On Friday, the CRTC gave approval to 5-year license renewals for Shaw and Videon cable systems in various Western Canadian operating areas, and for Novus, operating in Greater Vancouver. The licensees had sought seven year licenses, but the CRTC limitted both sets of licenses to 5 years because of issues with compliance by the companies.

These short-term renewals will permit the Commission to review at an earlier date the licensees’ compliance with the Broadcasting Distribution Regulations and their conditions of licence.

There is a special section appended to the Broadcasting Decisions [2010-820 for Shaw/Videon and 2010-821 for Novus] called “Additional Considerations of the hearing Panel” that sets out the frustration of the CRTC in dealing with regulated entities that don’t comply with regulations. It is an unusual addendum, written more like a dissent, but apparently carrying the support of the full panel of Commissioners. It may be the start of a campaign to increase regulatory powers for the CRTC.

Once again, the Commission is required to rely on sub-optimal regulatory tools to address non-compliance issues, resulting in less effective and more costly regulation, to the detriment of the broadcasting system and all Canadians.

Right now, if a company falls afoul of the rules, the CRTC has to wait until it is time to renew the licenses, and as punishment, it can either cut them off completely by not renewing their license (highly unlikely) or it can make the carrier go through the time-consuming renewal process more frequently by granting shorter license periods. The CRTC wants the power to issue fines: “administrative monetary penalties.”

Canada would benefit from amendments to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Act to provide more timely and relevant regulatory compliance tools. These should include the ability for the Commission to issue administrative monetary penalties (AMPs) with regard to non-compliance matters and transgressions by licensees. Most G20 members have granted their communications regulators the authority to issue AMPs.

Based on the CRTC’s experience, the use of short-term licence renewals, don’t act as an effective enough deterrent. According to the addendum, some companies have demonstrated that the a shorter licence term at the next licence renewal (a number of years away), is a better business decision than incurring short-term costs needed to comply with their regulatory obligations.

A case in point is the obligation to meet Commission obligations relating to accessibility. Delays in meeting Commission objectives deny Canadians with disabilities meaningful access to programming in a timely manner, while the licensee is only judged at licence renewal, which can be years away.

In other words, the CRTC would like greater flexibility in the ability to deal with those parties that flout the rules. The hearing Panel observed the lack of fining powers hampers the Commission in effectively discharging its regulatory oversight for both broadcasters and telecommunications carriers.

The CRTC has such powers to deal with violations of the Telemarketing Rules and it may acquire similar powers associated with the new anti-Spam Bill C-28.

Canada is in the process of defining our role and priorities within the digital economy. Now would be the best time to cut through these delays and curtail regulatory bureaucracy by providing the Commission with the tools to act in the least intrusive and least invasive manner.

Expect to see a campaign to open the CRTC Act to add these greater fining powers.

Next week, Ottawa will be the venue for the second annual gathering of The Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism (ICCA), hosted in part by Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney. The press release announcing the conference sets the tone: Stepping Up To Stop the Hate, Parliamentarians and Experts From Around the Globe Gear Up For 2010 Conference on Combating Antisemitism.

Among the sessions being examined by the parallel Experts Forum will be a session examining Hate on the Internet, a subject explored in various blog postings here over the past few years.

Twitter users can follow ICCA and watch for hashtag #icca2010

Three years ago, I wrote a piece that (unfortunately) is as relevant today as it was then.

I commented then that it is one thing to bring broadband internet to the masses, but how do we make them drink from the fountain of knowledge?

One of the challenges, of course, is that the industry has not yet sold turn-key applications that capture the imaginations of the unconnected. Surprising as it seems, email, Facebook, file swapping and web surfing have not yet attracted 100% of the population.

[Note that Twitter had not yet warranted a mention 3 years ago.]

I observed:

Are there some applications that might lend themselves to a toll-free model in order to reach the rest of the market?

For example, would home health care warrant installing a broadband connection as part of a monitoring service? The broadband access would be enabling underlying service, but the costs would be incurred by the health care agency, not the infirmed. Like toll-free calling, the application provider would pay the charges.

Your aging grandmother may have no idea that she would have a broadband connection coming into her apartment – perhaps complete with a wireless router. All she would know is that she can stay at home for routine monitoring check-ups.

Besides health care and elder-care, what other applications might “reverse-the-charges” for broadband access? Security services? Gaming? Entertainment? Energy management?

Among other considerations such as driving more universal connectivity, a reverse-the-charges model might put a very different spin on net neutrality – these applications will be asking the ISPs to bill them for a specific kind of access.

If Telemedicine has so many economic benefits, should provincial health plans be paying to install broadband with vital sign or blood sugar monitors into the homes of unconnected individuals with compromised health conditions?

Should our social services safety net include benefits to provide a computer and broadband to households with school age children?

We have the means to identify those Canadians that need government intervention to ensure affordable internet for all.

The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE) went over the top yesterday, perhaps euphoric that Canada’s proposed anti-spam bill (C-28) received support in its review by the House Industry, Science and Technology Committee.

It has an article linking spam to kidnapping, theft and rape.

Kidnap. Rape. There are no lesser words that can be used to describe what happened to the daughter of an anti-spam investigator in Russia.

His daughter was recently released, according to Joseph Menn’s recent article on Boing Boing, after having been kidnapped from her home five years ago, fed drugs, and made to service men, as a warning to ward off further investigations.

The criminals behind these vicious acts were also responsible for large spamming organization associated with Russian Mob activity.

That’s why CAUCE believes we need to ban legitimate Canadian businesses from sending you an email asking if you want to get notified of upcoming sales and promotions.

As I have written before, Canada is on the verge of banning electronic communications that are perfectly legal in paper form (and actually encouraged by Canada Post).

The CAUCE article goes on to say that most spam is sent by organized criminal gangs, just like other organized crimes. I agree completely.

Why then are we so comfortable with restrictions on other emails. This bill goes farther than necessary and will be an inhibitor in efficiencies enabled by electronic commerce.

Why haven’t more groups vocalized the danger of legislation so broad that it will impinge upon choice of communications.

Where would you have guessed that Canada’s fastest consumer internet is available? Downtown Toronto?

No. How about the 3 main cities in New Brunswick?

Yesterday, Bell Aliant launched Canada’s fastest broadband service: FibreOP 170/30, which offers, as the name implies, 170 Mbps download with 30 Mbps upload.

The service will be initially priced at close to $250 per month, so it is clearly not for everyone, but Bell Aliant has a wide range of other broadband service offerings:

• High-Speed: 1.5Mbps – $34.95
• High-Speed Ultra: 7 Mbps – $39.95
• High-Speed Max: 13 Mbps – $49.95
• FibreOP Internet 25/5: 25 Mbps – $77.95
• FibreOP Internet 70/15: 70 Mbps – $107.95

FibreOP services and bundles are currently available to Bell Aliant customers in the extended regions of greater Fredericton, greater Saint John and greater Moncton. Bell Aliant does not currently use any kind of technical traffic management on their broadband network, such as shaping, or throttling and there is no download cap.

As such, Bell Aliant takes the title of Canada’s fastest broadband service away from Videotron, which has been offering 120 Mbps download (20 Mbps upload) service for about $150 per month. But we note that Shaw has been trialing a gigabit service.

What are the applications that will justify these ultra-high speed services for residential customers?

Will some people set up an informal sharing group to power gaming, video streaming and cloud based file services for their entire neighbourhood?

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