The AWS auction is moving to ‘Round Two’ as of Monday morning:

The auction will move to stage 2 on June 9, 2008 at 09:00 in round 35. The activity rule will be 90 percent. In a round, bidders must be active on licences covering 90 percent of their total eligibility points in order to maintain that level of eligibility points in the following round. The percentage bid increment will be 8 percent and the absolute increment will be $2000/point.

Recall that when the auction opened, the increment was 15%, then this slowed to 10% last week.

As a sign that we are starting to reach an asymptote around $3.25B, the total bid price has only been increasing by about $10M between round 34 versus 33.

What does the level of bidding mean for the future competitive landscape? Vince Valentini has cut price targets for Quebecor, TELUS and Rogers because of the spectrum cost.

Many analysts had thought the current AWS spectrum auction would generate bids of about $1.5B. As the week draws to a close, the federal treasury has already raised more than $3B. It seems that we are heading towards a windfall of about $1.5B – $2B more than just about anyone in Canada’s Department of Finance could have reasonably expected.

I find it interesting to look at where people are bidding and which spectrum blocks within certain geographies. While the situation may change by the time you look at it, one company has bid a third more – $80M for one of the 20 MHz block than another company bid for the same geography (Toronto), same size block.

Lots of folks have looked at what it means for service providers spending more on spectrum than they might have originally hoped.

I’m interested in hearing what the government plans to do with the extra money besides the standard line that it is paying down the debt.

I have some ideas. What are yours?

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Industry Canada, AWS Spectrum Auction

Last January, I wrote about a US cable industry standardization initiative, tru2way, intended to enable open development of new services and features that rely on two-way communication over the cable network.

In effect, tru2way will eliminate proprietary set-top boxes, allowing conforming open standard set-top boxes to run on any cable network. Alternatively, tru2way could be built into new TV sets, eliminating the set-top box altogether. That is precisely what Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, and LG Electronics plan to do, helping to eliminate at least one remote control and for many, simplifying household wiring.

Light Reading wonders how telcos will respond. As a cable industry initiative, how would IPTV networks interface to tru2way TV sets?

It might be in the best interests of cable companies facing IPTV competition to provide incentives for customers to buy tru2way equipped TVs. Will telephone companies need to develop a kind of plug-in-the-wall interface to enable IPTV to operate with tru2way TV sets.

With wall mounted flat panel TVs becoming more common room fixtures, I have to think that eliminating the extra device, the set-top box, has value for a lot of people. For cable companies, tru2way-enabled TV sets may help keep customers from churning away to IPTV.

Consumers in a Multi-screen World is the theme of one of our break-out sessions at The 2008 Canadian Telecom Summit on June 16. Have you registered yet?

I had a professor who said that you always had to test your questionnaire. Watch the face on the respondents to see if they understand what you are asking.

I have written before about the book “Art of Asking Questions.”

Ipsos Canada is part of one of the world’s leading survey-based marketing research firms. You would have thought that they would know how to test their surveys before releasing them to the field.

So tell me, how should I have responded to the very first question in a survey that said:

Please indicate below whether there are male adults present in your household in each of the following age ranges.

(Please select all that apply.)

☐ Under 18

☐ 18-24

☐ There are no male adults in my household

Hmmm. Hardly mutually exclusive and exhaustive. What do you answer here if you are a male adult aged 25 or older? How about, none of the above? The survey wouldn’t let me continue without selecting at least one response.

I asked the help line what they were expecting from me and they said that I should have clicked on the box that said there are no male adults. Right – that makes sense.

It was a lot easier for the survey help desk to answer my inquiry that way. The alternative would have been for them to tell the study director that they had to start this survey over.

The client will never know the difference.

From looking at the photos of last week’s net neutrality rally in Ottawa, the reports of 300 people said to have been there must have included about 150 tourists who thought that the guy in the godzilla suit was the RCMP musical ride.

However, the rally was apparently a stimulus for a pair of private member’s bills, starting with Bill C-552, introduced by NDP MP Charlie Angus and announced at the rally. It proposes to add some text to Section 36 of the Telecom Act. Recall that the current section basically says that carriers can’t play with content without the express consent of the CRTC.

He has proposed that the following be added:

The Telecommunications Act is amended by adding the following after section 36

1. Network operators shall not engage in network management practices that favour, degrade or prioritize any content, application or service transmitted over a broadband network based on its source, ownership or destination.
2. Nothing in subsection (1) shall be construed as limiting or restricting the right of a network operator to
   1. manage the flow of network traffic in a reasonable manner in order to relieve congestion;
   2. provide reasonable security protection for a user’s computer or the network;
   3. give priority to emergency communications;
   4. offer directly to each user service at different prices based on defined levels of bandwidth or the actual quantity of data flow over a user’s connection;
   5. offer directly to each user consumer protection services, including parental controls for indecency or unwanted content, software for the prevention of unsolicited commercial electronic messages, or other similar capabilities, provided that the user is given clear and accurate advance notice of their ability to refuse or subsequently disable each consumer protection service;
   6. handle breaches of the terms of service, provided the terms of service are not inconsistent with subsection (1); and
   7. prevent any violation of federal or provincial law.
3. Network operators shall not prevent or obstruct a user from attaching any device to their network, provided the device does not physically damage the network or substantially degrade the use of the network by other subscribers.
4. Network operators shall make available to each user information about the user’s access to the Internet, including the speed, limitations, and network management practices of the user’s broadband service at any given time.
5. For the purposes of this section, “network operator” means a person who operates or provides access to telecommunications services.

It seems to me that a lot of folks keep forgetting that, unlike its counterparts in other jurisdictions, the CRTC already has the tools it needs to guard against discriminatory practices.

Bill C-552 appears to be balanced on a cursory examination, but I can already detect areas that give me concern about the possibility to limit future developments in the internet.

Yesterday, Liberal MP David McGuinty introduced C-555, “An Act to provide clarity and fairness in the provision of telecommunication services in Canada.” He has proposed to add certain consumer protections as a condition of license for mobile carriers.

While neither bill may not stand a chance of passing, especially with summer recess around the corner, Bill C-555 is a sign of frustration with anti-consumer practices such unilateral changes of terms and fees outside of contracts. Carriers might be thankful that the honourable member didn’t think of adding the condition to wireline BITS licenses as well.

For the final word on this lengthy post, I found it ironic that in writing about net neutrality this past weekend, Mark Evans seemed to endorse new neutrality laws and regulations but simultaneously quipped that

regulating the Internet is a joke unless your goal is to create bureaucracy, policy and opportunities for lobbyists.

Net neutrality will be the theme of a special session at The 2008 Canadian Telecom Summit on June 18.

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Charlie Angus, net neutrality, Canada, Canadian Telecom Summit