A letter [pdf, 1.52MKB] to the FCC, the CTIA (the US wireless association) refuted the OECD study that ranked the US dead last in its wireless rankings.

What makes the letter especially interesting is that it was sent in mid-May, long before the OECD’s ridiculous results. The CTIA stats aren’t produced by the industry association; the bulk of the tables are sourced from Merrill Lynch’s quarterly Global Wireless Matrix report.

Among the statements that you will find:

• the US has the lowest average cost per minute [Canada is ranked 5th]
• the US ranks right behind Britain in market share for top two wireless service providers [Canada ranks 4th]

Check out the letter.

While recent figures have been produced [ pdf, 110KB] that point to a decrease in peer-to-peer music traffic, an article in Forbes points to a dramatic increase in video piracy using p2p.

Traffic may be shifting from music to video, perhaps because broadband speeds enable pretty fast conventional file transfers of the much smaller audio files and perhaps because of the ready availability of most content from authorized download sites. It is the growth in video piracy that caught my eye.

As an indication, the Forbes article comments about last year’s top downloaded film, The Dark Knight.

More significant may be the enormous growth in peer-to-peer downloads. The Dark Knight’s 7 million downloads wouldn’t even place the film in this year’s top 10 pirated films. Even marginally successful films like The Day the Earth Stood Still and Transporter 3 were pirated close to 8 million times so far this year.

The Music Ally study [ pdf, 110KB] about the softening in music file transfers provides an indicator of file sharing trends: “the percentage of music fans who have ever file-shared has, unsurprisingly, increased, rising from 28% in December 2007 to 31% in January 2009.”

Video traffic on the internet helps drive broadband adoption and demand for higher speed services, but presents a challenge for effective network management to ensure a satisfactory consumer experience.

As traffic patterns continue to evolve, will network operators have sufficient tools and flexibility to respond?

While the OECD continues to respond to criticisms of its flawed wireless methodology, few people have addressed the failure to include the cost of incoming minutes on most mobile plans.

Let’s step back a second. In North America, our mobile services work on the basis of Mobile Party Pays: incoming and outgoing calls are paid for by the user with the mobile handset. In most of the rest of the world, the Calling Party Pays: incoming calls are free for the mobile user, but the person who placed the call pays an often outrageous fee per minute.

The OECD study ignores this important point. When commenting on my posting from last week, an OECD researcher wrote:

Users in other countries don’t pay for incoming minutes as Canadian and US users do.

Why does the OECD ignore the cost of these incoming minutes – incoming minutes aren’t free; the cost to the caller is relevant.

Our mainstream media failed to apply a critical eye on this story.

For a US perspective on the report, check out PwC’s Communications Direct News.

Globalive filed its responses to the CRTC in respect of its ownership review and sent heavily redacted copies to interested parties in the proceeding.

It wasn’t surprising that the company would try to maintain confidentiality over much of the information. However, the transmittal email contained language that was unusual.

Most of the time, when I receive copies of a submission, the body of the email will say something like “the attached material was filed today with the CRTC…”

Globalive filed its responses in 6 packages of 2MB each, with a lengthy legalistic cover message on each email. The message had 3 sections:

• the first was a more formal version of “here’s the stuff and some of it is subject to confidentiality claims”;
• the third was an explanation of why there are 6 separate 2MB emails;
• the middle section has a copyright claim that I haven’t seen before.

2. YOUR RIGHT TO USE THESE DOCUMENTS

These documents are provided to you to fulfill a CRTC requirement. Copyright in many of these documents is held by Globalive companies or its investors. Copyright in certain others is held by third parties.

They are provided to you for a direct, limited purpose — so that you may improve the evidentiary record of the proceeding initiated by TNC 2009-429. No one has granted you any right to store or reproduce them for any other purpose. No one has authorized you to store them for longer than is necessary to fulfill this purpose.

The copyright owners will reserve the right to vigorously pursue any unauthorized and, therefore, illegal use of these documents. If you feel that you are authorized to use any of these documents in any way that exceeds the use described above, or wish to use those in which Globalive or its investors holds rights for some other purpose, contact us at the e-mail address above.

Now, I’ll let the lawyers out there determine what all this means. Does “any unauthorized” really translate to “therefore, illegal”?

In any case, I found it interesting that the copyright claim appears in the email, but not in the body of the attachments.

In a day or so, all the attachments will be available on the CRTC website, without the email message. I don’t know how someone downloading the material from the CRTC’s website is supposed to know that Globalive’s lawyers consider it to be illegal to store the material just for your own reference purposes.

Keep in mind that the CRTC set out in the original Public Notice [right in paragraph 2] that the reason Globalive is going through this process was to help others understand the structure to use as a precedent for other corporate arrangements:

The Commission determined that a Type 4 review would be conducted where an ownership and governance structure is of a complex or novel nature, such that in the Commission’s view its determination would hold precedential value to industry players and the general public, …

As such, it is unclear that Globalive can really limit the purpose of the document retention or how the material.

Comments?

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Update [August 14, 12:30 pm]
Blake’s has filed a letter with McCarthy’s [counsel to Globalive] saying “We intend to respect any copyrights that your clients, or any other party in this proceeding, may assert. However please me advised that we will not be governed by any other restrictions which your letter purports to impose which are beyond the restrictions established under Canadian law”.

A recent report out of Merrill Lynch – Bank of America says that Canadian mobile data pricing is fully competitive with the US.” Its July 27 report notes that all Canadian carriers are offering $15 unlimited email plans, while none of the Tier 1 carriers in the US have such low prices available.

We find that Canadian pricing is reasonably competitive with US pricing at the middle and upper price points – and more attractive for BlackBerry service and for light users. In the next few quarters, we believe that Canada will have an unmatched combination of data network quality, breadth and competitiveness, following the launch of the TELUS/Bell HSPA network.

The report also says that coverage, bandwidth and network performance are generally better in Canada, arguing that that today, Rogers’ 7.2Mbps HSPA network is North America’s best.

The Merrill Lynch report concludes that as a result of the new competitive entrants and continued investment by incumbents, Canada should have an unmatched combination of data network quality, breadth and competitiveness.