It is old news that Industry Minister Tony Clement announced last November that the government was going to delay making a decision on changes to the rules on foreign direct investment in the telecom sector. After all, just a few weeks after rejecting BHP Billiton’s takeover of the rock mining operations of Saskatchewan’s Potash Corp., how could the minority government face the opposition on critical telecommunications infrastructure.

So at the International Institute of Communications conference, the Minister stated: 

With respect to foreign ownership, I have been consulting throughout the summer on whether the current restrictions constitute an impediment to growth in the wireless sector. Those consultations will continue as we proceed with our discussions on the 700 MHz spectrum.

And this just makes sense. After all, how spectrum is allocated and who is eligible to compete for it — and pay for it — are interrelated issues. And so we will consider foreign investment rules and decisions around the 700 MHz auction together, as part of an integrated regulatory approach.

Of course it was necessary to understand how foreign investment plays in the 700 MHz auction. But the converse isn’t true. We don’t need to understand who gets to bid on 700 MHz to sort out foreign direct investment in the entire sector – we need clear investment rules that apply to all telecommunications services providers – wireless and wireline. As Terry Corcoran wrote yesterday, in a piece called “Ottawa drives backward down the infoway“, we’re looking at the issue backwards.

When the Minister announced the process to review foreign investment in the sector at last year’s Canadian Telecom Summit, he said:

In the next few days, I will be releasing a consultation paper on this subject as well, and I will be looking forward to hearing your views on this important issue. Let me give you a little taste of what this consultation paper will be about. First of all, we will be confirming that we are intending to move ahead with telecommunications reform when it comes to foreign direct investment, and of the need for that reform. Secondly, we will have a relatively short, but important, discussion period in the next few days, commencing with the release of the report, so that we can get feedback from both the industry and Canadian consumers.

Note the expression “relatively short.”

The Consultation Paper referred to 3 studies that had already examined the issue: a 2003 report from the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology; the 2006 report from the Telecom Policy Review Panel; and, the 2008 report from Competition Policy Review Panel. The Department solicited public comments last summer and it received more than 40 submissions from companies and organizations and more from individuals.

We cannot continue to anchor foreign investment decisions solely on spectrum, completely ignoring the impact of delay on the rest of the telecom sector.

Wireline service providers are investing billions of dollars in fibre infrastructure and ISPs seeking to expand to the next stage are caught in purgatory waiting for a decision. Want to mess up the capital markets for a critical sector? Open up a consultation on allowing foreign investment and then keep it festering.

Next week is when comments are due for the 700 MHz consultation. That paper asked for more input on foreign investment – outside of the original process from last summer.

It will be interesting to see which non-Canadian carriers participate in the 700 MHz consultation. Perhaps even more interesting will be to consider which carriers didn’t bother participating because of the uncertainty playing Calvinball in our telecom marketplace.

In under 15 weeks, The 2011 Canadian Telecom Summit will open in Toronto. We should have a few things to discuss, given the heightened interest in consumer internet pricing models, broadband access, foreign investment and increased demand for spectrum.

For three full days, The Canadian Telecom Summit delivers thought provoking presentations from the prime movers of the industry. The Canadian Telecom Summit provides a chance to hear from and talk with them in both a structured atmosphere of frank discussion and high-octane idea exchange and schmooze in a more relaxed social setting of genial conversation.

Attracting the senior-most professionals from around the globe, The Canadian Telecom Summit is the forum for the broad cross-section of stakeholders to meet, exchange views, share ideas, challenge assumptions and plan for the future. Now in its tenth year, attendance is a must for telecom and IT industry professionals corporate users, carriers and manufacturers financial analysts, consultants and investors.

The initial print-ready version of the conference brochure is now available for downloading [pdf, 238KB].

Early bird rates provide savings through the end of February.

Aeschylus wrote “In war, truth is the first casualty”. The ability to engage in intellectual civil discourse must rank right up there.

More than 4 years ago, I wrote a posting called “4 degrees of impersonal communications” that described the different ways we engage with people and different behaviours associated with the increased levels of anonymity presented by the nature of the interaction.

In small towns, people talk differently to each other, in part because everyone knows each other. People are more civil because it isn’t possible to vanish behind a cloak of anonymity that people enjoy in bigger cities.

It was once suggested to me that people say things in emails that they would never say to someone over the phone. And, over the phone (especially in a voice message), we seem willing to speak in ways that one would never consider saying face-to-face.

I will add that people say things in anonymous comments on blogs that add a further dimension. Perhaps it is a sign of the indifference associated with mass anonymity.

On Twitter and on bulletin boards, I have had comments made about me that are beyond the ridiculous. Adherence to truth and reasoned thinking is clearly not a prerequisite for publishing on Twitter. 

One of my favourite tweets in the usage based billing discussion was:

@Mark_Goldberg you should resign, apologize to the Canadian people for stifling progress, publicly denounce CRTC and then dismantle it #ubb

Not sure what I would resign from, although my son tells me that he is eagerly preparing to take over the consulting practice. And the Prime Minister may want to know that I am getting set to not only denounce the CRTC, but banish them all to a remote location where they will be forced to watch the National Geographic Wild channel, except during meals when they will need to listen to Ryerson Campus Radio. I feel the power!

As I did 4 years ago, let me commend to you a piece written by Andy Rutledge called Anti-social Media.

