A few weeks ago, I wrote about my attraction to XM Radio’s Channel 27, The Bridge. I wrote the piece to talk about micro-market programming that is enabled by digital broadcasting and some of the benefits of push versus pull content delivery in exploring the unknown.
Sure, I could load up an iPod and play my tunes, but I don’t own everything from that period – every so often, there is a cut inserted that reminds me of a missed purchase from 30 years ago.
Panel is a new iPhone / iPod app that provides recommendations from a Panel of music industry experts, in the same way that corner record store owners, DJs and music writers were once the “go-to” source for new and undiscovered music.
The Panel app streams two full albums per week in various categories (rock, pop, indie, alternative, jazz, etc) chosen by the week’s “Panelist.”
It is another interesting approach to micro-programming. Comments?
I keep hearing voices say that Canadians are paying more and receiving lower speeds than our peers in the OECD. I keep saying that the data is biased. A couple leading academic institutions cite OECD statistics in their reports – meaning their studies are equally biased.
How many of the critics have actually looked at the data that the OECD used [xls, 286KB]?
Indulge me, please.
Download the spreadsheet and look at the tab called “BBPricing”. Look through the worksheet and you will see the basis of the speed and pricing and price per megabit that keeps getting quoted. Canada appears on lines 117-133 of the worksheet – line 133 is the arithmetic average of the 16 lines above it. It is as simple as that.
I want you to take a little time to actually go through these numbers, because I think that anyone who actually looks at the table will see the same problems that we have with the data.
Take some time to get a really good look at how the OECD numbers were developed, because these are at the core of the Oxford and Harvard studies.
Anyone wonder why Australia has 71 samples of data – some duplicates – and Canada has just 16? Why little Dansk Bredbånd (less than 100,000 subscribers in Denmark) merits 9 samples from their offerings – more than Bell Canada’s 8 and more than double the representation from Rogers and Shaw). The OECD liked Dansk Bredbånd enough to include duplication of 3 of its offers, thereby over-weighting the highest speeds.
Videotron’s high speed services were ignored by OECD, apparently because it isn’t one of the top 3 providers in Canada. So, no coverage of TELUS, Bell Aliant, Cogeco or Novus either.
The OECD didn’t limit its review of other countries to only 3 service providers. For example, 5 providers were sampled in Ireland; 4 in Iceland; 4 in France; 4 in Japan; 4 in Netherlands; 5 in Sweden; 6 in Spain; 4 in Portugal; 4 in the Slovak Republic; 5 in the US. Why only 3 from Canada?
Governments can’t set a broadband policy based on faulty data.
Why isn’t the OECD reporting of Canada more complete? That is a question that politicians should be asking.
An oft-repeated myth is that Canada’s industry is characterized by players that keep to their home turf. A press release caught my eye this morning that contradicts that view.
TELUS has teamed up with the IWK Health Care centre in Halifax to deliver a specialized portfolio of solutions to break down the walls that separate hospitalized kids from friends and family.
Created by Kids’ Health Links Foundation, Upopolis.com provides the best features of social networking for young patients who often feel disconnected when they’re in the hospital.
Kid’s Health Links and TELUS launched the program in 2007 at McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. Since then, it continues to expand to hospitals across Canada, including B.C. Children’s Hospital and the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario.
Of significance is the evidence of TELUS’ active presence in eastern Canada – Bell and Bell Aliant territory – with the service in Ottawa at CHEO and in Hamilton at Mac. TELUS has chalked up a number of significant wins in the public and financial sector.
The battle goes both ways: just look at Bell’s Olympian efforts to equip the Vancouver winter games and delivering Alberta’s Supernet.
Consumers benefit from this level of competition as well. Choice between phone companies, cable companies and various fibre owners enable the smarter smaller operators to leverage competitive wholesale arrangements for delivery of customer solutions.
I have to believe that some of the more vocal critics of the Canadian broadband scene know that the data is biased, but have avoided acknowledging the problems.
Suzanne Blackwell has detailed some econometric concerns with the recent Harvard study [pdf, 2.92MB]. In a number of cases, the study recognized problems with the OECD data and tried to modify the results.
While the steps taken to improve the pricing data were helpful, it is curious why the Berkman Center decided to create its overall ranking on price based on both the OECD price observations and a combination of the OECD and its own updated and expanded data. The latter would, for the most part, encompass the former observations so there is no reason to use both.
Suzanne notes that the Harvard study ignored high speed service data that it had available for Canada (recall, it showed that information in one of its figures), Canada was again artificially pushed lower in the rankings.
The Harvard study is marked “Draft”. Will the authors acknowledge these and other obvious errors and issue a revision?
The release of our report [pdf, 944KB] was greeted by the popular media with an interesting reception.
We have provided a Canadian interpretation of the body of studies regarding broadband services. Many folks, despite evidence to the contrary, seem averse to any consideration that studies issued by reputable foreign institutions could contain errors.
Some criticisms of our report seem to reflect naivete, ignorance of econometrics or a lack of real world experience. I was struck especially by comments that ridicule the role of satellite in completing the job of providing universal access to broadband in our country – together with most nations. If Australia’s NBN can’t reach more than 90% of its population with wireline facilities, despite plans to spend more than $40B over the next 8 years, exactly what policy will do better in Canada?
Is satellite a perfect substitute for terrestrial solutions? No. But, it is unrealistic to expect any other technology to be able to serve the minority of Canadians who live in areas with low household density. Would armchair critics prefer to have rural Canadians wait indefinitely for fibre to the farm, rather than improve their accessibility through next generation satellite?
The current federal broadband program recognizes this reality:
The Broadband Program will be technology neutral, accepting a variety of wireline and wireless technology solutions, such as fibre, digital subscriber line (DSL), cable and wireless networks (ground based and satellite).
Canadian ISPs aren’t done; there is an ongoing need for more investment, to continue to compete to attract more customers and increase the service levels to those already on-line. Facilities-based competition isn’t just the domain of cable companies and telcos; there are hundreds of entrepreneurs with regional and national networks, competing with all forms of infrastructure.
The report indicates that service providers are already investing about $8B-$10B per year on their networks and there is no indication that this is coming to an end. That is a lot of money – about $50 per month per Canadian household in capital expenditures.
Broadband adoption has two components: supply and demand. Among the recommendations in our report were two suggestions to support each of these factors.
On the supply side, we have recommended that the government should continue to encourage private sector investment in infrastructure:
Continue policies focused on fostering facilities-based competition
Build on the past success of private sector investment by removing current policy and regulatory uncertainty regarding investments in next-generation networks
And on the demand side, an area generally overlooked by policy makers, we suggested that research is needed:
Shift more attention to adoption issues (including adoption of next-generation services) and encourage socio-economic research focused on better understanding the obstacles to, and inhibitors of, broadband adoption
Consider programmes to improve digital literacy and the use of incentives (tax-based or otherwise) to target and overcome any barriers to broadband adoption
Supporting programmes to increase demand and overcome barriers to broadband adoption are a competitively neutral approach to get more Canadians on-line.
What do you think we need to do to improve Canada’s broadband adoption rates.
