Later today, the CRTC will be releasing its decision on its Notice of Consultation 2009-261, Proceeding to consider the appropriateness of mandating certain wholesale high-speed access services, as I discussed briefly last week. The file has been open for a year and a half, triggered initially by the CRTC as a follow-up to a wholesale DSL access service decision.

The proceeding was expanded by combining the issue with a request in March 2009 by Cybersurf to gain access to a mandated central office-based ADSL access service and cable head-end network access service.

There are some who have said that the decision will determine the viability of broadband competition. Will independent ISPs be able to compete if the CRTC does not rule in their favour. On the other side, the incumbent telephone companies have argued that the decision may determine the viability of fibre to the home investments in some communities.

Later today, we will see how the Commission adjudicated between these strongly expressed warnings.

Will Canada move to mandate more wholesale access to broadband facilities? Will the CRTC treat the residential market differently from the business services market?

How will the parties respond?

The CRTC gave advance notice that next week will be busy for observers of the Canadian communications sector.

At 4:00 pm (following the close of the the Toronto Stock Exchange), on Monday, August 30, the CRTC will be releasing its Regulatory Policy regarding wholesale high-speed access services – the long awaited outcome from Telecom Notice of Consultation CRTC 2009-261). This will determine whether the smaller ISPs will gain access to matching the highest available broadband speeds when connecting via the telephone companies’ Gateway Access Service (GAS); the extent of permitted levels of mark-ups on GAS; and, whether the competitors can access telephone company next generation networks when there is co-location at the individual central offices.

The following day, on Tuesday, August 31 (again, when the markets close at 4pm), the CRTC will be issuing its decisions related to the disposal of the funds remaining in Bell Canada, Bell Aliant, Telus and MTS Allstream’s deferral accounts – the follow-up filings arising Telecom Decision CRTC 2008-1.

For more than two and a half years, the deferral account proceedings have been overhanging the rural broadband marketplace. While the intent had been to accelerate the roll-out of broadband service in rural Canada, the effect of the process has served to inhibit investment by smaller ISPs that have not known whether the major telcos would be entering some markets using public funding subsidies.

The biggest question is how the CRTC will deal with Bell Canada’s proposal to use HSPA mobile technology as its subsidized rural broadband solution. As I wrote exactly one month ago, the CRTC has just asked the public to comment on whether “wireless services (e.g. Wi-Fi, 3G networks or satellite) can be substitutes for landline services to connect to the Internet.” If the CRTC approves Bell’s proposal, then it seems to be pre-determining the outcome of its current consultation (which is scheduled to close on Friday).

The summer will be winding down with a flurry of activity from the CRTC – be sure to visit this site next week for our perspectives.

Google has announced placing calls from inside GMail and I have a bunch of questions.

Perhaps my privacy radar is hyper-sensitive, driven in part by Sarah Schmidt’s article today about Facebook.

So let’s assume that Google allows its users to opt in or out of having their calling patterns tracked. What about the people being called? Do they have privacy rights from this service?

Let’s say that I am not a GMail user. Can Google track information about who calls me? The location that people are seated when they call me? Can Google sell that information to an advertiser who can then match up data about my home – maybe even what websites I visit in my home, the people who call me and where they are calling from?

Will I suddenly get ads from airlines that offer flights to visit LA if Google notices that a phone number registered to my household is receiving calls from a GMail client using a California university IP address? Maybe Google would offer a qualified Direct Mail address list that gets around do-not-call and anti-spam legislation.

Further, the CRTC’s privacy rules likely won’t be able to be applied. Google isn’t a telecom carrier. Although the CRTC may think that it can apply its regulations indirectly, there may not be a Canadian carrier that has any relationship with Google for voice services – Google can purchase all of its Canadian terminations from US service providers that have correspondent relationships.

How will Canada apply its standards of behaviour on this service?

Interestingly, the CRTC will likely have insights into the scale of Google’s operations in Canada. Google’s voice service will not qualify for the computer-to-computer voice exemption for contribution. As such, it appears that Google will be a Telecommunications Service Provider since its service is connected to the Canadian public switched telephone network. Although its non-voice revenues will be exempted from contribution to the universal services subsidy pool, the CRTC may get interesting insights into the scale of Google’s operations in Canada.

More to come later.

There was an opinion piece on network neutrality published yesterday on The Street.

The piece argued (and was entitled) ‘Net Neutrality is Akin to Socialism’. Long time followers of this blog will recall that I spoke along similar lines more than 4 years ago in a piece called “Soviet styled monopoly“.

There was an opinion piece in The Australian last week saying that its National Broadband Network (NBN) is welfare for tech-heads.

I just wonder if the common folks on the street understand the issue or find any realistic likelihood in the possibilities of the doomsday scenarios being painted by some.

Some will pipe in and say that a problem already arose – and they will bring up the TELUS blocking incident.

Indeed, that incident proves that no new laws are required – just like new laws won’t keep my neighbours from rolling through stop signs.

Are people getting engaged with the thought of government getting more actively involved in the internet? Are we more willing to wait until a problem actually arises and deal with the issue at that time? Is it time for Canadian net neutrality advocates to find a new cause?

Over the weekend, there were a couple separate calls for the government to regulate the internet.

One of them came from a Mark Evans blog posting, wondering aloud if the government should get into the business of regulating porn, presumably using a new Porn Control Board of Ontario to raise revenues for the provincial treasury. After all, now that Ontario has decided to join British Columbia in the world of on-line gambling, he asks if we could have provincial regulation and control over another fund-raising vice.

The other call came from an opinion piece in the Washington Post. which dealt with the Google-Verizon proposal for network management rules. The main theme of that piece is that it disagrees with wireless being given an exemption from the rules.

The biggest reason to apply net-neutrality regulations to wired and wireless alike is basic economics. Anytime the government applies one set of rules to some competitors in a market but not others, it distorts that market.

And although wireless broadband hasn’t always been a real alternative to land-based cable, DSL or fiber connections, faster 4G services make it a more viable option.

The Washington Post says that net-neutrality rules do not require “surrendering to anarchy” on Internet connections; they support Internet providers managing their networks in ways that don’t discriminate between legitimate sites or services.

So if your Internet provider’s connection gets clogged because some users are hitting one site, it couldn’t cut off access to that site. But it could, after providing fair warning, throttle back those users’ download speeds, cap their bandwidth or charge them extra. Straightforward usage limits would have the added benefit of being understandable to customers and companies alike — unlike a lot of federal regulations and corporate terms-of-service documents.

In other words, the Washington Post is suggesting that the US adopt the Canadian approach.

Is it time for Canada’s net neutrality groups to acknowledge that the CRTC may have gotten it right?