With Netflix slated to launch in Canada today, it is worth reflecting on my Rogers On Demand Online service.

I have been playing around with a Beta of movie rentals from the Rogers On Demand Online website and it is pretty convenient. At the cottage through the summer, we were exposed to Apple TV and the benefits of on-line movie rentals.

The trial runs through September and RODO Rentals should be available to the general public in about a week and a half.

It got me thinking about the value of content for BDUs. When Rogers negotiates for content, they do so as an enormous BDU, Canada’s biggest mobile wireless service provider, one of the biggest ISPs, one of the largest video rental distributors and as a broadcaster.

Think about negotiating leverage for other companies who may be trying to acquire distribution rights. some are similarly situated, others will clearly have a more difficult time.

Some deals will be exclusive for internet distribution; others may be more restricted. Will vertical integration lead to reduced distribution channels for creators?

Will over the top companies have a chance to acquire Canadian rights for all of the content they seek to distibute? 

When Netflix launches in Canada, how many programs will be tied up by another rights holder?

I found the ITU’s recent broadband report surprising pragmatic in many respects, despite a press release that needlessly distracts with hyperbole.

The report, A 2010 Leadership Imperative: Towards a Future Built on Broadband, does not call for broadband to be considered a basic civil right – that was a press release addition from the ITU’s Secretary General.

ITU Secretary-General Dr Hamadoun Touré today challenged global leaders to ensure that more than half of all the world’s people have access to broadband networks by 2015, and make access to high-speed networks a basic civil right.

Why did the ITU chief issue such a strong statement that has been erroneously attributed by some to the work of the Commission?

Considering the poor civil rights records of so many members of the UN, the mind wanders trying to sort whether his statement was driven by noble leadership, naivete or arrogance. In the lofty language of international diplomacy, a call for a new basic civil right has specific meaning. My jaded cynicism doubts that broadband ranks with other basic civil rights that are unenforced in so many UN member states. 

The closest that the Broadband Commission came was an action item that said:

The United Nations General Assembly is asked to note the recommendations of the Broadband Commission for Digital Development and in particular the concept of ‘Broadband Inclusion for All’ and its mapping to achieving the MDGs in relation to the relevant resolutions of its Second Committee and to acknowledge the work of the Commission in support of Article 19 of the Declaration of Human Rights. [link added]

Is that a clear call for broadband to be declared a basic civil right?

However, the report itself makes for interesting reading. In particular, there is support for the emergence of mobile broadband as a viable access alternative in the section entitled “Technology: Futureproofing Technology.”

In planning the roll-out and deployment of broadband networks, it is unlikely that any single technology will be able to provide all the answers. Optical fibre is desirable at the core of the Internet, and for the majority of backhaul traffic, to achieve a high-capacity backbone, but at the edges of the network, and in particular in the hands of end-users, it is most likely that mobile devices will deliver many broadband applications and services.

As I wrote yesterday and last Friday, we need to be far more flexible in our vision for connectivity solutions. Getting the best fitting broadband solution to all Canadians means having more than one kind of solution available. The ITU’s report is crystal clear on this point.

Depending on local conditions such as geographic location, economic prosperity, rural or urban environments and local terrain, there is a role for a host of different technological solutions in providing broadband access – from cable to fixed wireless; from satellite to microwave; from xDSL to mobile technologies; and many more. Policy-makers should seek to adopt a technology-neutral approach as regulation needs to accommodate new upgrades of current technologies, as well as future technologies which do not yet exist.

There is a strong endorsement of satellite technologies for broadband:

Satellites also provide invaluable solutions, particularly for providing capacity in hard-to-reach rural areas and for providing the essential backhaul capacity needed by other operators to reach their customers. Recent catastrophic events have also highlighted to governments the important role played by satellites for achieving emergency preparedness and responding to events (such as the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti and the floods in Pakistan).

Through technology agnostic lenses, we can see that market forces, prodded by policy leadership, have succeeded in ensuring all Canadians already have access to a broadband internet service. No one participating in the CRTC’s upcoming ‘Obligation to Serve‘ proceeding should find inspiration for a new universal broadband service obligation by misinterpreting the ITU secretary general’s call for broadband as a basic civil right.

