As expected, Industry Canada released its final Conditions of Licence for Mandatory Roaming and Antenna Tower and Site Sharing and to Prohibit Exclusive Site Arrangements on Friday.

These rules were initially going to make every tower in Canada available for sharing by mobile service providers – providing two benefits: easier entry for winners of spectrum in the upcoming auction; and, reducing the proliferation of towers that nobody wants in their backyard.

Industry Canada backed down from its original intent to apply the new sharing conditions on all current spectrum holders: broadcasters, utilities, emergency service radios, among others. Instead the rules will only be applied among mobile license holders.

The public utilities had complained that:

Public utilities noted that their sites are generally located within the confines of enclosures around utility installations (e.g. hydroelectric transformers and switching facilities). Admission to such enclosures is highly restricted and requires and could compromise the integrity of critical utility infrastructure.

The others had similar cop-outs:

Public safety agencies expressed similar concerns to those applicable to national security sites requiring highly restricted access. It was also submitted that broadcast sites already tend to be the subject of extensive sharing among broadcasters for technical and economic reasons while generally being poorly suited for other radiocommunication system architectures.

So what?

Industry Canada could have kept to its principles. Tower owners could easily impose conditions on which crews are permitted to perform installation and maintenance in order to deal with the “specialized training, equipment and procedures to protect personnel.” If the broadcast towers aren’t suitable for other “radiocommunication system architectures” then there won’t be many requests. These could all of been handled in the course of operators requesting access and tower owners responding with conditions in their proposal.

Why did Industry Canada back down?

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Industry Canada

Jeff Fan at UBS released his interpretation of Industry Canada’s clarifications from last Wednesday evening. The document was released in response to questions following the initial AWS spectrum policy release last November.

Bottom line:

We believe this is a net positive for the incumbents, especially for Rogers, because the clarified rules are not as favourable to new entrants as previously feared.

The main reasons cited by UBS are:

• Mandated roaming does not include resale: Industry Canada will not require resale of services outside of a new entrant’s licensed area;
• New entrants need to build network before launching service: A new entrant must offer service on its own network before its subscribers may benefit from roaming on another network;
• No requirement for seamless handoff: Calls in progress that are transferring from a new entrant’s own network to a roaming network may drop and have to be re-launched, leading to enormous frustration among the customers of new entrants;

The Industry Canada Q&A; is reasonably readable and can be found here [pdf]. The UBS analysis explains the winners and losers from the answers found in that paper.

There are significant changes expected to be announced by two different government bodies over the next few days that will impact the regulatory framework for wholesale telecommunications services.

Ironically, the environment for wireless services will come under greater regulatory intervention while wireline services will continue to follow a path to lighten the touch of government.

Industry Canada is expected to announce the outcome of its consultation on mandated roaming and tower sharing on Friday. On Monday, the CRTC will be releasing its decision on the Wholesale and Essential Services proceeding, a process that was launched in late 2006. We have written about that proceeding a number of times over the past year or so.

The changes that are coming will have a lasting impact on the state of telecommunications for the foreseeable future. More fodder for discussion at The Canadian Telecom Summit in June.

The CRTC and Statistics Canada have announced an initiative to cut down on the amount of government paperwork required from telecommunications service providers in Canada.

Both government bodies currently require filings from carriers.

Under a new inter-agency Memorandum of Understanding, their annual telecommunications surveys have been harmonized to reduce regulatory burden and make data collection more efficient.

Beginning with this year’s filings, there will be only one annual telecommunications survey, submitted through the CRTC’s web-based Data Collection System.

Nice to see the walls coming down!

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CRTC, Statistics Canada

There wasn’t lots in the federal budget for telecommunications – which is not necessarily a bad thing. Most of us prefer a hands-off approach.

I noticed that no one in Ottawa has yet picked up on my suggestion for a refundable tax credit tied to driving increased broadband subscriptions among lower income earners. I tend to think that this is the best approach for governments that want to stimulate broadband use and availability.

I did note one item in the budget speech. The government plans to put $21M into establishing global research chairs, one of which is in Information and Communications Technologies.

This funding will allow each Chair to assemble outstanding research teams and undertake cutting-edge research in areas of strategic importance to Canada.

If there is an election coming in the next year, when will telecommunications and technology become a more prominent issue?