After a lengthy examination, the CRTC has come out with a decision dealing with a dispute between MTS Allstream and the City of Vancouver over a number of disputed clauses in an agreement to permit construction of fibre on municipal property.

The resolution even covers issues such as lost parking meter revenues and whether to compensate the city for lost opportunities to issue tickets for expired meter violations during the time that construction blocks parking access.

On that point, the Commission ruled against the City:

The Commission considers that there is also the potential that a reduction in parking meters available during construction activities could lead to increases in illegal parking at other locations.

The review of this file must have been a change of pace for the CRTC staff and commissioners, dealing with division of powers between levels of government, a lot of legalistic contract drafting and mundane construction issues.

The adversarial relationship between cities and carriers seems to be rooted in the boom times of a decade ago, when cities looked at freshly IPO’d dot-com generation carriers as a potential windfall of non-tax revenue. In today’s environment, cities should be trying to encourage construction and renewal of telecom infrastructure.

Which cities will be first to welcome, encourage and even promote the placement of competitive information infrastructure on its rights-of-way?

Technorati Tags:
CRTC, Vancouver, MTS Allstream

Are search engines responsible for policing the legality of content that they find?

That appears to be the question in front of a BC court that is examining a dispute between IsoHunt and the Canadian Recording Industry Association [petition pdf 534K].

While the press accounts are asking if the BC court action could threaten the legality of Google and Yahoo! searches, the real question may be whether search engines will need to respond to requests for take-downs, similar to how YouTube deals with notices of infringement.

It is a case worth watching.

Technorati Tags:
isoHunt, CRIA

Last week, Bell and Bell Aliant filed a cabinet appeal saying that a consequence of the CRTC’s Cybersurf speed-matching decision is to discourage investment in next generation FTTN networks. That appeal is similar to one filed the evening before by TELUS. There was also an appeal filed by MTS Allstream of 2 different CRTC decisions, dealing with wholesale access to unbundled ethernet. [Links to the various decisions can be found here.]

A general concern associated with regulation is the potential for unintended consequences to arise from intervention in the marketplace. This is why it is Canada’s official policy to rely on market forces to the maximum extent feasible as the means of achieving the telecommunications policy objectives.

In his February speech to the Canadian Film and Television Production Association’s Prime Time conference, CRTC Chair Konrad von Finckenstein commented that the Commission is always particularly concerned about unintended consequences associated with its actions. Earlier this week, in the New Media proceedings, the Chair commented:

You know, we, like everybody else, avoid unintended consequences and when you just look at things through one lens, like in this case the broadcasting, you may have produced some consequence you didn’t want to because you didn’t look at the overall picture or you didn’t have jurisdiction for it.

The CRTC determination on matching speeds may have made sense through the lens of Section 27(2) of the Telecom Act:

No Canadian carrier shall, in relation to the provision of a telecommunications service or the charging of a rate for it, unjustly discriminate or give an undue or unreasonable preference toward any person, including itself, or subject any person to an undue or unreasonable disadvantage.

Keep in mind that Not all discrimination is forbidden. There is such thing as “just” discrimination.

In May 2006, the CRTC found that TbayTel had discriminated against its competitor, Superior Wireless, but its actions did not constitute ‘unjust discrimination’ under the Telecom Act. TBayTel was found to have treated the customers of Superior Wireless differently from the way it treats roaming customers of other carriers, however there was no ‘unjust’ discrimination, when considering the degree of competition in wireless services.

What constitutes a “sufficient degree of competition” in the services being examined? How can we be certain that there is an adequate measure of the degree of competition and that the statistics are reliable?

Had a similar lens been applied to examine internet services as the Commission used for mobile wireless in Decision 2006-33, would the outcome of the decisions under appeal have been the same?

As I wrote in late February, a number of parties noticed that the CRTC had not provided an opportunity for a final reply phase in its internet Network Management proceeding.

Today, the CRTC amended the procedures to provide a chance for participants to file concise final replies (at most 10 pages), responding to matters raised in the written and oral submissions by 24 July 2009.

Last week, I wrote about the slow pace of adoption of electronic health records by Ontario’s private physicians.

A colleague pointed out a recent article in the NY Times about Walmart marketing a digital health records system through its Sam’s Club division, which recently announced its exit from Canada.

The Walmart system is bundling Dell’s computers with an application from eClinicalWorks.

will be under $25,000 for the first physician in a practice, and about $10,000 for each additional doctor. After the installation and training, continuing annual costs for maintenance and support will be $4,000 to $6,500 a year

The Times story says that health technology suppliers have found it costly to sell to small physician offices because even though they represent a large market, they are scattered. Enter Sam’s Club.