According to the CRTC’s list of decisions upcoming this week, there are going to be some interesting releases later today – likely clearing the way for the Obligation to Serve proceeding that opens in Timmins tomorrow.

The CRTC will be ruling on two applications to review and vary decisions related to broadband services:

• One of these applications deals with usage based billing for the wholesale Gateway Access Service tariff. The main issue is whether the incumbent telephone companies should have to have every retail customer on a usage based billing plan prior to being allowed to charge any wholesale clients on this basis;
• The other application deals with the deferral account decision where the CRTC ordered Bell to use a specific technology (DSL) for rural broadband, rather than specifying the desired service characteristics and allowing Bell the flexibility to implement the technology of its own choice.

There is also a decision due out on a dispute between Bell / Bell Aliant and the City of Thunder Bay over access to city roads for telecommunications rights of way. It is an issue that rarely becomes discussed in municipal election campaigns, because telecommunications is generally a federal matter. Since today is municipal election day in Ontario, it is worth discussing this issue – too late to affect any of the results.

Municipalities rightly are concerned about the impact that construction has on their roadways and it would be reasonable for them to set standards for the telecom industry in respect of traffic disruption and repair requirements. However, it seems counterproductive for municipalities to be anything less that supportive of investment in infrastructure by the communications sector.

Shouldn’t we be looking for city hall to find ways to make it easier for new transmission lines to be deployed – the more, the faster, the better?

All these decisions and more – the opening of the Timmins hearings. Should be lots to discuss. Follow me on Twitter for some of the play-by-play.

A new report from Berkeley Research Group has found that Canadian consumers are among the world’s most intensive and sophisticated users of Internet services. In addition, the report [pdf, 700KB] says that Canada’s mobile networks and usage of such networks are among the most sophisticated in the developed world.

The authors of the report are Leonard Waverman, Dean, Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary and Kalyan Dasgupta, Principal, Berkeley Research Group. They found that Canadian businesses have been slower to adopt information and communication technologies than their counterparts in other countries.

… despite Canadians being among the most intensive users of the Internet anywhere, Internet-based retail lags in Canada compared to countries such as the U.K., even though broadband penetration in Canada is higher and average user speeds are also higher. Thus the primary “problem” in Canada would appear to be a wider business failure to sufficiently invest in or make use of technology that transforms business processes rather than a failure by the providers of telecommunications and broadband networks to provide affordable and high-quality services.

The report says that the inordinate focus on networks and networks alone is damaging “a much more important debate about the wider digital economy in Canada.”

The report considers the weak performance of Canada in electronic retailing, pointing out that getting Canadian electronic commerce to the level of U.K. electronic commerce doesn’t require faster broadband networks (given that broadband networks in the U.K. are slower than ours). So why did a 2008 study find that half of Canadian online users never make online purchases, compared with just one fifth in the U.K. and one eight in the US?

The report quotes Blair Levin, the recently departed head of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan for the United States:

As the leaders of the team that prepared the National Broadband Plan that was presented to Congress in March, we have seen that the public debate on broadband focuses too much on how our networks compare with those in other countries. Instead, the discussion should focus on how to use those networks here in America and rethink how we deliver key services.

We need to spend more time understanding issues impacting the demand side of the equation. How do we help consumers and businesses make better use of the infrastructure we have?

Yesterday morning, I picked up the phone and called an aunt who lives halfway around the world. We chatted for about 15 minutes – the call is going to cost me less than the cup of coffee I sipped while we spoke.

In the course of our conversation I found out something new about my aunt. She had travelled between Canada and Europe by ship 60 years ago – aboard the Empress of Canada and Empress of Scotland, 2 members of the fleet of ocean liners operated by Canadian Pacific. She went off for some travel after she finished school, before she got married.

The conversation made me think about my kids travelling. They fly and I can track their flight’s location on-line. We generally make sure that the kids have a cell phone that allows us to stay in touch and we can see their photos nearly instantly.

In my aunt’s day, a 3 minute call between Europe and Canada was a luxury reserved for urgent news. To this day, we start our calls with an announcement that everyone is allright – and no special lifecycle announcements. I can call just to say hi.

I don’t take any of this for granted.

Some people ask whether we are too connected, are we “on” too much? They suggest a nostalgic look back in time and tell us that our parents did just fine without all of this technology.

I don’t think that ‘just fine’ is good enough. Maybe our parents did ‘just fine’. But we are doing better than that. We can call around the world for a lower price than calling from Toronto to Waterloo just 20 years ago. In real, not adjusted, dollars. We can stay in touch when travelling. We can share our experiences easier – so that it doesn’t come as a surprise to our nieces and nephews that their aunt or uncle was a globe-trotter. And we can respond faster to emergencies.

Our parents generation may have managed just fine with letters and airmail, but we are managing even better with our current portfolio of communications capabilities. 

I won’t take it for granted.

The CRTC has approved Atop Broadband’s application to provide TV services to the Toronto area.

This isn’t the first time that Toronto has seen alternative choices for broadcast distribution undertakings (the official term for a cable company). But it may be the first time we have seen a BDU that plans to deliver its services using over-the-top IPTV.

Atop has said that it expects to be able to deliver multiple HD streams using 2 Mbps per channel. That will lead to almost 1GB per hour per channel. In my household, using Atop as my TV provider would blow out my download cap in a good fall weekend of football and baseball playoffs.

So how will they compete?

Atop says that it has several strategic alliances that will overcome internet “access issues”. Maybe Atop plans to work with one of the alternate ISPs that has colocation space in many of the central offices.

Most importantly, Atop’s plans sends a new signal that there are ways for service providers to deliver high bandwidth services to customers. There is going to be increased choice for TV services.

Perhaps customers and other companies will realize that there are more choices for internet access than they have been led to believe. It isn’t a monopoly marketplace out there and it is encouraging to see entrepreneurs investing in delivering more choice to consumers.

Welcome to the market, Atop Broadband.

Parents in Meaford Ontario are calling for the removal of WiFi from their kids’ school. A press release issued by one of the members of the school’s Parent Council says that this is the first Canadian Public School to vote to remove WiFi. Only a third of the 210 letters sent home were returned; 62 of the 70 parents completing the survey wanted the school WiFi shut off.

The school principal has said that it is not taking that action until it is instructed to do so by the Board of Education.

In June, I wrote about concerns with the City of San Francisco intervening in mobile services regulation:

One of the reasons that I enjoy watching World Cup soccer is that is provides such a wonderful metaphor for organizational excellence. Unlike the games we see at neighbourhood parks, players at the top tier don’t converge on the moving ball. The panoramic camera angles show the choreography as team members back away and trust their mates to defend or attack, pass and dance around the field. Players know their jobs and they know what the roles are for the other members of the team.

Government bodies, at all levels, need to know their own job and trust their team mates to do the same. You can’t perform at a world class level if you can’t get each player to understand this. The consumer labelling and information requirements of the San Francisco ordinance isn’t what troubles me; it is the dysfunctional balkanization of regulatory authority that the ordinance represents.

A school council can and should express parental concerns. But its governance is not equipped to make the decisions on WiFi safety. It is about 5 levels of government away from the people who have that mandate and responsibility at the Federal level.

Do we want school parent councils making decisions on school vaccination programs?