Manitoba wants the CRTC to order more rural coverage from Canada’s mobile carriers in the wake of communications access difficulties for firefighters earlier this month. The Brandon Sun quotes Premier Greg Selinger:

I think there’s a case that can be made for the CRTC, which regulates telephone companies in the country, that those basic levels of services can be provided. There’s no reason why Manitobans can’t make that case along with other parts of the country that have that same need.

Why would this be a CRTC issue? Police and other emergency workers historically operated private radio networks. Don’t you think they should have examined geographic coverage as part of the business case to migrate requirements within public mobile networks? If the coverage requirements are wider than a carrier operates, shouldn’t that have been part of the contract?

The premier’s statement just sounds like he is looking for someone else to pay.

I noticed that Industry Canada has shut down the Telecom Policy Review Panel website, although the panel’s full report is still available for download as a pdf [1.65 MB]. Sure, the report is now more than 5 years old, but many of its recommendations have yet to be implemented, due to partisan bickering in a minority government environment.

The CCTS is one of the most visible recommendations actually completed: the establishment of a Telecommunications Consumer Agency [Recommendation 6-2].

It is unfortunate that more of the report was not adopted; there was a McCarthy Tetrault released a book at The 2007 Canadian Telecom Summit that details the complete set of legislative reforms needed to implement the recommendations.

The TPR panel was created by a Liberal government; its work was completed and the report was delivered to Conservative Industry Minister Bernier. Naively perhaps, I was optimistic that a spirit of bipartisanship might allow us to modernize Canadian telecom policy despite the minority government. I can’t help but think of the number of issues that would have been preempted had the proposals been adopted.

There is an opportunity to do more.

Section 9 of the report looks at regulatory institutions, including an examination of the number of CRTC Commissioners and the way to recruit and retain them. Recommendation 9-6 calls for a reduction to 5 from the current 13 Commissioners; Recommendations 9-7, 9-8 and 9-9 deal with recruitment methods and compensation. There are a number of CRTC appointments to be made over the next twelve months, as current terms expire. The next year may be the most opportune time for a restructuring to take place.

In any case, Recommendation 9-4 called for creating a new panel around this time:

The Minister of Industry should be mandated by legislation to undertake a comprehensive review of telecommunications policy and regulation every five years.

It has been just over five years since the last panel completed its work. Perhaps it is time for a fresh look, as long as we don’t end up with another book that sits on the shelf.

Monday was the 150th anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental telegraph in the United States, in 1861. It took another 20 years for the charter of the Canadian Pacific to permit trans-Canada messaging to be routed without transit through the US.

Verizon’s PolicyBlog has an interesting viewpoint on this milestone.

Until the telegraph came in to being, it was impossible for messages to be relayed to people who were long distances apart any faster than the speed of a horse.

But Verizon also makes important observations on characteristics that distinguish today’s networks from the amazing transformative impact of the telegraph. I recommend reading it.

One of the recurring questions being raised at the CRTC’s Network Interconnection hearing has been equal access to competitive long distance services.

In some countries, prefix digits are dialled to select the long distance carrier that will route the call; in Canada, such equal access has not been mandated, except where the mobile carrier has CLEC status, such as Fido.

Under questioning, MTS suggested that prices have been coming down as a result of competition in the mobile marketplace. Responding to the vice-chair, MTS said that ad hoc long distance from mobile phones is actually less expensive than calling long distance without a plan on its wireline network.

In practice, people have choices beyond their mobile services carrier, such as prepaid calling cards or specialized mobile long distance plans from alternate carriers such as Yak.

Long distance bills can cause some real angst among consumers who haven’t shopped around for lower cost alternatives; do we need better consumer education or increased regulatory intervention?

My tweet from Baikonur summed it up. What a blast!

It was a great week in Moscow and Baikonur, watching the launch of Viasat-1, the first of two next generation satellites that will close the geographical broadband divide for Canadians living and working in rural and remote areas.

It will take some effort to re-adjust to time zones here – there wasn’t much time for sleep since last Wednesday, thanks to a 12:48 am launch time and a Friday night (Saturday morning) 3:00 am departure from our hotel. It meant that Friday night, we just stayed up.

That proved to be not very difficult, thanks to the Circle of Light festival in nearby Red Square.

A generation ago, Red Square was where soldiers marched as part of a parade of military might, with rockets and tanks rolling in front of the politburo leadership.

On Friday evening, Muscovites gathered to enjoy a demonstration of the transformation of their historic square – technology bringing people together for a creative audio visual experience.

Satellite based broadband doesn’t deliver the same experience as fibre – but that isn’t the right comparison, because for many, fibre just isn’t an option. For that matter, DSL and cable modem service aren’t options either. Satellite based broadband service is the right technology for those millions of Canadians who live beyond the reach of terrestrial solutions, who choose between dial-up or nothing.

Canadians with dial-up modems – that often have trouble connecting at 4800 bits per second over rural lines – make downloading emails a nightly exercise, so that you don’t tie-up the line and because attachments take all night.

For these Canadians, Xplornet’s half billion dollar investment in satellites is the fulfillment of a dream – continuing the deployment of advanced satellite technology to finish the job of communications connectivity over this vast country. Canada had the world’s first commercial communications satellite with the launch of Anik in 1972, delivering connectivity to the north. The launch of Viasat-1 continues the evolution of satellite communications to deliver high-speed connectivity for the next decade.

Over the next few months, Xplornet will be working to complete the connectivity testing with Viasat-1’s  game-changing technology, enabling all Canadians to access advanced broadband service, regardless of where they live.

The Circle of Light show was a great send-off for us leaving Moscow. We should all be toasting the successful launch of Viasat-1: На здоровье.