Protecting Canadian interests beyond our borders

February 6, 2007
Federal CourtMichael Geist posts about yesterday’s Federal Court decision in respect of the Privacy Commissioner and investigations outside Canada.

The issue was whether the Privacy Commissioner can investigate a case affecting a Canadian’s private information being collected and sold by a foreign company. The case was raised by Pippa Lawson of CIPPIC.

After protracted correspondence and discussion, on 18 November 2005 the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, through Heather Black, Assistant Privacy Commissioner, refused to investigate. Although the refusal deals with a number of issues, in essence the Privacy Commissioner was of the view that PIPEDA did not give her jurisdiction to investigate Ms. Lawson’s complaint. This is a judicial review of that decision, a decision which raises important questions about the extraterritorial effect of Canada’s laws and the jurisdiction of Canadian tribunals absent a real and substantial connection with this country.

Among other cases, the Court looked at SOCAN vs CAIP where the Supreme Court said “To occur in Canada, a communication need not originate from a server located in Canada.”

national practice confirms that either the country of transmission or the country of reception may take jurisdiction over a ‘communication’ link to its territory

Congratulations to Pippa and CIPPIC for not letting go.

Is there further applicability to having other Federal agencies examine their role governing the transmission of illegal content on the internet?

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John Roese’s mega-trends

January 25, 2017

Nortel CTO John Roese is just getting the hang of blogging and he is providing some interesting insights. I suspect we’ll be enjoying more frequent and shorter postings over time, but I find his blog is worth the investment of time to read.

In his latest post, he introduces part one of a series on mega-trends:

a mega-trend in my mind is an unstoppable force of change that causes us to rethink the way we do telecom. Past examples include open source, corporate LANs, home networking, security threats, etc. Each of these caused disruption and reaction from the technical community and each resulted in a new communications paradigm.

The three mega-trends that I view as significant and contemporaneous today are: hyper-connectivity, communications-enabled applications/frameworks, and “true” broadband services.

He defines hyper-connectivity, the theme of the first posting in the series, as a state in which the number of network connections exceeds the number of humans using it. In other words, virtually everyone in the demographic of my blog readers. Count your network connections for human use (voice, data, mobile, TV, etc.) and then add in machine-machine connectivity (meter-reading, automotive diagnostics, etc.).

John’s assertion is that this trend and its inevitability have not been factored into much of the technology and architectures in use today to build networks. Far reaching impications. Do operators adequately understand the capital requirements to adapt their networks? Will there be adequate revenues associated with the increased connectivity to justify the capital or will this be blended increased demand at the edge captured in net neutrality covenants?

What are the business models to enable network operators to accommodate hyperconnectivity?

More fibre in Verizon’s diet

January 25, 2017

Globe and MailCatherine McLean had an article in Saturday’s Globe and Mail about the Verizon FiOS gamble, betting the company on fibre to the home (FTTH), as contrasted with the approach of most other telcos to build fibre to the node (FTTN) and use traditional copper wiring to enter the home.

While Bell Canada has its own satellite service to deliver TV, there is still a race for interactive service speeds. With Videotron’s 100Mbps service trial announced this week, the telcos are racing to catch up to the cable companies.

So far, Verizon is the only major North American carrier to commit to as high a fibre content in its diet – uniquely positioning it to surpass the cable speeds demonstrated last week by Videotron. Do the capital markets have the appetite to fund any others?

Beavers and chainsaws

January 25, 2017

The Canadian Television Trends blog posted this YouTube clip of Videotron’s pitch in the Quebec internet speed battle: chainsaws against a beaver.

Not terribly environmentally friendly. For 100Mbps, I hope we won’t be seeing deforestation. As I said yesterday, you need a sense of humour and thick skin when competing in Quebec.

Competition in Quebec: it’s no joke

January 25, 2017

The Quebec telecom market is getting to be fun to watch. Six weeks ago, I mentioned Videotron’s sponsorship of the Just For Laughs festival. Now Bell has partnered with Quebec’s most visited French-language site – tetesaclaques.tv.

If you are not familiar with Têtes à Claques, you can find some on YouTube, but who knows what the status is of that intellectual property. Better to visit the official tetesaclaques.tv website.

Têtes à Claques fans will have unlimited access to clips by subscribing to Bell’s Fun bundle, starting at $20 a month. Exclusive content like voicetones, caller ring tunes, video ringtones and screensavers will be updated each week.

A lot of companies have approached the Quebec consumer market by simply translating their English language ads into French and then sat wondering why the customers didn’t respond. Both Videotron and Bell have turned up the heat with a battle of humour.

With a quarter of Canada’s population at stake, the Quebec market is no laughing matter.

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