FORA.tv has a video highlight available of Google’s Derek Slater speaking about ideas for building broadband connections including customer owned fibre – or what he has called, Homes with Tails.

http://fora.tv/embedded_player
His full talk at the April 15 session of the Association of Computing Machinery can be viewed here.

Derek will be speaking on the Building Broadband panel at The 2009 Canadian Telecom Summit, June 15-17, in Toronto.

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Canadian Telecom Summit, Google, Derek Slater

The Cabinet appeals that were filed March 11 appeared in the April 4 edition of the Canada Gazette, which started a 30 day clock for the filing of comments. The clock runs out today.

Subsection 12(1) of the Telecommunications Act provides that, within one year after a decision by the CRTC, the GIC [Governor in Council (Cabinet)] may, on petition in writing presented to the GIC within 90 days after the decision, or on the GIC’s own motion, by order, vary or rescind the decision or refer it back to the CRTC for reconsideration of all or a portion of it.
…
Submissions regarding these petitions should be filed within 30 days of the publication of this notice in the Canada Gazette.

You can find the Petitions and supporting documents here. Comments will be posted on that site as well.

The cabinet appeals should add fuel to the fireworks that usually erupt during the Regulatory Blockbuster, on June 16 at The 2009 Canadian Telecom Summit. Have you registered yet?

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Update [May 4, 2:50 pm]
MTS Allstream has issued a press release to announce its submission of reply comments.

As I read James Bagnall’s story in the Ottawa Citizen about Nortel last Wednesday and colour commentary by Mark Evans, I thought that there will be case study material for Canada’s business schools for decades to come as armchair CEOs replay and analyze missteps made by management and the board.

Management is rarely blessed with the benefit of hindsight. On the other hand, good managers can surround themselves with more diverse viewpoints in order to improve the breadth of information that contributes to more effective decision-making.

There was a quote in the story that reminded me of a personal experience 25 years ago.

Nortel achieved this distinction by spending more than $2 billion (all figures U.S.) annually on R&D;, and hiring up to 30 per cent of Canada’s masters grads in electrical engineering.

I didn’t have a graduate degree in engineering – my Masters is in Mathematical Statistics.

AT&T Bell Laboratories was recruiting people with diverse graduate degrees – some of them engineers, but many of them from completely non-technical disciplines. I saw geography and music majors when I worked there. All of them were very bright; all of them had a technical aptitude.

The recruiting guidelines suggested that we ask candidates what kind of hobbies the potential employee had. Did you like to play with Lego or Tinkertoys as a kid? Did you ever take apart the family car radio? Depending how they answered those questions, we figured we could teach them how the phone business worked.

Perhaps initially driven by Affirmative Action programs that demanded that AT&T spread its recruiting beyond white males, it was a systemic difference between Bell Labs and BNR.

Sandvine filed reply comments [ pdf, 364 KB] in the CRTC’s Network Management proceeding that directly addresses the populist myths about deep packet inspection that were raised by the Privacy Commissioner and the expert for CAIP in their initial comments.

Single Lens Reflex (SLR) technology underlies cameras that take photos at family birthday parties. The same technology has been applied for surveillance of individuals and public spaces. One use of the technology raises privacy issues, the other does not. Nobody questions the value or validity of the camera technology. So why question DPI technology? Privacy concerns properly attach to applications or uses of technologies, not to the technologies themselves.

Sandvine CEO Dave Caputo will be speaking on the Net Neutrality panel at The 2009 Canadian Telecom Summit. Have you registered yet?

What is the best strategy to encourage investment in facilities based telecommunications competition?

That question is at the core of both sets of telecom carrier appeals to cabinet filed in mid-March.

In the Essential Services Decision, the Commission wrote:

117. The Commission notes that fibre-based access and transport services include CDN DS-3, OC-3, OC-12, and Ethernet services.

118. The Commission notes that the record indicates a high incidence of competitor self-supply or alternative supply of fibre-based access and transport facilities. The Commission considers that the reported level of alternative supply demonstrates the existence of competition in the upstream market for such facilities.

In evidence [pdf, 425KB] filed with cabinet, there is a question raised about whether the CRTC’s statistics may have been somewhat self-fulfilling; the evidence shows that a trivial percentage of Toronto’s business addresses have access to competitor fibre facilities.

But is that a fair characterization of the issue? Let’s face it, corner convenience stores and dry cleaners aren’t priority fibre candidates for either the ILEC or for competitive carriers.

Isn’t the real question whether competitors are able to reach the same types of “high data rate” customers as the ILEC?

That was the question the CRTC looked at in its statistics gathering and the facts established evidence of “a high incidence of competitor self-supply or alternative supply of fibre-based access and transport facilities.”

The Commission also looked at the issue of competition for fibre-based services on an exchange-by-exchange basis in the context of digital network access forbearance for high speed services. A substantial number of exchanges are forborne on the basis of this detailed analysis.

Two different ways of looking at the numbers; both indicate competitive supply for fibre-based services.

We’ll be looking at these policy issues and so much more at The 2009 Canadian Telecom Summit, June 15-17 in Toronto. Are you registered yet?