The 2011 Canadian Telecom Summit is now less than 2 months away – the event opens on May 31 in Toronto.

In addition to keynote addresses from 17 industry leaders, there are a number of panels that are examining issues in greater depth. Over teh coming weeks, I’ll try to provide previews of some of these sessions.

For example, this year will include a panel examining security and privacy. More than ever, service providers are trying to compete by improving their customer experience, yet ironically, the need to heighten privacy can sometimes negatively impact the customers’ experience in dealing with the provider. Furthermore, legislation is a key driver for privacy protection and security spending. And, with mobile payments and near field communication (NFC), can privacy and security enable or hinder adoption of these approach and enhance the customer experience? We are pleased that Canada’s Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, will be joining a panel on June 1 at The 2011 Canadian Telecom Summit to examine these issues and more. The panel will also feature Rogers’ Chief Information & Security Officer, the General Manager of PayPal Canada, the Country Manager for ArcSight Canada, a senior executive from Google, along with PwC’s national information security practice leader, David Craig. David is featured in a story about data security in today’s Globe and Mail.

You can download a printable version of our 6-page brochure from the conference website.

Registration fees increase by $250 on May 1. Have you registered yet?

Catherine Middleton pointed me to the release of the Wales digital strategy release, entitled “Action plan to ensure Wales exploits digital technologies“.

The Digital Wales Delivery Plan has action plans for each of the five key priority areas identified in the Digital Wales strategy launched last December, which cover the economy, public services, inclusion, skills and infrastructure.

These are familiar priorities to us in Canada, but Wales has also published 21 specific goals in an accompanying Digital Wales Delivery Plan [pdf, 306KB]:

• Theme 1: Digital Inclusion – An Inclusive, Sustainable and Prosperous Society
  • To work collaboratively to gain a better understanding of digital exclusion.
  • To reduce levels of digital exclusion amongst people aged 50 and older.
  • To reduce levels of digital exclusion amongst residents of social housing.
  • To reduce levels of digital exclusion amongst unemployed and economically inactive.
  • To reduce levels of digital exclusion amongst people with disabilities.
  • To reduce digital exclusion amongst all adults.
• Theme 2: eSkills – Skilled and Competent People.
  • To improve the ICT skills of children and young people.
  • To improve the ICT skills of adults.
  • To make the most appropriate use of digital technologies in the delivery of education, training and support for learners.
• Theme 3: Competitiveness – A Thriving and Competitive Digital Economy.
  • To support and develop a competitive ICT sector.
  • To support and develop a vibrant creative sector.
  • To support sustained investment in research & development in high value-added ICT based products and services.
  • To ensure that all businesses fully adopt and exploit ICT to achieve and maintain a competitive advantage.
• Theme 4: Transforming Public Services.
  • To increase the availability and uptake of useful and useable digital public services.
  • To design and implement appropriate, secure digital platforms which enable public services to be delivered online.
  • To improve the efficiency of ICT services by reducing the procurement, purchase, carbon footprint and ownership/support costs of ICT equipment and services across the public sector.
  • To deliver improvements in the delivery of public services through the innovative use of digital technologies.
• Theme 5: A First Class Digital Infrastructure
  • To ensure everyone has access to a basic level of broadband.
  • To ensure everyone has access to next generation broadband.
  • To improve mobile phone coverage across Wales.
  • To improve digital radio (DAB) coverage across Wales.

Each goal is accompanied by a list of activities and timescale.

The initiative aims to encourage market participants to drive forward with investment in Wales, to see suppliers “extending service coverage, trialling new technologies, locating in, investing in and developing new skills in Wales.” The action plan is particularly readable – I liked the phrase “broadband notspots” to refer to holes in coverage.

In 42 pages, Wales has succinctly set out its digital strategy with 21 specific goals. Not all of the points are applicable to Canada, but its approach and clarity are laudable.

Prior to the election, we had been looking for a May release of Canada’s national digital economy strategy. How will that timetable be impacted?

The Liberal Party released its platform [pdf, 6MB] yesterday and it has a “Digital Canada” component.

It calls for a further $500M in rural broadband programs and a fair, effective wholesale regime for internet access services among its multi-point digital strategy:

With continuing, rapid leaps in computing capacity, data storage and wireless innovation, digital technology and the Internet have the potential to invigorate our democracy, our economy, and our culture, putting the full power of information and action into citizens’ hands.

But in the last five years, Canada has fallen behind more ambitious competitors. The United Kingdom, France, Australia and the United States, for example, have developed far-reaching plans for the digital society of the future, and are introducing comprehensive policies and programs.

