With new entrant wireless carriers scrounging for capital, some incumbents seem to be trash talking their business opportunities in the Canadian wireless industry.

At CIBC’s Whistler Investor Conference, TELUS’ CFO Bob McFarlane poked fun at the willingness of investors to put money into a wireless start-up. [You can listen to the webcast here. His comments about investing in AWS can be found around the 11:00 minute mark. Listen to the interview and see if you pick up any other signals.]

Bill Linton of Rogers spoke at the same conference [available here] of how tough a business case it will be for new entrants, even as he told the attendees of expectations of continued growth for Rogers.

An article about the Friday session quotes McFarlane talking about a general retreat in wireless spending, reflected by the lower average revenue per user being reported by most carriers in the 4th quarter. He is quoted in the story as saying that this is not just due to the general economic pullback, but can be attributed to reductions in voice pricing.

Long term industry observers also recognize that 4th quarter ARPU is often down from 3rd quarter. Look at Rogers’ results from a year ago and you can see that 4th quarter ARPU declined by $2 compared to their 3rd quarter. After all, business activity typically declines in the last few weeks of the year so there would be a significant seasonality.

It seems a strange strategy to play down opportunities in your core growth sector. Maybe the investor relations strategy is to try to make fund raising more difficult for new entrants.

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TELUS, Rogers

In a speech delivered yesterday to the Canadian Film and Television Production Association, CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein reiterated the four principles that guide the work of the Commission: transparency, fairness, predictability and timeliness.

On predictability, he said:

We should be consistent, and follow clearly articulated directions. Or, if we deviate from these directions, we have to explain why – that is, what drove us to the departure, and whether it is an exception or a change of course.

He closed his speech with a statement of his view of the hallmarks of Canadian broadcasting: a preponderance of Canadian content; access to the system for Canadians both as participants and audiences; reflecting the bilingual character of our country; and our unique diversity.

I think it will be important for participants in the new media proceeding to reflect on their proposals in view of these principles and hallmarks. Perhaps the best indicator of predictable success would be to assess how well the proposals align with these 8 points.

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CRTC, new media

Early last week, Bell filed an application [zip, 51KB] to change the process for Canadians to switch their phone company. While the application claims that their proposal will enhance competition and benefit customers, these results are less than obvious to me.

The way things work currently, customers agree to an offer from a service provider and give the new company the authority to act on their behalf to notify the old company. It is a process that has worked for the past 15 years.

Bell believes that the strength of competitive forces and the prevalence of services bundling have rendered the current processes to be unwarranted. It went so far as to suggest that the process is at odds with the Policy Direction requirement to minimize regulatory intervention.

Bell wants users to have to contact their current phone company themselves to cancel their service.

As I understand it, Bell wants you to:

1. agree to a new deal with your new service provider, then
2. try to get through to your current company to cancel your old service, listening to offers to “please stay, we’re sorry we mistreated you and made you feel like we overcharged you” and,
3. somehow coordinate so that your new company and old company make the transition happen somewhat seamlessly.

Of course, the fact that the old company will do their best to convince you to stay, is why Bell says this enhances competition to the benefit of customers.

The Companies submit that from the end-user’s perspective, winback activities can only serve to enhance consumer welfare. Furthermore, the current transfer process is detrimental to end-users by denying them important information regarding their existing contract obligations with their current TSP.

Of course, under Bell’s proposal, the old phone company won’t let you leave if there is an outstanding billing dispute, whether from a contract, a bundle or just plain errors. I’m not sure how this proposal enhances consumer welfare. I think that the ability for consumers to walk away is an important leveling of the balance of power in consumers dealing with big companies.

While Bell’s application deals with long distance and local services, it would likely be extended to wireless number portability processes, presenting a risk to wireless substitution from the new competitors.

Coincident with the Bell application, a US Court recently upheld FCC restrictions on Verizon win-back campaigns that relied on customer contact lists generated by the submission of transfer requests from competitor cable companies. Verizon had argued that the FCC violated its First Amendment rights of free speech, to which the Court ruled:

the executing carrier is disabled only from using an opportunity fortuitously placed in its hands by a technological necessity — the fact that its technical cooperation is essential to the implementation of the submitting carrier’s competitive victory.

Many of the arguments put forward by Verizon sound similar to those in the Bell application.

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Bell, CRTC, Verizon

In the new media hearings, the chair emphasized a fundamental principle in his conversation with SOCAN, reminding the witnesses that in the new media world, the consumer is in control, not the content provider. Consumers will find the content they want, regardless of where in the world it is hosted.

SOCAN was asking for regulatory constraints on Canadian hosted websites to require that Canadian content be made available. SOCAN suggests that Canadians want to have access to Canadian content, so the Chair wanted to know why it needs to be regulated. If there is a commercial advantage to making Canadian content available, why does it need to be regulated? In the alternative, since consumers can seek out content world wide, why would we want to disadvantage Canadian operators of websites.

SOCAN suggested that a commercial website including professional blogging sites could be subject to government licensing requirements under the Broadcast Act. Commissioner Denton suggested that SOCAN’s proposal could result in significant government restrictions in the ability for Canadians to speak. SOCAN’s response was to push the problem back onto the CRTC – that it would be the Commission’s job to carve out some kind of subset of Canada’s websites upon which to impose licensing restrictions.

Most government licenses are viewed by the investment community as assets; this one would make most investors run away.

SOCAN said that they want to make sure that at least the archives section of websites have available Canadian content. In that case, why not ask the national archives to build a repository – a giant bunker of on-line content? Index it properly and the world will be able to find it. Let Canadian hosted sites succeed or fail on their own.

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new media, CRTC

Since Rogers doesn’t act on the content of its internet customers, and consistently has said that they don’t want to do that, I have no idea why Michael Geist took it upon himself to implicate them in such a practice.

In his post yesterday, he cited an Ottawa Citizen story about the CRTC’s New Media hearings that are underway.

In his article yesterday, Geist wrote:

Net neutrality is frequently re-characterized as “network management,” with ISPs arguing that they should be able to manage their networks in a manner that distinguishes between certain applications (and potentially content).

He added those three words in parentheses – “and potentially content” – in order to make the ISPs argument fit with the emotions he wanted to whip up. Enough already. Could someone please provide the citation that supports this allegation?

Which ISP argued that they should be able to manage their network in a manner that distinguishes between content? I haven’t seen that argument put forward by any of the ISPs, so please help me find the reference. I have read the major ISPs submissions and I didn’t find that argument anywhere so please, please help me out here.

Although Geist tried to suggest that there is an inconsistency in Rogers’ positions set out in the New Media proceeding versus those stated in the Network Management proceeding, it is only manifested by the addition of words in parentheses that never came from Rogers.

The quote in the Citizen article was clear:

“We’re a dumb pipe,” says Ken Engelhart, senior vice-president of regulatory for Rogers Corp. “We don’t know what you’re downloading . . . so how can we be responsible for the content?”

That position has been consistent in everything I have seen from Rogers. For that matter, no Canadian ISP that I know of manages traffic based on the content, no matter how many times people suggest that they could. Canadian law already prohibits this.

If anything, inconsistencies show up in the net neutrality position set out by Geist. Recall that he proposed that ISPs should discriminate on the basis of the national origin of internet content and treat Canadian content differently. His perspective was a surprise to those who believe that our existing net neutrality laws are correct in saying ISPs have no business looking at and acting on the content being carried on their networks.

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Michael Geist, CRTC, new media