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A number of recent announcements of projects to deliver ultra-high speed internet have surfaced in recent weeks, ranging from Bell’s FTTH roll-out in Quebec City, Novus 200 Mbps offering in Vancouver and Shaw planning gigabit trials in its territory.

All of these point to a climate of substantial investment driven by competition looking for differentiation by enhancing the internet speeds available to their customers.

The investments aren’t limited to just urban centres. Barrett Xplore has announced [here and here] investments in next generation high throughput satellite capacity in order to bring advanced services to rural and remote markets.

As the CRTC works through the filings in the essential services proceeding, and the deferral account implementation plans [3 files: implementation, competitor access, and consumer rebate], it needs to be cognizant of potential unintended consequences of its policies: chilling a fragile investment climate.

Competition appears to be working, with facilities based carriers driving investment in more advanced broadband facilities, delivering faster speeds to consumers. Our governments are out of money and, as I have written before, governments don’t have a great track record at maintaining and operating infrastructure.

What are the right policies to continue to provide encouragement to the private sector?

With the Olympics acting as a bit of a distraction, it took me some time to get around to reading the CRTC report, “Navigating Convergence: Charting Canadian Communications Change and Regulatory Implications.” Many of the news accounts of  the report were typically superficial, effective for looking for sensational headlines and forcing the CRTC Chair to issue a statement to respond.

One of the stories focused on so-called “skyrocketing” prices supposedly highlighted in the report. If you check out Figure 7 in the report, you will see that the prices don’t really seem to be “skyrocketing.” The overall CPI rose 13.3% from 2002 to 2008. Telecom services rose 5.7%, less than half the rate of inflation. Prices rising 5.7% over 6 years: help me understand the adjective, please. That’s a fizzled out kind of skyrocket, isn’t it?

Now, eyeballing Figure 7, you will notice that prices have been pretty flat, with an uptick in the final year. The statistician in me asks, what happened in that year? Well, followers of the CPI would know that in 2007, Statistics Canada updated the CPI, changing the base year to 2002 and it also updated the basket of goods to match consumer purchase patterns in 2005.

So the first point is that there is a discontinuity that needs to be examined and understood. Secondly, the CPI report from Statistics Canada is measuring a basket of services that does not necessarily align with current purchases. The current basket is 5 years old. An objective of the CPI is to match the goods and services that the average household buys, and adjust in order to understand like for like price changes. But certain goods and services are very different today from what was available 5 years ago.

Think about the challenge in comparing prices on computers – the purchase price may stay at $1000, but that buys a lot more of a machine today than it did in 2002. Today’s households buy a very different mix of telephone services than what they bought 6 years ago. That changing mix means prices for legacy services may have changed for all the right reasons as tastes and trends transition.

Cable and satellite rose 30% since 2002; double the CPI. Of course, let’s also be sure to take a look at what has happened to TV over that period. More channels, more digital, affordable big screen TVs (meaning more set top boxes per household), more HD, pay-per-view, on-demand, etc.

In other words, people are buying more TV services, perhaps because they want to and because they think it is worth the price, especially compared to other entertainment choices in a tough economy.

It is easy to look at numbers; it is a lot tougher to understand them, draw conclusions and develop policy based on the data.

Early bird prices expire at the end of February for The 2010 Canadian Telecom Summit. Sessions at the event will explore all of the issues affecting Canadian Telecommunications. Register today for The Canadian Telecom Summit.

For a few years now, I have been calling for Canada to develop a national digital strategy. Others have independently echoed the call and many other countries have moved faster toward examination of the broad range of issues to be considered as economies evolve to prosper in a digital era.

The CRTC’s recent report “Navigating Convergence” has a section on National Digital Strategy. The report observes:

A world-leading broadband network infrastructure is not an end in itself. The “pipes” are only useful inasmuch they are used to deliver services, applications and content to Canadians.

The 2010 Canadian Telecom Summit will have special sessions on Tuesday, June 8 that look at International Perspectives on ICT Strategies, followed by a session looking at Building Digital Canada. Early Bird rates for The Canadian Telecom Summit are available until the end of February.

Have you registered yet?

A story in Monday’s New York Times talked about the emergence of a new technology for mobile digital TV, in desperate need of a catchier name: ATSC-M/H (Advanced Television Systems Committee for Mobile and Handheld).

Beginning in April, eight television stations in Washington, D.C., will broadcast a signal for a new class of devices that can show programming, even in a car at high speed. In all, 30 stations in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle and Washington have installed the necessary equipment, at a cost of $75,000 to $150,000.

Apparently, Our Communications Research Centre spoke about ATSC-M/H in its submission more than a year ago to the CRTC’s New Media proceeding. A couple of months ago, CRC announced its own trial of the technology (thanks to Bram Abramson for the tweet with the links).

The CRC’s submission to the Commission concluded with a statement:

CRC has been collaborating with the broadcasting industry to develop and evaluate various broadcasting technologies. CRC will continue to look into the future and work on new broadcasting technologies such as the ATSC-M/H and multimedia broadcasting, as well as more advanced video technologies like 3D TV, super-high definition and immersive TV.

Thirty TV stations in a number of major US cities are in live market trials, while Canada is in a government test lab. While the CRC is working in cooperation with Canada’s broadcast industry, de-risking the investment in research, is there an unintended consequence of delaying the availability of new technologies for Canadians?