Former New Brunswick premier Bernard Lord has been named president of the Canadian Wireless Telecom Association.

He led the New Brunswick with two successive majorities from 1999 to 2006 and was most recently Senior Counsel at McCarthy Tétrault.

The Association is responsible for representing the wireless industry to the government and various regulatory agencies, such as the CRTC. Issues include use of spectrum, the use of mobile technology in cars, tower location and other areas of industry-wide advocacy.

The story first broke yesterday in papers in eastern Canada. The Saint John Telegraph Journal wrote:

Lord was premier for seven years and is close to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and well-known to many of the MPs formerly in cabinet or likely to be appointed.

Lord most recently served as one of three co-chairs of the federal Conservative party campaign.

Among the challenges for the new association leader will be recruitment of new members – welcoming the new AWS spectrum holders under the industry’s umbrella. While the new entrants may harbour some resentment for the CWTA’s lobbying during the spectrum consultation, there are many issues for which the common interests of the industry should unite all of the players.

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Update [October 24, 9:20 pm]
Peter Nowak’s story at CBC Online includes a segment on why the new entrants should join the CWTA:

Industry analysts said newcomers would have much to gain by joining the CWTA.

“They’re concerned with future spectrum concerns, the ability to build towers and ensuring that legislation for driving and using cellphones is done with full knowledge instead of emotion,” said telecommunications consultant Mark Goldberg. “All of this can be done with so much more credibility if presented on an industry-wide basis.”

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Last week, CBC broke a story about a “recent” study out of Dal that purports to show that hands-free phone use while driving is just as dangerous as hand-held.

The study, which was a review of existing literature, was actually released more than 4 months ago at a conference in Whistler: the 18th Canadian Multidisciplinary Road Safety Conference. Having looked at that paper and some of the underlying primary research, I began to wonder if the conclusion is a little bit misleading.

The body of literature really seems to be pointing to a broader problem: driving while distracted – distractions coming from many sources. Some papers (for example and this example) refer to distractions caused by being engaged in conversations – even those with someone else in the car.

No one is suggesting that we should ban travel with passengers in the car, although the research seems to be clear that drivers are going to be distracted by conversing with the people in the car. We have all experienced the distractions associated with crying kids in the backseat, over-exuberant and rambunctious sports teams in the carpool, shared map reading.

We don’t see legislation being proposed to mandate driving alone. We even have special car pool lanes, giving privileges to those drivers most likely to be distracted!

By demonstrating that there is no difference between hand-held and hands-free, is it possible that the Dalhousie study is actually showing that there is no difference between any kind of cell phone use and conversations with passengers in the car?

Does this raise questions about whether legislation that targets only mobile phone use is missing the mark?

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driving, mobile phones, hand-held, hands-free

Videotron announced its mobile network plans Wednesday morning, saying that it has awarded its network build to Nokia Siemens Networks.

Videotron plans to spend another $250M building its network over the next 12-18 months and it will roll-out price leading mobile services. Peter Nowak at CBC has a number of the details from the announcement.

I thought that the discussion of leveraging Quebecor’s stable of media assets holds the greatest promise for customers, beyond the expected price savings. Videotron is characterizing their network as 3.75 G – nearly a 4th generation wireless network. They plan to be technology leaders in mobile, just as they have led in cable internet speeds and cable-based telephony. As such, their ability to offer a package of broadband content at home and on-the-go holds a great deal of promise for consumers.

I think back to the days when Videotron first launched telephone service. Recall that Quebec had among the lowest penetration rates for cable TV. Voice was a way to pull through cable subscriptions. Their mobile services resale helped complete the basic voice/TV/IP bundle, as we noted two years ago.

From what I heard, it sounds like Videotron is now moving to the next level of converged content delivery, with a vision to develop a distribution platform for its print and broadcast media to be as available on the go as it is at home.

The second thrust of our business model is the repurposing and dissemination of this content on an unprecedented number of media. Just as print content will be accessible in the virtual universe, purely digital creations will be accessible on more conventional media. And I see no limits to these creations and this content, be it in the field of information, art, entertainment or sport.

Telecommunications, print and the Internet will no longer be separate, self-enclosed worlds but rather platforms that readily allow for movement between them.

I suspect this is a preview of messages that Videotron will deliver to the CRTC’s New Media proceeding.

A new report out of the SeaBoard Group suggests that the rhetoric out of many in the net neutrality camp is sensationalistic and unhelpful for the future health of the internet:

Treating the Internet as some sort of pastoral elysium rather than a tool to be managed and used, we argue, would have dire consequences for the future health of the Internet should legislators/regulators attempt to embrace these misguided notions.

The SeaBoard report dispels what it calls a faulty romanticized version of the internet, saying that such a vision is based on false precepts. Further, SeaBoard says that net neutrality regulations would “impede the growth, potency and relevance of the Internet in the future.”

Sandvine released its latest study [Exec Summary pdf] that analyzes global broadband trends. The report finds:

• Online entertainment-based applications such as gaming, video streaming, social networking and VoIP communications dominate peak evening hours between 6:00 and 11:00 p.m.
• Peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic remains dominant in the upstream direction totaling 61 per cent of network traffic and is also responsible for more than 22 per cent of downstream bandwidth consumption worldwide
• web traffic and streaming videos account for 59 per cent of downstream bandwidth consumption.

Sandvine president Dave Caputo notes that P2P bulk file transfer applications unaffected by changes to network utilization, contrasted with real-time applications that are sensitive to jitter and latency during times of peak usage. Sandvine advocates network traffic optimization techniques that balance network capacity, application requirements and subscriber quality of experience in real-time.

If the CRTC or Canada’s 40th Parliament addresses net neutrality, will they adopt the language of the Telecom Policy Review Panel?

A Montreal woman was convicted today of mischief and related charges because she placed more than 10,000 calls to 911 in a 15 month period. That works out to about one call per hour, 24 hours per day, 7 days a week over that period.

A Quebec Court judge on Tuesday refused to grant a joint Crown / defense recommendation of a nine-month suspended sentence for Marie-Ève Dean, saying she would likely do it again if she didn’t get therapy.

According to the CBC account,

A court-ordered report submitted in Dean’s case described her as “vengeful, aggressive and immature” and a person who hates the police.

I wonder if she is registered on the Do Not Call List. Imagine her taking revenge on a telemarketing company!

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