in Canada and not all wireless providers or equipment suppliers are members of the association. As such, the initial informational inquiries from the CRTC was certainly appropriate, but as an unregulated entity that does not represent all of the sector, should the CRTC’s followup have been more broadly based via an instrument such as a public notice?
• For its part, the industry association reply appears to rely exclusively on its carrier members, despite the fact that theft of devices could include phones from foreign visitors or devices that were not sold by Canadian carriers or their agents. In the initial letter, the CRTC mentioned concerns associated with personal information on stolen devices (‘the fact that the industry is beginning to bring to market mobile devices that will act as “digital wallets”’). This should have indicated a need to include the device manufacturers and those that develop the operating systems.
• Of course, that in turn raises the question of whether this whole initiative should be led by the CRTC or by Industry Canada – the body that licenses all of the carriers and all of the devices that are brought into Canada. The CRTC’s follow-up letter suggests including law enforcement representatives to ensure a more holistic, multi-lateral composition of the CWTA’s Security Working Group.
• This issue is one that highlights the division of authority between Industry Canada and the CRTC in contrast to the FCC in the United States. Will the national digital strategy address the long outstanding recommendation to migrate the authority for wireless licensing to the CRTC?

The Washington Post story indicated that as many as 3 in 5 robberies involved smartphones in the District of Columbia. It is a serious issue that needs to be addressed. But we need to make sure all of the right parties are are at the table developing solutions and that costs are being managed and distributed appropriately.

The ITU’s Broadband Commission for International Development has released a new report [pdf] entitled “The State of Broadband 2012: Achieving Digital Inclusion For All“.

As telecoms.com reported: “while household Internet access has seen strong growth over the past year and is on track to achieve Commission targets, individual Internet use continues to lag behind.”

Frequent readers are aware that this has been a frequent lament of mine. Too often, we have seen broadband initiatives focus on expanding access based on geography, without appropriate consideration to creating incentives based on the affordability of services, independent of geography. This has led to hundreds of thousand of households without broadband service or even home computers in Canadian urban centres.

It was interesting to see the report acknowledge the data gathering challenges in measuring mobile services adoption. The report observed that the discrepancy in mobile adoption measures derived, at least in part from multiple SIM card and multi-device ownership, trends “which are increasing dramatically.”

“Accurate and up-to-date statistics are vital for good policy-making.”

According to the ITU report, the Broadband Commission is working for digital inclusion for all by 2015. Among global best practices, the report cited the US Connect2Compete program that was launched a year ago.

Above all, the report observed that 119 countries now have a national broadband plan, policy or strategy in place. “The Report recognizes a clear need for policy leadership to establish a strong vision among stakeholders and prioritize the deployment of broadband at the national level.”

Planning and budgeting used to be so much easier with just one national network. Centralized control, heavy regulation – it was so much more orderly.

Other than the high prices and lack of innovative products and services, monopoly networks were just great, especially for those who worked for the phone company, or as the old timers called it, working for “the Bell”. Still, after 20 years of competition, most agree that competitive forces deliver sufficient benefits to outweigh the associated chaos.

I have been reading various articles [such as this one commissioned by CIRA from PCH] bemoaning the low number of Canadian exchange points for internet traffic relative to other countries, implying that connecting via Chicago or other US points somehow is harmful to Canadian internet users. As a builder of one of the first cross border optical rings more than 15 years ago, I am not convinced that the network constraints imposed by national hierarchies are necessary. Given Canadian and US geography and population densities, isn’t it likely (or at least possible) that connectivity between Canadian cities could be more efficient via the US?

I had a number of problems with the CIRA/PCH paper, but that is not today’s theme.

Rather, I want to take a look at a more general challenge: evolving network architectures, right down to the switching fabric of carrier networks that will need to evolve with the continued growth of data traffic – and more specifically, mobile data traffic.

Current switching architectures require constant incremental investment, trying to ensure that equipment is provisioned to handle the projected peak traffic in the local region, coupled with additional capacity in the interest of survivability. At the same time, carriers are seeing continued declines in revenue-per-bit thanks to our insatiable demand enabled by new devices and applications.

Software defined networks are emerging to solve capacity and scalability challenges. Some analysts are suggesting that we will see explosive growth in SDN deployments over the next 5 years. Twenty five years ago, we deployed software defined networks for major enterprise customers embedded within the AT&T Communications network.

So I started off somewhat cynical when I recently had a conversation with some executives from ConteXtream. ConteXtream announced the release of its second generation grid network virtualization software today. ConteXtream says that service providers’ business models are challenged because revenue is increasing at a slower pace than costs while data plans are designed for various kinds of ‘average user’ – a notion that no longer exists. ConteXtream Grid allows a wireless network to be evolved into a data center application, leveraging cloud economics and generic network appliances to reduce capital and operating costs.

In addition, ConteXtream spoke of novel customized pricing and services enabled by a more granular enforcement of resource allocation. Imagine the possibilities if an operator could dial in various service attributes on a per customer basis.

As demands on networks increase with ever changing traffic characteristics, we need to explore new approaches to economically serve these challenging requirements. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for new architectures, such as SDN virtualization being explored by ConteXtream, to find their way from the labs and into general deployment.

Four years ago, the CRTC launched the National Do Not Call List (“DNCL”), as it acknowledged in a tweet earlier today:

On September 30, 2008, the #CRTC launched the National Do Not Call List to help reduce the number of telemarketing calls.

— CRTCeng (@CRTCeng) September 30, 2012

The DNCL was implemented “to help reduce the number of telemarketing calls.” Is it working?

Check out the latest status report from the CRTC. There have been more than 600,000 complaints filed. But there have only been 191 citations issued to date, leading to 56 notices of violations, which in turn drove 43 fines and 4 alternate settlements. Despite complaints growing at more than 15,000 per month, there were only 4 new investigations opened in the past quarter and there are less than 140 open investigations.

Sure, we have had some high profile fines and settlements. But I am still getting calls daily from “Air Duct Cleaning” and credit counselling services.

While some are pushing hard for the Government to proclaim the new anti-spam law, should we be assessing the impact of the DNCL first to see if the outcome justifies the financial and economic costs of the legislation and its enforcement?