Peter Nowak continued his outstanding coverage of The 2008 Canadian Telecom Summit by conducting an interview with Sandvine co-founder, president and CEO, Dave Caputo, following the Wednesday morning Net Neutrality panel.

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At the end of the day on Thursday, bidding for AWS spectrum cracked through $3.9B and it seems to keep creeping up almost $5M per round. At that pace, we will get close to, but not quite at the $4B level before the week is through. I have already written about my thoughts on how the government might reinvest its windfall in enhancing accessibility to broadband by lower income Canadians. I noticed coverage in Tech Media Reports as well.

At the Canadian Telecom Summit on Tuesday, Ken Engelhart did some quick arithmetic to show that the amounts are in line with valuations in recent auctions in other countries – it’s just that his comparables were for different frequency bands.

Still, we can be confident that the business plans still justify the levels. The question of where will all the capital come from remains. How many global players have stayed away because of foreign ownership restrictions?

While there are certainly legal constructs that can allow companies to satisfy a license review, how many companies have stayed clear of such games because they tend to believe that if they are putting up most of the bucks, they should get to control the board?

Would a loosening of foreign ownership restrictions result in even more competitive service providers?

I have been a little tied up for the past few days so I am grateful that my blogging colleagues, veteran journalists Peter Nowak and David George-Cosh have been providing such outstanding coverage of The 2008 Canadian Telecom Summit in their roles as writers at CBC Online and The National Post respectively.

Their posts provided complementary coverage of Wednesday’s speakers. Peter talks about the keynote addresses early in the day from Robert Depatie and Pierre Blouin; David covers Competition Bureau chief Sheridan Scott’s address late in the afternoon. David also asks an important question arising from M. Depatie’s keynote.

The event is now over. Thank you to the delegates and sponsors for your support. Thank you to the speakers for imparting your experience to our attendees. And thank you, David and Peter for assisting in bringing news of the event’s proceedings to the rest of the public that couldn’t make it there in person.

The dates for next year’s 2009 Canadian Telecom Summit will be June 15-17, 2009 and we expect to be in Toronto.

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Day 2 of The 2008 Canadian Telecom Summit featured a number of memorable sessions – including this year’s installment of the Regulatory Blockbuster [covered here by CBC and here by the National Post].

Keynotes by University of Waterloo President David Johnston and CRTC Chair Konrad von Finckenstein were covered by Peter Nowak here. The CRTC Chair’s keynote was described by David George-Cosh here.

Each year, it is a challenge for us to keep the event fresh and relevant and we try different things. A number of global industry executives who have participated as speakers and delegates have commented on the uniqueness of The Canadian Telecom Summit in gathering together such a panel of leaders – on stage and in the audience.

To close off Day 2, we had two receptions. The first, sponsored by Tech Mahindra, honoured the participation of their president of international operations, CP Gurnani, and BT CIO Clive Selley.

This was followed by a reception and concert sponsored by the Israel Economic Mission and the Canada Israel Chamber of Commerce, featuring Mosh Ben Ari.

He opened the show with the song in the video I posted earlier this year – a song called “The Way” – which is my favourite. To quote a lyric from the song, it was an especially sweet moment for me.

The 2008 Canadian Telecom Summit opened yesterday with more than 500 delegates gathered to hear from 75 industry leading speakers.

You can watch our introductory remarks here.

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