This evening’s speech from the throne laid out the priorities of the Conservative government for the next session of parliament.

We noticed the following tidbits of interest to the telecommunications sector in the section of the speech entitled “Providing Effective Economic Leadership for a Prosperous Future.”

As part of ensuring economic security for Canadians, our Government will bring forward a long-term plan of broad-based tax relief for individuals, businesses and families—including following through on its commitment to a further cut to the GST. To complement this, our Government will support Canadian researchers and innovators in developing new ideas and bringing them to the marketplace through Canada’s Science and Technology Strategy. Our Government will improve the protection of cultural and intellectual property rights in Canada, including copyright reform.

Copyright reform could include an examination of downloaded content on the internet, digital rights management tools and potentially the role of ISPs in the enforcement of these rights. Of course, copyright is important to more than just the cultural sector; our software and technology industries are keenly interested in following this debate.

In addition, the speech announced an infrastructure program, the Building Canada Plan, to support long-term growth. While the rest of that section of the speech spoke of support for bricks and mortar type projects, we’ll want to see if communications infrastructure – perhaps in support for extending broadband capabilities to remote regions – is part of the plan.

Finally, we noticed a section in the law and order section of the speech that could have implications for illegal content on the internet and lawful access to customer name and address information:

Our Government will address Canadians directly on the challenge of protecting our free and open society with a statement on national security. The Government will introduce legislation to make sure that Canada has the tools it needs to stop those who would threaten our cities, communities and families…

We’ll watch for further commentary and the response from the opposition leaders over the coming days.

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In January, I asked about carriers leading a drive toward green energy and increased environmental consciousness. I am disappointed that the posting apparently wasn’t sufficient for me to merit consideration for even a small share of the Nobel peace prize. Still, I’ll return to environmental issues with today’s post.

I have noticed a variety of initiatives from carriers coming to the fore in recent weeks, including announcements in the past few weeks or so for projects such as TELUS’ greening in Montreal and Edmonton as well as Bell’s new environmentally conscious Montreal HQ building.

Later this month, the Intelligent Waterloo Conference will be hosting a one day session: Intelligent Communities and Broadband: An Alternative to Energy Consumption, taking place on October 25.

Among the sessions, Assistant Deputy Minister Michael Binder will be looking at Moving Information Without Moving People. The abstract says:

Canadians are increasingly embracing the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in their daily lives. This presentation examines the challenges and opportunities faced by policy-makers in building an innovative economy and society. Particular emphasis is placed on the potential of these technologies to support environmental goals.

The conference is hosted by the Intelligent Waterloo Committee, the City of Waterloo, the University of Waterloo, the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), Canada’s Technology Triangle and Communitech.

There were very few reply comments submitted last week for the CRTC’s consultation on delegation of its investigative powers for the telemarketing rules.

Only four groups show up on the CRTC’s website as having sent in reply comments.

The Canadian Marketing Association (CMA) warns that the registry of telemarketing agencies could rival Canada’s infamous gun registry:

to attempt to identify, register and charge fees to the hundreds of thousands of companies that engage in telemarketing will be a controversial administrative nightmare rivalling that of the gun registry.

Ottawa can be a little touchy about the subject of large government administered registration databases.

The phone companies comments acknowledge that there are approximately 80,000 registered charities alone, let alone the countless – but soon to be counted, if the CRTC has its way – number of clubs, school groups, church organizations and small businesses that make calls of any kind dealing with selling something or in some way involving money. Not only will these groups need to register once, but the telemarketer registry records will certainly need to be kept up-to-date, providing the “telemarketing police” with contact information of this year’s head of the grade 8 class trip chocolate bar sales campaign.

Maybe when future school trips come to Ottawa, the tours will include a visit to the Unsolicited Telemarketing Rules investigator’s headquarters. Each kid can come home with a souvenir whistle.

Considering the challenge that the local service contribution administrator has in keeping its records up to date, or the CRTC with its international phone licenses, the CMA is likely not far off in its gun registry analogy for an administrative nightmare associated with this broadly defined telemarketer registry database.

CMA’s comments suggests that the rationale for the registration process with an independent investigator appears to be for the CRTC to avoid conducting its own investigations funded by the phone companies through the consolidated revenue fund. That might be a reasonable expectation since the phone companies are the people profiting from the sale of communications services to telemarketers – whether the calls are exempt from the DNCL or not.

CMA is rightly concerned about its members once again being caught in the cross fire. After all, the fact that a telemarketer joins CMA is a sign that it wants to follow the rules. CMA’s members aren’t the concern for most of us – it is the calls from commercial telemarketers who aren’t members of CMA.

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Update [October 15, 12:20 pm]
Today’s National Post includes a story about government red tape burying small business. It makes me wonder why associations representing small and independent businesses didn’t weigh in on this CRTC file.

Is the registry going to be consistent with the objective to reduce the paper burden 20% by November, 2008 from Secretary of State responsible for Small Business & Tourism, Diane Ablonczy. “Key departments and agencies must actually start a count of their requirements being placed on businesses.”

There is a new Vice Chair of Telecom at the CRTC, filling a vacancy left by the departure of Rick French earlier this summer.

Len Katz, who had been serving as the Executive Director of the CRTC since 2005 will now become a Commissioner and Vice Chair. As executive director, he has led the process re-engineering at the CRTC, working to improve the responsiveness of the Commission in light of the changing competitive industry landscape.

Josée Verner, Minister of Canadian Heritage, also announced the appointment of Peter Menzies as a part-time member to the CRTC.

Congratulations!

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Jeffrey Fan, telecom analyst at UBS, has released a report that looks at the impact of new entrants on the Canadian wireless industry. The report is certain to generate substantial discussions, if not heated arguments in the countdown to Industry Canada’s release of the AWS spectrum auction rules.

Among the most significant findings in the report are:

• Videotron and Shaw have positive business cases for wireless, substantial opportunities for Videotron, even without any incentives from the government. In the case of Videotron, UBS estimates that it can afford to pay 3 times the cost of spectrum in the 2001 auction. Shaw could afford to pay almost double the 2001 price.
• MTS Allstream does not have a business case if it has to pay the average price for spectrum from the last auction. It has a negative NPV and very low IRR. “We fail to find the economic rationale for MTS Allstream to expand its wireless operations nationally.” The UBS model shows a negative NPV of $684M for MTS Allstream – which seems to indicate that the present value of new entrant concessions would need to be that high, just to make the business case break even.
• UBS believes foreign carriers will not find Canada’s AWS auction being sufficiently attractive for invest at a minority position.

What would it take to make the MTS Allstream business case go positive?

To make it viable, we believe MTS would want: 1) little cost incurred for the spectrum licences; and, 2) to build out less than two-thirds of the sites that would typically be required.

UBS raised its target for MTS Allstream last Wednesday, however the new paper discusses a number of factors that could impair MTS Allstream’s success. Among them:

• the company’s ideal customers are seen as a challenge for a wireless business plan since the business services market is already mature;
• business clients would be most demanding on roaming capabilities which would be costly until the national network is largely built;
• the success in developing domestic and international partnerships is not likely; and,
• external capital will be required, given the current dividend stream.

We can expect considerable discussion of this paper, which also quantifies changes in stock market valuations taking into account the potential impact of additional wireless players.