As part of its support for the development of a National Digital Strategy, TELUS has released a paper, called “Leaping Forward – Wireless Broadband and a National Digital Strategy.”

According to the paper, now that Canada has built an ubiquitous broadband infrastructure, the question of how to leverage these networks and development of a broadband economy be part of a larger digital industrial strategy:

That industrial strategy for Canada would include:

• incentives for continued investment
• policies that promote consumer access and choice; and
• ensuring that application providers, software developers and content creators across the value chain can reach markets.

Telus expands with its own Top 10 list of principles to guide the discussion and debate in developing the national digital strategy:

1. Canada needs to trust the market to build our broadband future
2. Government can find smart ways to support a digital media strategy without large expenditures funded by taxpayer dollars
3. Spectrum auctions should be fair and open to ensure to ensure that the $2 billion dollar overpayments in the last AWS auction are not repeated again
4. Canada and the world are our markets; we cannot be inward looking
5. Digital content is not limited to narratives/stories but is also software and applications that enable the creation, distribution and sharing of content online
6. Governments are ill equipped to shape new media or to sustain markets that don’t exist, but government can stimulate investment and innovation
7. Canadians must have the opportunities to access, communicate, interact, create and transact over open broadband networks
8. Copyright is not an absolute; it must be balanced against fair use
9. Intellectual property is the currency of an information economy just as much as access to broadband is a prerequisite to participation
10. The consumer and public are already shaping markets and we need to follow their direction to succeed

Each of these points are fleshed out in greater detail in the paper – see below.

Many of these themes have been discussed by Telus before, such as in the context of its Petition to the Governor in Council from last March. A ruling on a series of cabinet appeals is expected later this week.

Leaping Forward-Wireless Broadband and a National Digital Strategy FINAL http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=23376655&access_key=key-eo0fzs9dtqop8q5cy4i&page=1&version=1&viewMode=list

Catherine Middleton’s tweet last week pointed me to a report out of the Australian Senate Select Committee on the National Broadband Network (“NBN“) [ pdf, 1.2MB] that has a number of recommendations. By the way, you should add @catmiddleton to your must follow list.

The recommendations lead with:

That the Implementation Plan clearly states the government’s intention to prioritise the needs of underserviced communities, particularly those in regional, rural and remote areas, over those with comparatively well-serviced urban areas.

In other words, before you spend $43B to lay new fibre in urban locations that have working broadband, let’s start off with the outer reaches.

The report also calls for a rigorous cost-benefit analysis, open to public scrutiny, of the NBN proposal prior to acquiring assets. If the study concludes the NBN project specifications are unrealistic, not practical or uneconomical, the government is being asked to reassess its overall policy approach.

It is one thing to set a vision – it is also important that governments are prudent in spending. The Senate Committee also called for the government to advocate the development of new applications to facilitate economic development and improvements in health, education and energy efficiency. These were seen to provide greater opportunities for commercial viability of broadband networks.

That sounds like helping stimulate the demand side of the equation. It is nice to see the Australian Senate committee echoing our view that stimulus for broadband adoption has to consider more than just the supply side denominator; we need to consider stimulus programs for the demand side numerator as well.

There is an article on TMCnet that articulates the problem with importing foreign open access regulatory models without consideration of the North American reality of facilities based competition.

A success of the regulatory framework in Canada and the United States has been the presence of multiple communications channels in most homes and businesses.

In most countries where open access rules apply, the competitive landscape is quite different.

That has huge financial implications for any firms contemplating building ubiquitous high-speed access facilities. In countries where, for legal, regulatory or other reasons there is not ubiquitous cable broadband already in place, a service provider might seriously entertain building an open access network, relatively safe in the knowledge that virtually all contestants will be wholesale customers.

As our report showed [Figure B.1.3 on page 81], few other countries have such ubiquitous cable broadband and telco broadband infrastructure, operated by competing companies (in some countries, the incumbent telco is also the cable company). In Canada and the US, the broadband market is already fragmented with an almost even split on each of the cable and telephone infrastructure. Further, satellite and wireless (fixed and mobile) take another portion of the total market off the table.

So where the open access broadband model, in a different country, might reasonably be expected to achieve nearly 100 percent or more of the addressable market, the potential return is cut in half where the achievable share is no more than 50 percent.

The article challenges readers to build their own spreadsheets to run the numbers.

Among themes that come to mind for future exploration:

• Is open access too focussed on an enforced fiber-to-the-premise investment strategy to be compatible with technological neutrality?
• Is nationalization of infrastructure required?
• Would both cable and telco infrastructure have to be acquired for competitive neutrality?

Others?

The Globalive ownership matter continues to generate an enormous number of comments on various news sites.

I’m not going to get into forecasting how the Industry Minister will proceed on this file; I suspect that we may receive guidance in the next week. I will observe that from a process perspective, contrary to what was reported in the Calgary Herald, Globalive did not appeal the CRTC decision to cabinet; that would have triggered a lengthy consultation process set out in Section 12 of the Telecom Act. At this point, the Minister is reviewing “of his own motion”, which has less formal structure set out in legislation.

That isn’t the theme for today.

I want to look at some commenters who somehow draw a parallel between overseas outsourcing of jobs (by some service providers) to foreign ownership restrictions.

More particularly, I find it fascinating that so many writers assume that an English accent that isn’t clearly from the Ottawa Valley leads to a conclusion that some carriers are answering calls in Mumbai as opposed to downtown Toronto.

Are so many ranters so isolated that they have not noticed the number of Canadians that enrich our society with multi-lingual capabilities?

It is tough work – especially for those in customer service – to try to exude a smile through the phone lines. In a previous job, I spent an hour on the phones in our call centre to gain an appreciation for the folks in that job. I came away with great respect for them.

Let’s face it, customer service reps answer the phone dozens of times each day, knowing that they are about to speak to someone who likely isn’t calling just to say “thanks, have a nice day”.

And if you do happen reach someone in an overseas centre, the chances are that your billing problems don’t come close to their survival issues at home. And, he or she is trying to follow the script to empathize with you, while your supplier of goods or services is trying to cut costs.

So, the next time you call, cut the voice on the other end of the phone a little slack.

After all – it’s US Thanksgiving – get in the spirit of the season. Ho, Ho, Ho!

Ovum has released a report that looks at some long term trends for global telecommunications.

In Straight Talk Telecoms 4Q09, Ovum introduces a series of reports on the state of the telecoms industry in the year 2020.

There are numerous tidbits of interesting observations and forecasts. I found this one in a section looking at “Tiering of broadband offerings increases to
combat rise in traffic”:

Where tiering has been introduced, it typically relies on one of two measures for differentiating various packages: total traffic downloaded per month, and, more rarely, time spent online. We believe neither of these will be sustainable in the long term, because neither meets the test of easy comprehension or tracking by customers. We believe that a different model will instead come to the fore, which will differentiate by usage patterns, with web, email, gaming and video packages offered by providers at increasing price points.

Of course the challenge is whether such pricing plans will be permitted under the new rules for internet traffic management.

According to Ovum, end-to-end delivery of a quality experience will require a new set of capabilities, delivered by SMART players, where SMART stands for ‘Services, Management, Applications, Relationships and Technology’. Those that can’t rise to the this level are seen likely to fall back on the role LEAN operators: Low-cost Enablers of Agnostic Networks.

Advocates for internet access as a plumbing service have suggested that dump pipes are necessary to permit the greatest opportunities for innovation in the development of applications.

Will regulation limit the ability of carriers to offer SMART choices?