Twenty years ago today, the CRTC public hearing opened to review the application by Unitel to create competition in the Canadian long distance telecommunications market. The hearing ran for months and it followed a lengthy exchange of paper and a year of preliminary processes. This was the oral phase of the proceeding that led to Telecom Decision CRTC 92-12. I was part of the opening panel of witnesses, defending our network interconnection plan.

It was a remarkable time in my career and I was privileged to work with a team of dedicated young professionals who helped prepare the winning case. We continue to stay in touch, albeit too infrequently.

Unitel hasn’t existed as a brand for a long time, but what we did 20 years ago continues to be felt. Does anyone wait until 11pm to make a long distance call any more? That is what we did when we were students. Twenty years ago, calls after 11 became affordable for students, as long as the call was kept to the bare essentials – like “exams are fine, I’ll be done on the 18th I need money, love you, bye.”

Twenty years ago, overseas calls cost a tank of gas so you would save that for family emergencies. Nowadays, you can talk to much of the world for 20 minutes for less than the cost of a cup of coffee. I’m going to guess that most of my readers don’t think twice about picking up the phone to call anyone, anywhere, or at anytime. You’re welcome.

Twenty years ago, I faced a week of cross examination from lawyers who were unable to poke holes in our network plan. As a regulatory novice, I remember the shock of seeing our lawyer talking with Bell’s lawyer during the first coffee break at the hearings; I was surprised that these enemies on the battlefield could be so civil with each other. Through the years, I have had the opportunity to work with lawyers and executives from both sides of our original long distance battle. Like Sam and Ralph from Looney Tunes, the ability to do battle while remaining collegial and respectful has been one of the key attributes of the regulatory blockbuster at The Canadian Telecom Summit.

At the time, the Financial Post observed the youth of our team. I feel good to have been part of that group. There are a lot of stories from those days. I remember being called back to Ottawa at the last minute to help with witness preparation for Canadian Pacific CEO Bill Stinson and Rogers chief Ted Rogers. Early Monday morning, I found that in my rush to pack, I forgot to pack a dress shirt, so I borrowed one with a neck size so big that we folded and stapled the back of the neck. I happened to make mention of my kids on the transcripts when describing how Unitel’s long distance wouldn’t impact 9-1-1 service and that has been a little challenge and inside joke ever since.

Our offices will be closed for the first part of next week so that I can spend time with the family who are all home for Passover so there will be no blog posts until next Thursday.

Michael Geist had a blog post with some excerpts of Canada’s performance in the World Economic Forum’s Global Information Technology Report 2010-2011 [pdf, 10.1MB] yesterday. I had a post this morning that uses the report to understand the breadth of issues that need to be considered in a comprehensive national digital strategy. You can contrast the full 71 point scorecard in the World Economic Forum approach with the views of others

I thought it would be worthwhile to expand on the indices that Professor Geist provided and look at how Canada ranks compared to our colleagues in the G-8.

Issue	Canada	Canada in G8	US	UK	Germany	France	Italy	Russia	Japan
Average cost per minute mobile phone calls	66	6	42	60	25	113	47	45	128
Mobile telephone subscriptions	95	8	76	24	27	68	13	9	75
Mobile subscriptions with data access	68	8	16	28	32	31	22	40	4
Fixed broadband Internet monthly subscription charge	23	2	12	28	71	41	31	35	46
Government prioritization of ICT	31	3	20	32	24	42	115	77	41
Government procurement of advanced technology products	25	2	5	52	31	47	116	81	40
Importance of ICT to government vision of the future	28	2	22	38	34	30	104	100	40
Household with a personal computer	10	2	24	13	8	29	36	46	11
Broadband Internet subscribers	10	2	18	12	11	9	30	51	19
Internet users	11	2	15	7	13	23	46	74	15
Internet access in schools	13	1	14	18	39	41	85	62	40
Use of virtual social networks	6	2	12	3	23	37	51	102	67
Impact of ICT on access to basic services	23	2	22	39	24	26	78	101	45

Not sure why his post didn’t include this line from the tables, which might have preempted the usual voices preaching that all is doom and gloom in the Canadian telecom sector:

Issue	Canada	Canada in G8	US	UK	Germany	France	Italy	Russia	Japan
Fixed phone tariffs	1	1	1	96	58	82	70	37	46

Among the interesting observations are the consistently strong measurements compared with our economic peers. Canada and the US are both at the bottom of G-8 ranking so for mobile penetration for a variety of structural reasons and the government has already taken action to advance Canada’s mobile voice and data competitiveness.

