Where is the announcement on auction policy for the 700MHz band? The government continues to procrastinate on digital policy files – like issuing a comprehensive digital strategy, deciding on foreign investment policy for telecom services sector and sorting out spectrum.

Over the past couple days, various players have been working the media to set out their positions. Public Mobile and Wind told the Canadian Press that if there aren’t special concessions for new entrants, they won’t even show up at the auction. Wind CEO Anthony Lacavera said “We’re not suicidal. We’re not going to go out and try to bid on something we have zero chance of winning.”

Public Mobile invoked the theme of increased rural coverage, made possible by competitive pressures by the new entrants in urban settings.

In response, Bell issued a press release that calls for “no special measures” for new entrants. “Rollout of next-generation LTE network to rural and remote communities depends on open and transparent 700 MHz spectrum auction.”

I’m not sure I see the connection between rural LTE and an open auction. Frankly, if a rural build of LTE is a priority, there are a number of more direct ways for the government to create the right opportunities and incentives.  Perhaps more on those thoughts later.

In a meeting with CITIG yesterday, I learned of a letter from the Prime Minister to Chief Bill Blair in his role as head of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, confirming the government’s commitment to a Public Safety set-aside in the next spectrum auction.

With last week’s announcement in the US of assignment of the D-block of the 700MHz band for public safety applications, will Industry Canada follow the US band plan?

Has the decision on Canada’s 700 MHz policy been delayed in order to allow the US to conclude its public safety plan?

There is a panel on Wednesday June 6 at The 2012 Canadian Telecom Summit that will be looking at spectrum issues. Early bird rates expire February 29. Have you registered yet?

I’ve written about XM Radio’s The Bridge a few times in the past couple years. Satellite radio has permitted narrow-casting to match the tastes of finely targeted groups.

With personal recording of music and TV coupled with an increasingly wide variety of on-demand streaming sources, I have to wonder about changes coming for broadcasters. It seems to me that scheduled broadcasting is going to be reduced to live action programming (such as sports) at some point in the near future. In a world of fragmented, on-demand delivery, will content producers generate sufficient revenues to cover production costs?

When will we see automotive dashboards with audio systems that “tune” to internet radio stations or streaming video and gaming for passengers.

What are the traffic demand implications for mobile and fixed internet services?

Bell’s mobile TV application was reported to have tripled its audience for the Super Bowl this year. Is this another indicator for the future of program delivery? The evolution of audio and video entertainment to streaming internet is one of the reasons why the CRTC’s NFL mobile decision merits such importance.

Can content owners independently determine the best business models for licensing and distribution? What are the bounds of regulatory oversight of content delivered on new media platforms?

In football terms, we’re going up to the booth for a review of the call on the field.

Bell is appealing the CRTC’s NFL Mobile Decision (2011-765) in the Federal Court of Appeal on the basis that the CRTC made errors of law and jurisdiction.

Bell’s application sets out 5 grounds of appeal, the first four said to be errors in law, breaching Bell’s right to procedural fairness:

• The CRTC wrongly applied a reverse onus to Bell (in requiring that Bell establish that any preference or disadvantage was not undue);
• The CRTC held Bell to an improper standard of proof;
• There was no evidence to support significant CRTC findings;
• The CRTC misapplied the reverse onus to find evidence; and,
• The CRTC decision infringes the Copyright Act.

The court filing has the case files that the CRTC had in reaching its decision under the alternative dispute mechanism – as an aside, had anyone been able to find this file on the CRTC’s website?

The CRTC’s ruling set an important precedent for content delivered on new media platforms. This appeal will determine the way the game will be played.

Update (1:10 pm February 20, 2012): Bell’s 157 page filing with the Federal Court of Appeal was dated January 10 and TELUS submitted a 31 page answer on January 30. In its answer, TELUS argues that the CRTC made no error in law or jurisdiction on the first 4 points of the appeal and is entitled to judicial deference ‘since the Commission is involved in the interpretation of its “home statute” and policy issues which involve the exercise of its broad, polycentric mandate.’ On the 5th point, TELUS argues that Bell’s filing is premature, since the CRTC’s decision only asked for a report.