The social aspects of social media are often as anti–social as it gets. In our online community discussions, we say things we’d never say to another face–to–face and we behave in a manner that would likely otherwise get us punched in the face. And rightly so. We’ve grown comfortable with the idea of dispensing with our subjectivity to one another. This is a very bad idea.

Much of the social media has become a venue for us to practice our most anti–social behavior and exercise our basest motivations. And we’re rewarded for this activity by the fact that others delight in engaging us at a similar level, fueling the engine. And this activity is supposed to be the new and valuable community mechanism to lead us into the more enlightened future? I don’t think so.

Can we rise above anti-social behaviour in social media or develop better filters to shut out the noise?

A number of stories have appeared in the past week regarding growing mobile data demands.

Last week, the ITU chief called for governments to take “urgent action now” to support mobile broadband growth.

Mobile operators have been investing billions to upgrade and improve the capacity and performance of their networks, but in some high-usage cities, such as San Francisco, New York and London, we are still seeing users frustrated by chronic problems of network unavailability.

Yesterday, Openwave Systems and Juniper Networks announced plans to work together to improve the economics of delivering video over mobile networks. According to Openwave, video is expected to represent 65% of all mobile traffic by 2013.

Our insatiable thirst for spectrum will be one of the areas that will be covered at The 2011 Canadian Telecom Summit. Kim Perkidou of Juniper Networks will be delivering a keynote address and Dave Caputo of Sandvine will be speaking on the panel looking at solutions for government and industry to deliver on the expanding requirements.

As the ITU observed, “Mobile broadband is increasingly the technology of choice for hundreds of millions in the developing world, where fixed line infrastructure is often sparse and expensive to deploy.” Mobile and fixed wireless provides an alternative for universal broadband in Canada. A panel at this year’s Canadian Telecom Summit will be examining how existing networks, coupled with fibre and wireless technologies deliver broadband to all.

Early bird rates expire in less than 2 weeks. Have you registered yet?

I’m looking for some loose change. About $100M per year.

A friend asked me what I thought of Obama’s announced plan to free up 500MHz of spectrum, invest in 4G for rural areas, and build out nationwide public safety network. He wrote

Spectrum auctions as public policy tools – deficit reduction and public safety. I always get kind of uneasy when government does this multi-purpose policy stuff. Theoretically, they could hit a homerun and get it all right, but do you really have confidence that they will?

The plan to harvest broadcast spectrum to make more available for fixed and wireless communications is great. You have to stop and consider how wasteful it is for so much spectrum to be reserved for the exclusive use of a minority of TV viewers still accessing over-the-air signals. So we should all endorse the potential for improved utilization of the resource.

But I question: Why is this being tied to other programs, such as rural service expansion? Are there other cost programs that are tied to revenue generators? If the spectrum auction doesn’t generate the target levels, will rural expansion be killed, or will it compete with all other government programs? How do you set up sustainable funding?

In some ways,  the asset sale is being transformed into another durable program, although the government doesn’t own the asset – some lucky winner is chosen to whom we hand over our cash. In a sense, it represents an asset swap, as contrasted with the way some governments using the sale of assets to balance current account deficits. [Apparently, in its zeal to carefully manage the zillions of dollars of our taxes, the government has cut back on hiring a financial advisor to teach the difference between capital and expense, between asset sales and recurring revenues.]

It doesn’t strike me as a way that I would spend my money; I don’t plan to use money from sales of assets to pay current expenses until retirement time.

Let me say that in general, I don’t like rural expansion programs from the government. It means picking winners and subsidizing broadband based on geography, rather than an economic needs test. I have shown in earlier posts that we have huge numbers of people in cities who need help with affordability of internet access services as much as, if not more than, middle or upper class rural dwellers – many of whom have access to alternatives.

If some rural and remote dwellers can’t afford to pay what the service needs to be priced at, then isn’t a targeted, needs-based subsidy a better approach, dealing with the broader issue of digital affordability (devices and services)?

Let’s face it, rural infrastructure subsidies are politically appealing because they lead to three distinct photo opportunities for each hand-out: the initial cheque; the construction ground breaking; and finally, the initial service activation. And let’s not forget the reminders that will go into election campaign material from the incumbent.

On the other hand, targetting affordability sprinkles a little bit of money all over the place. There is no great photo opportunity. We have to fix this.

We’re going to auction spectrum in Canada in the next year for a couple important frequency bands. Based on the AWS auction of a few years ago, we could again be looking at raising billions of dollars from the sale of these assets. I’d like to propose a way to use those funds in a meaningful way. Go ahead and take the money raised and apply it to our mortgage – the national debt.

But retiring that amount of debt frees up some interest payment relief – current account savings – in the order of $100 M per year. That would fund a sustainable program to put technology into the hands of economically disadvantaged Canadians. That amount of money each year should fund about a third of my Million Computers, meaning that such a program on a continuous basis should allow for maintenance and technology renewal every 3 years or so.

Taking the cash from the sale of an asset and setting up an endowment is a reasonable approach to money management. Further, it is an indirect and competitively neutral way of returning a kind of stimulus to the communications and technology sector that is funding the spectrum auction, helping to grow the market for services and technology.

Will the proceeds from the next spectrum auction create a sustaining legacy to drive a more digitally connected country?