Canada’s first place standing in school internet access shows the value of targeted government programmes in achieving leadership, as I suggested this morning. Although people have observed the drop from 7th place in the previous year’s rankings to 8th place this year, an examination over a longer term shows the generally improving trend:

Network Readiness Index Rank	Canada	Canada in G8	US	UK	Germany	France	Italy	Russia	Japan
2010 – 2011	8	2	5	15	13	20	51	77	19
2009 – 2010	7	2	5	13	14	18	48	80	21
2008 – 2009	10	2	3	15	20	19	45	74	17
2007 – 2008	13	3	4	12	16	21	42	72	19
2006 – 2007	11	3	7	9	16	23	38	70	14

In the absence of a comprehensive national national digital economy strategy, Canada’s performance has been generally improving and global leadership is within reach. Canada has been second to the US for the last three years. Following the election, clear targets should be set for Canada to lead the G-8 within two years and aim to consistently be among the world’s top three by 2017.

On Tuesday, I tweeted about the World Economic Forum’s latest reports, which placed Canada in 8th place (out of 138) for “Networked Readiness“. Sweden, Singapore and Finland took home the medals this year.

The full Global Information Technology Report 2010-2011 (GITR) can be downloaded [pdf, 10.1MB], which includes one page summaries for each country.

While the interactive version of the report helps find Canada’s status quickly, it is important that Canadians look at how the index is composed. Part 4 of the report begins on page 300. It provides details about the 9 broad components of the Networked Readiness Index.

• Environment
  • Market environment
  • Political and regulatory environment
  • Infrastructure environment
• Readiness
  • Individual readiness
  • Business readiness
  • Government readiness
• Usage
  • Individual usage
  • Business usage
  • Government usage

Each of these 9 “pillars” are examined with 3 to 11 sub-categories, for a total of 71 measures being evaluated. These categories are all important indicators of the readiness of a nation to compete in a global digital economy.

Because of the election, there are a number of groups that are taking a superficial view of what should be contained in Canada’s national digital strategy. The 71 indices in the GITR provide a guide to the breadth of issues that need to be understood and addressed in a comprehensive digital economic strategy. These are the kinds of performance metrics by which Canada’s digital economy can be and will be measured.

When the dust settles from the election, will the Industry Minister release a digital strategy that leads Canada from an acceptable 8th place ranking to improve to a place on the podium?

Michael Geist writes that the Liberals are supporting British style functional separation for Canadian telecom carriers, based on a rapid-fire on-line exchange between Open Media’s Steve Anderson and Marc Garneau this past Monday {see 2:11 on chat}:

Anderson: In Canada, we have a few companies that dominate both the business of providing access to the customer via the last mile of the Internet (wholesale), as well as the business of providing access to the wires that connect the customers to the backbone of the Internet (retail). It is this domination of both wholesale and retail markets that experts say is at least partially responsible for the high costs of Internet access in Canada, as well as the lack of choice and competition in the market. The UK and other countries have dealt with this situation by separating the two businesses in what is called “functional separation.” This appears to have lowed prices and created more choice and competition. What is the Liberals position on functional separation? Would a Liberal government adopt this approach?

Garneau: Steve, we are supportive of that concept. The UK is doing interesting stuff and we need to look at that carefully.

Anderson: Is that a yes?

Garneau: Yes.

Of course, functional separation has never been imposed in a country that has platform competition and it is unclear how it would be implemented or whether it makes any sense in Canada. The telephone companies are not the incumbent service providers for broadband. Cable based services were first. In virtually every geographic market, the phone companies aren’t even the market leader. So, which company would it apply to?

So, how would functional separation work? More fundamentally, how would functional separation stimulate further investment?

An article on ARS Technica yesterday highlighted “The four enemies of indie Internet TV”:

• Data caps
• Lack of a clear home theatre standard
• Mergers and acquisitions
• Priority access

The 2011 Canadian Telecom Summit, coming up in just 7 weeks (May 31-June 2), will have a session, “Tablets, TVs and smartphones, oh my! The explosion of the multi-screen universe,” looking at these issues and more.

The conference brochure can be downloaded here. Have you registered yet? Prices go up May 1. You should register today.