Saskatchewan has become the second province in recent weeks to announce plans to make broadband access universal throughout the province. There are a number of ways that distinguish the Province of Saskatchewan’s approach from that announced in PEI a few weeks ago.

To start with, Sasktel is owned by the province. As such, funding for this program represents a strategic investment by its shareholder. Also, Sasktel is following a more rational approach to technology selection, recognizing that a DSL solution does not fit everywhere. Sasktel is using fixed wireless and satellite to get to customers beyond the economic reach of DSL.

It was interesting to see mobile infrastructure in the announcement – adding 50 new digital cellular sites across the province, resulting in coverage for 98 per cent of the population.

But now, the focus needs to be on adoption rates. British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario lead the rest of the country in households subscribing to broadband service. How much of this can be attributed to the state of competition for broadband service in these provinces, with more vigourous rivalry between cable and telco solutions?

As I wrote on Wednesday, now that we have built broadband access for vast majority of Canadians, we need to get more of them to subscribe.

I received a press release from Covad earlier in the week, announcing the appointment of William R. Ferraiuolo as the new General Manager for Covad’s wholesale division, which accounts for 70 percent of the total company revenues.

It struck me that Canada needs a company like Covad to help wean our ISPs off their self-imposed dependence on Bell’s wholesale internet services.

Covad Wholesale Program allows partners to purchase Covad VoIP or broadband services on a wholesale basis and sell these services to their customers under their own brand names.

Why aren’t more Canadian ISPs migrating some of their customers onto their own DSLAMs and leased loops? Such a strategy would have been expected in order to improve margins: going from resale of Gateway Access Service onto unbundled access that the ISP controls itself.

This would have been expected especially in any central office that has sufficient density of customers to make the migration economic. That would let the ISP operate completely independently of traffic management imposed by the local telephone company, but it requires some investment.

Why are Canada’s independent ISPs so risk averse? Is there an opportunity for a Covad to operate in Canada?

Technorati Tags:
Covad, ISP

A week or so ago, I wrote about the $8.2M deal that PEI struck with Bell Aliant to extend broadband to the 5% of the province that is beyond the reach of current broadband solutions.

I noted that PEI already has among the highest levels of internet accessibility but suffers from the lowest rate of broadband adoption in the country at 43%.

I suspect that the issue is more than a matter of price.

Various studies of internet adoption have found that there are different triggers for internet adoption. For example, in a study in Indonesia, women tended to consider “ease of use” ahead of “perceived usefulness”, while men were the reverse. A study in Australia found that internet adoption varies with education levels, marital status, children at home, income level and employment status. It also found that unemployment and low education levels were major factors impacting internet adoption and that seniors (>55 years of age) were disadvantaged because of lack of awareness and capability to use the Internet.

These are all areas that can be targets of community programs. Perhaps it should also be the focus of retail sales efforts for computer hardware and internet access providers alike.

Too often, programs focus on stimulating DSL internet accessibility. We need to recognize that conventional wireline solutions have questionable economic returns to serve the remaining unwired households.

We need to get creative to get around the laws of diminishing returns.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission has received its independent Report On Hate Messaging on the Internet prepared by Richard Moon of the University of Windsor.

Early reports have focussed on the headline recommendation:

section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) be repealed so that the CHRC and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) would no longer deal with hate speech, in particular hate speech on the Internet.

The recommendation continues to say:

Hate speech should continue to be prohibited under the Criminal Code but confined to expression that advocates, justifies or threatens violence. In the fight against hate on the Internet, police and prosecutors should make greater use of section 320.1 of the Criminal Code, which gives a judge power to order an Internet service provider (ISP) to remove “hate propaganda” from its system.

But that isn’t all that the report says about ISPs.

The report calls for ISPs to create their own hate speech advisory body:

The major Internet service providers (ISPs) should consider the creation of a hate speech complaint line and the establishment of an advisory body, composed of of individuals with expertise in hate speech law, that would give its opinion as to whether a particular website hosted by an ISP has violated section 13 of the CHRA or the “hate propaganda” provisions of the Criminal Code.

If this body were to decide that the complaint is well founded, the ISP host would then shut down the site on the basis of its user agreement with customers.

Further, while the report calls for this to initially deal with hate speech hosted in Canada, it suggests that applying this process to deal with content originating outside Canada can be studied later.

Technorati Tags:
illegal content, CHRC

Some people have questioned whether the existing regulatory framework is sufficient to have been used by the CRTC to examine the CAIP complaint about Bell’s traffic shaping.

NDP critic Charlie Angus is quoted by the CBC as saying:

[The] CRTC is applying outdated rules that this government has refused to change, leaving the average consumer and emerging business models at the mercy of the telecom giants.

Two years ago, the Telecom Policy Review Panel (TPRP) released its report, having looked at these issues in a broad review of Canada’s policy and legislative framework governing telecommunications. In April, Angus called for the government to adopt precisely the net neutrality provisions recommended by the TPRP.

So let’s look at what he wanted. Recommendation 6-5 calls for legislative changes to:

confirm the right of Canadian consumers to access publicly available Internet applications and content of their choice by means of all public telecommunications networks providing access to the Internet.

This amendment should

(a) authorize the CRTC to administer and enforce these consumer access rights,
(b) take into account any reasonable technical constraints and efficiency considerations related to providing such access, and
(c) be subject to legal constraints on such access, such as those established in criminal, copyright and broadcasting laws.

It seems to me that the CAIP application would not have succeeded any better with these provisions. Based on the discussion contained in the CRTC’s Decision last week, it was just as likely to have failed.

The TPRP leans toward allowing ISPs to make reasonable decisions, but importantly, with clarity of information to customers. As I cited when the report was first released:

Given the complexity of this area, the rapid evolution of technologies and the market dynamics, the Panel believes the regulator here should have more discretion than in other areas of regulation. However, the Panel also believes this discretion should be exercised with a view to encouraging reliance on market forces and customer choice as much as possible. For example, there may be situations in which a customer wants an ISP to block access to particular applications or content. In addition, some customers may be willing to accept a reduced degree of access in exchange for a lower price. Such consumer choices should be respected.

In the Panel’s view, the purpose of a customer access rule should be consumer protection, and there should be a strong emphasis on ensuring that customers have the information required to make informed choices. In this way, the rule would promote the efficient operation of market forces.

It is encouraging that the NDP is calling for the report of the TPRP to be adopted. Perhaps this support will help move legislation onto the government’s agenda.

We will again explore net neutrality as a panel at The 2009 Canadian Telecom Summit in June.