Last Friday, the CRTC affirmed that businesses are consumers too. In Telecom Decision 2011-341, the CRTC told PIAC that it was indeed appropriate for the the Canadian Federation of Independent Business to be part of the selection process for consumer group appointed directors for the Board of Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services Inc.

The Commission further notes that the CFIB is independent of the telecommunications industry and represents a subset of consumers of telecommunications services, i.e., small business consumers, whose complaints fall within the CCTS’s mandate. The CCTS has included eleven other groups in its nomination process whose primary function is to represent individual consumers.

One of 12 voices has been given to small business interests? The proper question may be to ask why that segment is so under represented?

Maybe that is a question to ask during the Regulatory Blockbuster, an annual feature of The Canadian Telecom Summit, taking place next week in Toronto. Are you registered yet?

Roberta Fox knows business communications. She and her colleagues at Fox Group are the people that I go to whenever a client is looking for assistance with their corporate needs. We have had a number of opportunities to work together over the 20 years we have known each other.

That is why we couldn’t have thought of a more suitable person to moderate our panel discussion on Unified Comunications: The evolving future of business at The 2011 Canadian Telecom Summit.

The panel will take place on the afternoon of June 1, featuring

• Avaya Canada President Ross Pellizzari
• Microsoft Canada CIO Steve Heck
• Genband VO Michaela Giuhat
• OneConnect President Gianni Creta

The panel will be looking at hosted, cloud-based solutions versus customer premises based networks. What are the issues when businesses depend on communications service always being available?

The 2011 Canadian Telecom Summit is less than two weeks away, taking place May 31 to June 2 in Toronto. Have you registered yet?

Sandvine CEO Dave Caputo always delivers a great presentation at The Canadian Telecom Summit. This year, he is participating on the Wireless Broadband panel on the afternoon of May 31.

Sandvine has just released the Spring 2011 edition of its Global Internet Phenomena Report, which you should download [free following registration on their site]. The report is based on internet traffic statistics collected from a voluntary representative cross-section of Sandvine’s customer base. Sandvine serves more than 220 Internet providers with hundreds of millions of subscribers in more than 85 countries.

Among the highlights from the report this edition:

• Real-Time Entertainment in North America represents almost half of peak period fixed access traffic. At this rate of growth, it will make up 55-60% of traffic by the end of the year.
• P2P filesharing had a trivial drop in share, shifting from 19.2% of peak period traffic in Fall 2010 to 18.8% in Spring 2011.

Sandvine described these two statistics as seemingly contradictory: P2P Filesharing is here to stay, despite the growth of real-time entertainment.

We will be looking forward to hearing more when Dave addresses The Canadian Telecom Summit in less than two weeks. Have you registered yet?

Mégantic—L’Érable MP Christian Paradis was named Industry Minister earlier today and many will be watching how he approaches a number of active issues for new information industries, as he transitions from his former role as Minister of Natural Resources.

Network World asked for my initial impressions of the cabinet and I observed that we could see delays as the new Minister gets acquainted with the files.

With the Globalive court hearing today, I have been reflecting on an interview I had with Canadian Press last year when Minister Clement launched his consultation on liberalizing foreign investment in telecom.

Industry analyst Mark Goldberg, who also organizes the telecom summit, praised the government’s initiative but also said it is prudent to quickly advance the plan, because the leaving the future uncertain could actually hurt all of the carriers.

“Once you open a process and there’s uncertainty as to which direction is going to be followed, it creates an overhang for the capital markets. The ability of companies to raise capital during that interim period of uncertainty can’t be overstated,” he said.

“It could be extremely damaging to small players and large players alike to have a lengthy period of uncertainty when you’ve got such a capital intensive business.”

And here we are a year later with no progress on the file other than having been needlessly linked to the 700 MHz spectrum auction and a second round of consultations on the same issue. It has to be frustrating for Globalive, Allstream and others who thought there would have been more action to settle the foreign investment question.

Welcome Minister Paradis to the digital economy. Reactivate that @christianparad Twitter account. We’re ready for you to jump right in to lead a comprehensive national strategy.

Continuing the discussion of the various panels at The 2011 Canadian Telecom Summit, I want to look at the session being moderated by Evan Kelly, PwC’s National Communications Practice Leader, who has been a great supporter of our event and with whom I have had the pleasure to collaborate on a few projects through the years. The Evolution of Consumer Communications: Compete or Collaborate panel will explore the evolving world of applications, content and services and how traditional business models are changing. It will be an interesting panel, with some interesting and diverse views of where the future may be heading for consumer services business models.

The panel features

• Lori Bieda from SAS
• Paul Brannen from Samsung
• Vikas Gupta from TransGaming
• Caleb Rubin from Rogers

The 2011 Canadian Telecom Summit is May 31 to June 2 in Toronto. It is less than two weeks away. Have you registered yet?