If you are a regular reader on the web version of this blog, you have probably already noticed the banner ads telling you to hold the dates: June 16-18, 2008 for The 2008 Canadian Telecom Summit in Toronto.
We are once again preparing the preeminent forum for leaders of the global telecom industry to meet, exchange views, share ideas and plan for the future of telecommunications in Canada.
The speaker list is building up and we have already confirmed:
Martha Béjar, Corporate Vice President, Communications Sector, Microsoft
Pierre Blouin, CEO, MTS Allstream
Robert Dépatie, CEO, Videotron
Konrad von Finckenstein, Chair, CRTC
Mark Henderson, CEO, Ericsson Canada
Terry Matthews, Chair, Mitel
Michael Moskowitz, President Americas International, Palm
Sheridan Scott, Commissioner of Competition, Competition Bureau
The September 10 issue of Canadian Business magazine carried a description of the special session looking at the AWS spectrum consultation that we hosted on the last day of The 2007 Canadian Telecom Summit:
It’s the kind of firecracker debate attendees have come to expect of this annual conference — part schmooze-fest, part WWE SmackDown — that gives power brokers from the telecommunications industry a rare opportunity to grab face time with one another and exchange views.
The star “wrestlers” from last year’s regulatory and policy panel have also confirmed their attendance. You should also be planning to be there.
We have already begun to receive registrations. Book your place early.
For a while there have been dual-SIM phones available from small manufacturers in China.
Now, for the first time a major handset manufacturer, Samsung, recently announced the launch of a dual-SIM device to address the common phenomenon in Europe of people carrying more than one cell phone.
I have been talking about the impact of this kind of distortion in comparing market penetration rates between countries. The multi-SIM issue has led to some silly assertions from some quarters and feelings of inadequacies regarding communications services in Canada.
Samsung’s product launch provides additional validation of the number of people that carry dual SIMs.
With more Canadians heading south thanks to a stronger dollar, maybe more of us will begin to carry a US SIM, leading to demand for this device here as well.
The IPTV technology is being provided by Inuk Networks, a Terry Matthews company based in the UK.
“It’s full-screen, broadcast-quality television,” says Sean Van Koughnett, director of UW Graphics and the project manager of an initiative to bring electronic innovations to the residences and eventually the rest of the campus.
“It’s called the Media and Mobility Network Project,” Van Koughnett said, “but it’s really a bunch of projects under one umbrella.” The Internet television is one part of MMNP, a small-scale introduction of Voice over Internet Protocol telephone service to residence rooms is another part, and some cellphone projects are on the horizon, he said.
The MMNP project includes plans to bring savings to UW residences which are all currently equipped with landline phones. Considering that students are equipped with cellphones and use a variety of VOIP services such as Skype, the project is looking at a plan to get rid of the POTS lines.
Over the long term, the Bulletin says that MMNP’s vision is to develop a service that enables students “to talk, text and surf wherever they are on campus for much less than what they currently have to pay.”
Incidentally, Terry Matthews will be a keynote speaker at The 2008 Canadian Telecom Summit next June. I’ll have more information about our speakers in the next day or so.
Update [November 1, 2:20 pm]
There is a story about the MMNP project in the University of Waterloo student paper The Imprint.
Yak had a witness at the CRTC’s Essential Services proceeding this morning. He was asked if there was evidence of the impact of dial around in disciplining telco long distance rates.
I have access to virtually unlimited North American calling on various lines in the house. However, anyone who makes any amount of international calling is crazy if they don’t use a dial-around service. For international calling, all service providers are on an equal footing – even the major phone companies are just resellers of international long distance.
So why are dial around companies so much cheaper?
As I have pointed out before, in many cases, dial around is even cheaper than Skype. No prepayment. No need to run out to a convenience store to buy a card. No expiration date. No ‘system access fee’. You just pick up the phone and dial and the charge appears on your bill.
Some people may only make one call per month, if that. But the savings can be dramatic. Dial around provides an important level of flexibility for people swayed to lock into domestic services bundles.
Will the CRTC keeps casual calling viable? In a country like Canada that has such a high percentage of people making occasional international calls, dial around provides affordable choice.
The problem with the “Information Highway” metaphor for the internet is that people seem to think that highways are the right way – in fact, the only way – to move all goods and people.
In fact, we have an inter-modal transportation system, including rail and highways on land, shipping by sea and air. Some parts regulated as common carrier. Some unregulated. Some scheduled with public access. Some private.
It seems to me that the entire transportation system, including the way disparate systems – transportation networks – integrate could be a better model to examine for policies on how we move information.
Sometimes shipping by sea makes sense. Other times shipping by air is needed. There aren’t rules that mandate that all goods and people must travel equally. So we need to carefully examine why our bits should be any different.
The Green Party of Canada’s election platform includes a section called “Supporting the free flow of information” found on page 153 of its 156 page party platform document.
Its position seems to reflect a view that appears to be based on incorrect premises:
The Internet has become an essential tool in knowledge storage and the free flow of information between citizens. It is playing a critical role in democratizing communications and society as a whole. There are corporations that want to control the content of information on the internet and alter the free flow of information by giving preferential treatment to those who pay extra for faster service.
Our Vision
The Green Party of Canada is committed to the original design principle of the internet – network neutrality: the idea that a maximally useful public information network treats all content, sites, and platforms equally, thus allowing the network to carry every form of information and support every kind of application.
Green Solution
Green Party MPs will:
Pass legislation granting the Internet in Canada the status of Common Carrier – prohibiting Internet Service Providers from discriminating due to content while freeing them from liability for content transmitted through their systems.
Whenever I look at the logo for the Green Party of Canada, I think of an old Harry Chapin song called Flowers are Red. The logo of the political party depicts a flower with green petals.
The Green Party strikes me as being willing to look at issues differently. I think such diversity of views can be healthy.
That said, I don’t accept the Green Party premise that a network that treats all content equally is maximally useful. I think that certain applications and certain types of secure or priority information cannot be supported by a network that treats all content, sites, and platforms equally.
Would a ‘democratic’ network limit the ability to fully converge some application specific networks, by prohibiting measures and assurances that protect voice and priority or secure data?
Why limit the degrees of freedom for companies and users to leverage efficiencies that could be offered by network providers? Sometimes, shipping by sea makes more sense. Other times, it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight. So we have priority courier service.
Chapin’s song celebrates the eccentricity of a child’s painting and mourns a teacher’s success in instilling uniformity:
There are so many colors in the rainbow
So many colors in the morning sun
So many colors in the flower and I see every one
Beige, that most neutral of colours, can be pretty boring. We have all seen apartments and homes that celebrate neutrality. For many, those beige walls enable tenants to add the colour themselves – furniture, art – the applications of their choice. But should the government mandate a world where nobody gets to have colour, even if they want to distinguish themselves?
The creativity in internet application development to date has occurred without specific net neutrality laws. Some might say the creativity has happened because of light touch regulation enabling flexible business models to emerge.
For some content and applications, beige may be the right background. My question is whether we should be legislating beige when there are so many colours in the rainbow?
The better approach for party platforms would be to adopt the language – the complete language – of recommendation 6-5 from the Telecom Policy Review Panel report on Net Neutrality.
The Telecommunications Act should be amended to confirm the right of Canadian consumers to access publicly available Internet applications and content of their choice by means of all public telecommunications networks providing access to the Internet. This amendment should
authorize the CRTC to administer and enforce these consumer access rights,
take into account any reasonable technical constraints and efficiency considerations related to providing such access, and
be subject to legal constraints on such access, such as those established in criminal, copyright and broadcasting laws.