In a separate response to the CRTC regarding Bell’s January 30 report to the CRTC, TELUS observed that “Bell has indicated that it has complied with the prohibition against exclusivity set out in the Vertical Integration Policy by entering into a new, non-exclusive, mobile content licensing agreement with the NHL.’ TELUS has asked the CRTC to clarify that auto-renewal of an existing agreement would be considered a new contract, for the purposes of Vertical Integration Policy.

National Campus Radio members want to be self-regulated. That is a proposal under review by the CRTC in Public Notice 2011-797: Call for comments on the National Campus and Community Radio Association’s proposed Codes of Conduct and proposed guidelines and best practices.

The last time I wrote about the association of campus radio stations was last September, in relation to the Association having passed a resolution at its annual convention calling for “a comprehensive boycott of Israeli media institutions at the national and international levels.”

That resolution has been made an issue in an intervention by The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) in the CRTC’s review. According to CIJA,

the NCRA’s BDS policy will render their proposed codes of conduct woefully deficient in the application of equitable content and balance, with an ineffective complaints mechanism. It is our position that, if the NCRA proposal is approved, every Israel related complaint against them would have to be adjudicated directly by the CRTC, given the inherent bias resulting from the NCRA’s BDS policy. Instead, it would make far more sense for the NCRA to adhere to the CAB Code of Ethics and be regulated by the CBSC, where complaints could be adjudicated fairly and broadcast programming held to a higher standard. Should the NCRA be granted its own self-regulated codes of conduct, we will ultimately be forced to intervene in their license renewal with the CRTC.

By virtue of a resolution passed by the National Campus Radio Association at its 2011 Plenary, it is not clear that the Association can simultaneously demonstrate the balance required to adjudicate a complaint and adhere to resolution F7 requiring that the body will

Work toward the condemnation of Israeli policies by encouraging that resolutions be adopted by our respective radio stations, associations, and organizations.

This appears to be in direct conflict with NCRA’s proposed Guideline 3 to:

encourage balance in our programming schedules by… actively engaging a variety of volunteers, and encouraging community involvement in our programming, thereby providing the means for diverse points of view to be represented.

These appear to be incompatible.

You can’t always expect online polls to be representative.

A research firm like Angus Reid knows that.

Sure, maybe the online population’s love of breakfast cereals matches the general population, but there are certainly areas that we can expect to be skewed by only surveying online users. I suspect that use of technology is one of those areas.

That is why I am reading the latest Rogers Innovation Report with a critical eye. Don’t get me wrong. The report has some very interesting and helpful information to understand how people are using technology. I just don’t think there should be confusion about whether this is supposed to be representative of the Canadian population at large.

The important caveat is found near the bottom of the press release under the heading of “About the survey”:

From January 13^th to January 23^rd 2012, an online survey was conducted among 1,403 randomly selected adult Canadians that own a smartphone or tablet and use texting, social networking, video calling, email, instant messaging, or BBM. All were Angus Reid Forum panelists. The margin of error—which measures sampling variability—is +/- 2.6%, 19 times out of 20. The results have been statistically weighted according to region and gender. Discrepancies in or between totals are due to rounding.

Let’s parse this.

It is an “online survey”, so we eliminated the 20% of Canadian households that have no home computer. The survey was of “Canadians that own a smartphone or tablet”, which knocks out half of cell-phone users who do not yet have a smartphone, and then further reduce that to eliminate the subset (likely small) who don’t use their smartphone or tablet for the kinds of things we expect them to. The results were weighted for geography and gender, but no other weighting – apparently – for age, intensity of internet use, etc. We also know that the sample was drawn from existing Angus Reid Forum participants – people who like to fill out online surveys in exchange for compensation.

Is that subset of the population representative of Canadians in general or even technology users in general?

The Rogers Innovation Report has some interesting information. Just be careful extrapolating the results.