As Wire Report wrote earlier in the month [pay wall], there was no Canadian representation on the ITU’s Broadband Commission. It will take some further analysis to see whether our industry and consumers interests coincided with recommendations that emerged out of a Commission that had strong representation from our major trading partners.

A couple weeks ago, SaveOurNet.ca asked, “Where does Canada stand if internet access is declared a right.” All Canadians have access to broadband under the ITU’s definition. Indeed, all Canadians have access to at least one broadband service operating at more than an order of magnitude beyond what is called for.

I think there has been enough attention on the plumbing. We need to focus on getting more Canadians to drink from the taps.

David Ellis is self described as a digital strategist, educator and broadband evangelist. He teaches in York University’s interdisciplinary Communications Studies Program and he has been writing about Canadian broadband. In particulare, he is advocating for more to be done to accelerate adoption of higher speed services.

Among his writings, he has been frustrated by provincial complacency with 100% broadband availability and my regular readers know that I share his feeling that we need to do more to get people to actually subscribe.

He had a piece through the weekend that merits discussion.

I took issue with his view that a reason to rule out satellite connectivity is that the higher latency rules out telemedicine applications.

Most of all, geostationary satellites have latencies that put them completely out of the running for important apps like telemedicine – three or four times higher than the 250 milliseconds it takes a signal to travel 22,236 miles into space and back, i.e. 900 to 1,000 milliseconds or more

Telemedicine is an imprecise name for a broad field, with a variety of requirements for broadband connectivity. Let’s be clear – most of us are not ever going to have digital imaging devices in our homes and even fewer will have a robotic scapel connected to a gigabit optical feed to allow doctors to operate from the comfort of their homes. Instead, a more immediate requirement is for telemetry type connections: vital signs, blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, blood sugar levels. Isn’t that a reasonable definition for residential telemedicine?

Until we get to pricing of home CT Scans in the order of Mr. Fusion, we need to be more realistic about the kinds of broadband speeds and latency that are really needed.

There seems to be a subtext that implicitly suggests that anything less than the types of speeds possible in an urban setting isn’t worth consideration for univeral broadband services.

This strikes me as a noble, but naive message.

There is an enormous benefit to having any form of data communications connection in a household. The leap from zero to anything greater than zero enables all sorts of efficiencies in the delivery of government and social services. Most importantly, it provides an appetizer – a taste of what being connected can do.

The next stage is moving from casual – call it dial-up – to always-on connectivity. With ‘always-on’ connections, there is the ability to push as well as pull, an ability to stay on any time, without tying up the phone line. Many applications, such as home energy monitoring, e-health, e-commerce, e-mail, need just a basic always-on connection.

We want way more than basic always-on connections, and we are going to need a variety of connectivity technologies – including next generation satellite – to enable all Canadians to derive benefits from the digital economy. There are high throughput satellites being launched early next year that will bring affordable urban speeds to every home in Canada – no matter how remote it may be.

As I have said many times before, I used satellite for the entire summer, for business and consumer purposes and it works just fine, thank-you.

The ITU released a report yesterday, A 2010 Leadership Imperative: Towards a Future Built on Broadband, that will be getting a lot of coverage over the coming week. The ITU Secretary General called for making access to high speed networks a basic civil right, a stronger statement than what appears in the official report. However, keep in mind that the ITU has a low bar for its definition of high speed service: 256 kbps, always-on connection. The ITU defines wireless, mobile broadband and satellite as all being acceptable substitutes. Canada is well beyond this hurdle for all our citizens. 

As I wrote on Friday, there needs to be a greater emphasis on broadband adoption. On that key point, I am in full agreement with Professor Ellis. Let’s hope for some action as Parliament returns for the fall session.

The 10 days leading up to the start of Yom Kippur tonight are a time for reflection, a review of the past year.

I have taken the past week to recuperate from some surgery, which provided an opportunity to have narcotics influence the thought process. As a preamble, I wish to note that my surgeon recommended not conducting any major legal or financial transactions while under the influence. So, I hope this note of reflection doesn’t end up like the epiphanal manuscript from Jerry Maguire.

