As many of you prepare to head off in search of warmer climes, I’m planning to slow down postings over the next few weeks as well, spending a little more time with the family.
As I mentioned last week, you should have received the first email blast promoting The 2010 Canadian Telecom Summit, taking place June 7-9. Registrations are open; we can process your registration and get you a receipt immediately, if you are looking to use up 2009 funds in your year-end budgets.
We’re going to be looking at Canada’s national digital strategy, the changing market for mobile communications, and all of the issues that are at the forefront of our dynamically evolving communications industry.
12(1) Within one year after a decision by the Commission, the Governor in Council may, on petition in writing presented to the Governor in Council within ninety days after the decision, or on the Governor in Council’s own motion, by order, vary or rescind the decision or refer it back to the Commission for reconsideration of all or a portion of it.
In the case of the Globalive review, there was no petition presented; the Minister of Industry set in motion a review of its own motion. For that kind of process, there is not a lot of procedural definition.
That raises an interesting question of process. Would the Globalive determination have been delayed if there had been a “petition in writing”? For example, let’s say that someone looked at the CRTC’s decision and thought that there was a problem with paragraph 45 – which has some interesting ideas about independent directors. [As an aside, how independent can we consider the director named by one shareholder to be?]
Once the Minister started his own review, what would have happened if a party representing the interests of proper corporate governance had filed a petition to the Governor in Council? Normally, this would cause a series of prescribed activities. The Department would have waited 90 days until January 27 (the end of the cabinet appeal period defined in the Act) and then posted a notice calling for comments in the Canada Gazette.
Check out the processes described in the recitals in the MTS Allstream and Bell / TELUS orders posted a couple days ago.
It would have taken until late February before the paper consultation was complete. By then, Globalive might have brought itself into compliance with the original CRTC Order through a creative financing scheme with one of the banks.
Did Globalive’s opponents miss a clever procedural manoeuvre?
Bell Aliant has announced the completion of an $8.2M investment in broadband infrastructure in PEI, enabling the company to deliver high-speed Internet to virtually all areas of the Island.
Now, Bell Aliant and the government of PEI have launched a $1M Rural Broadband Fund, a five-year strategic partnership to support innovation in information technology across PEI.
In October, we released our report (Lagging or Leading) which called for increasing the attention on stimulating demand for broadband services.
According to the CRTC’s Communications Monitoring Report, PEI lags the rest of Canada in broadband adoption; at the end of 2008, it was the only province with less than 60% of households connected to broadband service.
Will PEI be able to stimulate its digital connectivity through universal access and the Rural Broadband Fund?
As the son (read “associate”) of an independent telecommunications consultant, it is my privilege and pleasure to test out new gadgets from time to time. Recently, I got a hold of the brand new Nokia N86 smart phone.
As a disclaimer, this was one of the first smart-phones that I have used, with the limited experience of accessing wikipedia-ing obscure 90’s alternative rock bands on friends’ iPhones or checking Facebook on a parent’s Blackberry.
Accordingly, the initial wow-factor for me was “amazing, I can easily check my e-mail on this thing”.
After I got over the general excitement of setting up and using a smartphone, I focused on a few specific features I liked/disliked.
Likes:
Fast response time – when I press a button, the phone does something. This might sound trivial; I currently use a Motorola SLVR L6 and there is a noticeable delay between the time I press a button and when it responds. All around frustrating. So I appreciate the blazing speed with which the N86 responds to my button-pushing. [Side note: The L6 is a 4 year old model, and my father/boss is a telecommunications consultant. Hmmm.]
In general, it doesn’t take too long to load up applications on the N86 either. It switches between applications instantly.
Five stars on multimedia: Two cameras. 8 megapixel primary camera. Secondary camera on the front face is handy for the self-shots with pals. The sound quality is quite good for a phone speaker, and comes with great noise cancelling earbud headphones.
Did I mention that you can check your email with this thing? Goodbye telegraph.
Battery Power – Lasts quite some time – a nice break from recharging my battery every night.
Dislikes:
For all the features it has, it might as well have a full QWERTY keyboard. The biggest limiting factor of the phone, in my opinion.
Stiff camera shutter button. Maybe it was just this unit, but you really have to jam your finger down on the button to take a picture.
Clumsy auto-rotate – takes too long to respond to turning the unit on its side. (nitpicky?)
The Nokia N86 is one of the many Nokia devices available from their Christmas gift guide. Wind Mobile will be officially launching its service tomorrow morning. What kind of impact will it have on the busiest time of the year for most wireless service providers?
Editor’s note: Before you write to ask why my son is using an “antique” phone, remember that he is living in Southern California and he seems to enjoy subjecting electronic equipment to salt-water immersion tests and exposure to his chemistry lab experiments.
With eyes in Canada focussed on the Globalive story, it seems the OECD’s new broadband numbers slid under the radar screen.
On Friday, the OECD released figures for June 2009 penetration rates. Canada held onto its number 10 position in subscriptions per capita; Canada was precisely 360 subscriptions short of pulling ahead of Finland to move into the number 9 position.
Finland, the country that made headlines for its statement that broadband access is a right for all its citizens, lost two years worth of subscribers in six months to fall from number 6 to the number 9 position. It is no wonder their government had to make some kind of political statement like a universal broadband obligation, although it is possible that there has been some mobile substitution.
Despite the challenges of the economy, in the six months ended June 2009, the OECD says that more than half a million Canadians were added to wireline broadband services, while tens of thousands were knocked off Finland’s numbers. Canada’s broadband growth rate was the highest of all top 10 countries.
If you look at the OECD’s spreadsheets [such as here], you’ll see that most of the OECD broadband figures come from official government sources. Canada and the US are the only two countries that the OECD estimates broadband penetration from company quarterly financial reports.
How should the OECD source information from companies that do not report? These would include companies like SaskTel (that only reports annually) and privately held fixed wireless companies, cable companies and independent telcos.
There are also thousands of business accesses provided by multinationals carriers (such as AT&T;, Verizon, etc.) operating in Canada.
