There are a couple interesting twists that emerge from a closer review of the AWS spectrum policy announcement. These are beyond the serendipitous observation that the spectrum auction should be wrapping up just in time for The 2008 Canadian Telecom Summit.

One twist reveals a perverse definition for new entrants that will see the least competitive provinces stay that way; the other thing I noticed is the creation of a potential poison pill for new entrant spectrum winners.

As I mentioned earlier, new entrants are defined as:

An entity, including affiliates and associated entities, which holds less than 10 percent of the national wireless market based on revenue.

So, MTS and Sasktel are defined as new entrants, and that definition will allow them to bid on the new entrant spectrum – even in their incumbent province – despite enjoying 60% and 80% market share at home respectively!

While the intent of the government policy was to be introduce more competition, this part of the policy appears to be ill conceived, because the two provinces with the least evidence of competition will have the least opportunity to have that situation changed.

Oops! Don’t consumers in those two provinces deserve the same benefits of new entry?

Now, if you are a successful new entrant winner of spectrum, that spectrum will serve as a poison bill to ward off Bell, TELUS and Rogers as potential future suitors:

While all licence transfers must be approved by the Minister, licences obtained through the set-aside may not be transferred to companies that do not meet the criteria of a new entrant for a period of 5 years from the date of issuance.

How will this kind of poison pill influence shareholders?

Shaw had been looking for favourable auction conditions to help it decide on whether to bid in the auction. Will the risk of poisoning a future acquisition influence its decision?

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Update [November 29, 3:10 pm]
I appeared on BNN [clip available here] this morning with perspectives on the auction rules. Be generous: I had to get up early to get downtown to be in make-up for an 8:15 appearance!

Earlier today, Industry Canada warned us about “an important announcement” that was released at 4:00 pm today.

The full rules were announced in front of a banner claiming “Putting Consumers First”.

For the major incumbents, the government nearly completely rejected their arguments against a spectrum set-aside, against tower sharing and mandated roaming. 40 MHz of the total 105 MHz will be set-aside for new entrants. The 40 MHz could yield 3 new carriers since it is divided into 14 provincial blocks of 20 MHz each, 14 blocks of 10 MHz each and 59 regional blocks of 10 MHz.

Even the definition of new entrants runs against what the incumbents might have hoped:

An entity, including affiliates and associated entities, which holds less than 10 percent of the national wireless market based on revenue.

That definition allows current incumbents MTS and Sasktel to bid as new entrants, but will keep Bell from bidding on spectrum in Manitoba, despite the fact that Bell owns no spectrum there and MTS enjoys a 60% market share within the province.

No liberalization of foreign ownership rules, so we’ll wait to see how potential new entrants raise sufficient capital to bid on the spectrum, let alone build out their networks.

The mandated roaming rules are pretty generous as well – we’ll comment further over the coming days.

The complete 19 page book of spectrum rules can be found here.

Technorati Tags:
AWS, spectrum auction

According to CTV, the Manitoba government will be introducing legislation to require ISPs to report any detection of child pornography.

Many of the large ISPs have voluntarily started to block access to child abuse content that is identified as part of Project Cleanfeed Canada. This legislation appears to be the first time that ISPs will be required to act.

All kinds of questions that emerge – including provincial authority over what is normally a federal undertaking, that is, telecommunications content; does this represent a change in the traditional common carrier defense for ISPs; etc.

I’ll update with a link to the legislation when it is available.

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Update [November 28, 5:50 pm]
The Manitoba Government press release has a few more details about Bill 7 (The Child and Family Services Amendment Act) – also available in pdf.

Technorati Tags:
Manitoba, child abuse

Industry Canada has issued a media advisory for “an important announcement” to be released by Minister Jim Prentice today, shortly after the markets close at 4:00 pm today.

Will this be the announcement of the rules on the AWS spectrum auction?

The level of public discourse has been accelerating, with an OpEd in today’s pages of The Financial Post by Martin Masse, a former policy advisor to Minister Bernier.

[Today, I offer a guest article written by Alex Goldberg – a student at Queen’s University. Traffic shaping isn’t just an issue for commercial ISPs.]

During the last week of the semester, it is not uncommon to see a bulk of students at Stauffer Library pounding away at their term papers or reports. In my case, I am polishing off a poster presentation on my Honours research project. Most students use the library as a venue with minimal or limited distraction; all of the necessary resources for research are available, between electronic and physical texts, as well as a general atmosphere conducive to study.

Like most universities, Queen’s provides free wireless internet access at all of its libraries. This provides access to electronic academic resources available exclusively to Queen’s students, as well as resources in the public domain. However, the network provided by Queen’s is also used extensively for file sharing between students on the network.

The legality and legitimacy of file sharing aside, I don’t believe that downloading the latest Futurama episode should take precedence over one’s access to academic materials, especially on a university campus.

Unfortunately, the capacity of the university network is limited. On several occasions, I have found that my connection deteriorates considerably during peak usage times. In fact, the bulk of this post was written during periods that I’ve been waiting for pages to load. While the ideal solution to the problem would be to expand the university network’s infrastructure and to increase capacity, there are obvious costs associated with it, let alone the time and energy required to implement such a change at a public institution.

Packet prioritization is an issue for more than just the commercial ISPs; capacity constraints affect university campus networks as well. Since there is a limit to the capacity of the university network, most would agree that research and access to basic information should take precedence over downloading for personal entertainment.

While the end goal should be to expand network capacity and make all information easily available, the immediate needs can be addressed by implementing packet prioritization.

Technorati Tags:
Queens University, traffic shaping, net neutrality