It has been 4 months since the launch of Canada’s consultation on the Digital Economy. In that time, we have seen some huge amounts of money allocated for rural broadband by the Broadband Canada program and the CRTC’s deferral account decision.

It seems to me that we have been spending a huge amount of money without first having a clear statement of our objectives. What are we trying to accomplish by spending this money, with what kind of paramenters to measure success? What is the liberalization of foreign investment rules trying to accomplish?

I’m not being facetious here. What is the one-line elevator pitch description of the objective of more than a half billion dollars (or more) that was committed to extend broadband access over the past few months?

Without a clear statement of our objective, how can we measure whether it was the most effective way to spend the money. Sure, there are regions that are now in line to get access to improved connectivity – but that doesn’t mean we got value for the money. Are we even heading in the right direction?

Clearly, it has not been to get as many Canadians on-line as possible. If that was the objective, we would be spending more money stimulating demand among the millions of Canadians that already have access to broadband, but have not yet connected.

Around one in 5 Canadian homes doesn’t subscribe to a wireline high speed broadband service that is at their front door. We know that broadband adoption rates are skewed toward higher income Canadians.

So, if our objectives for a digital Canada are geared toward improving economic advantages, shouldn’t we focus on greater digital participation among those Canadians who are already the most economically disadvantaged?

And if increasing broadband adoption is the primary objective, are our current government programmes consistent with the most effective way to achieve that goal?

There have been some commentators that have argued that Canada needs a Digital Minister – a single point of focus around the Cabinet table. I disagree: this is perhaps one implementation approach, but not the only one. I could argue as forcefully that a government that truly buys into a digital vision could (and should) have a more pervasive virtual digital leadership; digital strategies should be found within every government office.

The “how” is more of an implementation detail. I am far more concerned with the “what”. What are we trying to do? Let’s start by making that answer clear.

What is our national digital connectivity objective? Do we want the fastest speeds? Do we want the most people to have access? Do we want the most people to be connected? Do we want global leadership in certain types of content or applications development?

I would vote to focus on maximizing the number of Canadians who are connected on-line all the time. And if that is the case, then spending programs need to be measured based on how effectively they deliver on that goal, with technological neutrality.

I am less fussed with what gizmo or plumbing pipe people use, as long as it serves the purposes of enabling us to be able to leverage the capabilities, efficiencies and opportunities afforded by digital connectivity and literacy.

Nokia recently announced its focus on getting the next billion connected to the internet. It is a clear statement of a bold objective.

It is a new school year, a new season, as we prepare for the return of Parliament on Monday, let’s look forward to a clear statement of a bold digital vision.

I have never been a fan of the National Do Not Call registry or the anti-spam legislation that has been proposed.

Both sets of laws have generally struck me as legislation that increases the cost of doing legitimate business, but in practice, they have very little impact on the really bothersome calls and emails that should be the real target.

In May, I wrote about one adventure I had tracking down a rogue telemarketer.

Over the past couple weeks, I participated in another sting for a group that was promising a bundle of communications services – that just didn’t smell quite right. So I worked with the communications services provider to find out who was behind the “unknown name / number” calls in order to shut them down.

The bad actors just keep misbehaving; the easiest approach is to just ignore the call, or hang up on them – which can be quite cathartic, especially if you have older styled phones that actually make noise when you slam the receiver down.

So given these experiences, you may think that I want stronger legislation. No, I don’t.

I’m not crazy about door-to-door water heater salespeople, but there is no registry to keep pushy sales people away. I’ve learned how to say “no thanks” and close the door without pangs of guilt.

I get frustrated by idiot drivers in my subdivision who roll (or speed) through stop signs, distracted by their phones, or make-up, or coffee or kids. A honk on the horn works fine for them.

I would think that personal safety is more at risk from strange salespeople showing up on my doorstep than errant phone calls or email messages.

If a national “do not knock” registry wasn’t required, do we need legislation like the so-called Electronic Commerce Protection Act?