The word that President Obama is easing trade restrictions on Americans dealing with Cuba will have repercussions for Canada’s telecommunications carriers. The administration is going to license US carriers to build new links to the Island.
For at least 15 years, facilities operated by carriers in Canada have provided a gateway for Americans to place calls to families, since there are a very limited number of circuits currently available on direct links between the US and Cuba.
Wholesale rates to Cuba are about US$0.22 per minute (landline and cellular), which is about double the current rates to Haiti and around ten times the US$0.023 rates to Dominican Republic.
Which Canadian carriers have the greatest exposure to losing that traffic?
I drove to and from Montreal over the weekend and passed through a lot of rural territory that has been the subject of various rural broadband projects. For example, the Eastern Ontario Warden’s Caucus (EOWC) is looking at enhancing the broadband capabilities of its residents.
It seems to me that an important issue is broadband affordability – rural and urban. More than simply being concerned with connectivity, how do we make broadband affordable for all Canadians? We have technologies available that can reach every Canadian household and business, but can they afford to sign on?
The CRTC announced yesterday that it is lightening some of the reporting burden from the telecom industry, responding to changes in the industry and the marketplace.
Regulatory Policy 2009-183 gets rid of or modifies 8 out of the 9 regulatory measures that were under review regarding monitoring and reporting requirements.
Telecom Vice-chair Len Katz said:
As part of our ongoing efforts to reduce the regulatory burden on the industry, we reviewed the value of the reports that are submitted to us. Today’s announcement is an example of how we continue to seek more efficient and proportionate ways of regulating the Canadian telecommunications industry.
The reports under review consisted of:
Affordability: Reporting eliminated
Local pay telephone competition: Reporting eliminated
Modem hijacking: Reporting eliminated
Manual access to 9-1-1 ALI database: Reporting eliminated
Competitor service interruption: Reporting eliminated
Before you flip out over the elimination of reporting requirements of telemarketing complaints, first consider that complaints are now filed with the National DNCL operator and forwarded to the Commission for investigation.
The 2009 Canadian Telecom Summit includes an address from the CRTC chair and our regulatory blockbuster. Have you registered yet?
Tech Media Reports is writing about the calls from National Film Board and the CRTC for the development of a national digital strategy, about which I wrote last week. I am quoted in the article.
The article talks about what is going on in other countries:
In January Britain released its national digital strategy. Dubbed Digital Britain, the strategy lays a path for Britain to revamp its knowledge-based economy. Its key objectives aim at upgrading infrastructure, creating dynamism in investment, creating content specifically for Britain, a fair and universal accessibility to digital and developing infrastructure and skills.
Last fall, France released its strategy called France Numerique 2012. Loaded with more than 150 recommendations, the strategy is designed to restore growth and modernize France. It also aims to increase broadband accessibility to all French citizens by 2012 at affordable rates—less than US$46 per month. New Zealand’s Digital Strategy, was also released last fall and contains provisions to boost the economy, create sustainability and vibrant communities.
Will Canada take up the challenge of developing our own vision of how to stake out the country’s place in the knowledge economy?
The office of the privacy commissioner has released a series of essays on deep packet inspection (“DPI”) that strike me, at first blush, as lacking balance. There are 14 essays – only one from an author in the private sector.
You should read the papers to form your own opinion on the papers.
Accuracy in some of the statements of facts is suspect. Despite the academic credentials of many of the authors, it is clear that the rigour of peer review has not been applied.
Take for example, this paragraph from the essay by Ralf Bendraft, of the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. He says that
Some use-cases of DPI already seem to be disappearing. They do so for different reasons:
…
Regulatory: ISPs Comcast in the US and Rogers in Canada have undergone scrutiny by regulatory and privacy authorities because they throttled some of their users’ traffic based on what seemed appropriate and what not.
It was Bell that underwent scrutiny in Canada, not Rogers. Further, one might assume based on the context that Canadian regulators halted throttling based on DPI, which was not the case.
Was Bell’s traffic shaping in violation of their tariffs?
Was Bell’s traffic shaping in violation of non-discrimination provisions of the Act?
Did Bell’s action control the content or influence the meaning or purpose of the telecommunications?
Was Bell’s traffic shaping in violation of CRTC privacy rules?
Did Bell act in violation of the “notice of network change” rules?
“No” was the answer on all counts.
I also wrote last November that it is inappropriate to lump the Comcast case in with traffic management.
While some ill-informed observers try to draw a parallel to a different outcome with the FCC and Comcast, they conveniently neglect to say that Comcast was blocking applications, with no evidence of their actions being tied to managing their network.
Although the office of the privacy commissioner referred to the plan to post these essays in her evidence [pdf, 541KB] [html] submitted to the CRTC under its network management proceeding (PN 2008-19), the DPI website is not part of the public record for that proceeding.
