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.

Yesterday, two papers critical of usage based billing were released.  Both papers were sponsored by Netflix and neither of them appear to have been filed with the CRTC by the March 28 deadline for the Wholesale Internet Pricing proceeding.

Michael Geist released a paper looking at Usage Based Billing Around the World. The paper includes an estimate of the costs incurred by ILECs on a per gigabyte basis and has views on “what should come next” including a proposal for new guidelines for retail usage based billing: IBUMPS – Internet Billing Usage Management Practices.

If UBB is to remain part of the retail Internet access landscape, the transparency and public disclosures must improve. The CRTC should adopt similar requirements as those found with ITMPs to ensure that consumers are better informed about the benefits and limits of their capped services.

There is also a paper released by Bill St. Arnaud, called Myths and Fallacies about Usage Based Billing.

Hopefully, these papers will be filed as part of the CRTC’s proceeding (2011-77) that is reviewing usage based billing. In this way, the assertions can become part of the evidence examined and tested by the Commission. There are a number of phases remaining in the CRTC proceeding, but one has to wonder about the coincidence of two papers sponsored by the same corporation just happened to be released less than 48 hours after the deadline for submissions.

Netflix is registered as an interested party to the proceeding. I doubt that many of the other parties will object if Netflix files the submissions a few days late in order to ensure that these materials don’t miss the opportunity to be tested in the interrogatory phase of the proceeding.

I noticed that Australia is continuing to press forward with its government-led NBN project, pumping about AU$36B of government funding into a project that hopes to have fibre to the home for 90% of the population.

The NBN plan is said “to promote sustainable retail-level competition, and fair pricing of wholesale services for all Australians.”

What is meant by fair pricing? $36B works out to about $5000 per household in upfront spending. That upfront government cash adds about $50 per month to every Australian households’ tax burden. Korea’s national broadband network is also the result of massive government involvement.

When looking at international broadband pricing, should comparisons include these hidden costs?