A Liberal government will develop and implement Digital Canada, focusing on the following objectives:

• Access to Broadband for All Canadians. Liberals consider access to a high-speed broadband Internet connection essential infrastructure, just as the electricity grid and the telephone network were over a century ago. A Liberal government will publicly tender contracts for private companies to install broadband capacity for the hundreds of thousands of Canadians in rural, remote or northern areas who do not currently have access. To make those contracts economical for private investment, we will provide $500 million in support, allowing Canada to achieve basic high-speed Internet access for all Canadian households within three years. The source of that investment will be the next spectrum auction for wireless licensing rights.
• Closing the Digital Divide. Research shows that Internet skills lead to real economic benefits, including lower prices for consumers and more competitive small business. A Liberal government will work with all partners to promote digital life skills and training, in particular for older Canadians and lower income families.
• Fair balance Between Creators and Consumers. Digital technology offers many new opportunities, but enjoying content without compensating its creators shouldn’t be among them. At the same time, consumers should have freedom for personal use of digital content they rightfully possess. Liberals have worked to pass effective copyright legislation, including a private copying compensation fund instead of any new tax on consumers.
• Flourishing Canadian Content, Culture and Identity in Digital Media. Canadians should continue to have access to ever more Canadian stories and Canadian content in the Digital Canada of the future. New media should provide vibrant and rewarding new avenues for expression by Canadian artists. The public broadcasters, Radio Canada and the CBC have crucial roles to play in achieving these objectives.
• Competition in a Healthy Business Environment that Rewards Innovation. Consumers deserve choices and carriers that invest heavily in the advanced services and infrastructure of tomorrow deserve the chance to earn a fair return.
• An Open Internet. The Internet is today’s principal conduit for the free flow of ideas. To ensure it fosters the uninhibited exchange that innovation requires, Canada’s Internet environment must remain open. Internet traffic management must remain neutral, and maintain the open sharing of legitimate technologies, ideas and applications. A fair, effective wholesale regime is also essential to allow smaller Internet service providers to lease broadband infrastructure at fair prices.
• Open Government. Canada’s federal government must embrace information technology and open data in order to improve services to Canadians and make government more transparent and accountable for public spending. Putting Statistics Canada and other government data online wherever possible, after meeting all privacy and other legal requirements, will strengthen Canadian democracy, help create and disseminate knowledge and spur innovation.
• Protection from Digital Threats. Just as openness and transparency are the sources of boundless innovation and creativity on the Internet, these same features are too often exploited for criminal purposes causing significant personal and economic disruption, harm to children, and even threats to national security. A Liberal government will make security a priority in Digital Canada, working to advance it with the private sector and other governments at home and abroad.

The platform accounting page appears to be suggesting that the upcoming 700 MHz spectrum auction will generate $5B in revenues for the government. The Liberals propose to recognize that revenue as $500M per year for 10 years to fund their programs. That is using an asset sale to fund programs; contrast with my post a couple months ago.

The issue of reform to regulations on foreign direct investment in the telecom sector is not addressed, although the Liberal platform does speak about “strengthening the Investment Canada Act to make foreign investment reviews more transparent.”

The Liberal platform recognizes an issue I have raised on these pages [such as here] – the need to target programs aimed at getting lower income Canadians on line, although no funding appears to be allocated for this.

Last week, I asked for Canada’s political parties to lay out their national digital strategies. The Liberals have gone first. How will the Conservatives and NDP deal with Digital Economy issues?

There is a Hasbro children’s game called Operation that zaps players who touch an edge when removing a game piece from the game board. Winning requires hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills to carefully keep from venturing too close to the edge.

As I read through a report from the European Investment Bank yesterday, the game of Operation came to mind. Why?

The report examined the total investment required to implement Europe’s Digital Agenda. My first thought was – Europe actually has a Digital Agenda! My thought was that we in Canada are playing a game of Operation, but we’re playing in the dark. We’re guided only when the buzzer sounds without being able to know what the playing field looks like.

Canada has shelves filled with reports from Commissions and Panels without action plans implementing the recommendations; we have had consultations but we have been slow to act in reaching conclusions. For example, last year’s consultation on relaxation of restrictions on foreign direct investment should have resulted in a policy statement and legislation last fall. Instead, the government decided to re-open the issue as part of the 700 MHz consultation. This issue was also studied by a number of expert panels prior to the auction of AWS spectrum, with no action. It took the buzzer sounding on Globalive’s ownership structure to force Cabinet to weigh in. They said that it may look like Globalive strayed close enough to the edge, but we don’t think so.

The policy response to usage based billing for wholesale internet access was just the latest demonstration of buzzers sounding in response to crossing the line. Hopefully, this election will result in the lights being turned on a national digital strategy. It is too serious a game to be played in the dark.

Bell Canada has done another about-face on its wholesale internet plan, replacing Aggregated Volume Pricing (AVP) with Pay Per Click (PPC). Under the new plan, users will have unlimited download capabilities but will pay $1 for 10,000 clicks. The plan is said to be an upstream traffic management plan.

Rogers has historically throttled only upstream peer-to-peer traffic. That’s where we got the idea to charge for clicks. PPC allows users to download all the movies and TV shows they want. It will encourage everyone to learn to be more effective in their search terms because it rewards people who use fewer characters. Similarly, Canada’s gaming community will become world leaders because the more shots you need, the more you will have to pay.

Typically, internet connections are asymmetric, with far more download capacity than upload. PPC is designed to help reduce congestion on the upstream path. Bell does not plan to charge users for clicks on their Fibe TV remote control, as long as the channel is being changed to a CTV station.

We asked why Bell was abandoning AVP less than a week after it was introduced. In an emailed statement, Bell’s spokesperson said that it was time to focus on the real bottleneck.

Enough was enough. Some people were clicking away and using up the entire upstream capacity. Especially the gaming community with all that shooting. We need Canadians to aim better. The new pricing will not affect many people and we have a deal with Open Media to buy their mailing list, offering a special affinity programme to their 400,000 signatories. So everybody wins.

Bell expects PPC to get people to renew their support for the Open Media initiative, unless they realize this is some kind of April Fools Day joke.