Shaw and Videotron have both announced that they have stopped sending their contributions to the Canadian Television Fund until there is a review of its accountability, implicitly calling for an overhaul of the governance structure.

While the direct target is CTF, this may be viewed as an indirect challenge to the CRTC. The CRTC’s Broadcast Distribution Regulations require cable and direct-to-home satellite operators to contribute a portion of their gross annual revenues to the CTF. In Shaw’s case, this amounts to $5M per month.

CTF’s governance structure had 3 representatives from the CCTA, a cable industry association that dissolved last year. Videotron had not been a member of CCTA for a number of years and so it had no way to influence the direction of its contributions. CTF’s January 12 news release says that it “has requested that the CCTA nominate a candidate to ensure proper representation from the BDU community on the CTF Board of Directors.”

Did CTF miss the news of CCTA’s demise last year? Exactly who at the non-existant CCTA did CTF approach “to ensure proper representation from the BDU community?”

Pierre Karl Péladeau, president and CEO of Videotron parent Quebecor said:

Fund managers pay little heed to the main private-sector contributors to the Fund and give little consideration to their point of view in decision-making.

We fully intend to continue being a leading contributor to the financing of Canadian production but we have decided to withhold our monthly contributions to the Canadian Television Fund until significant changes are made to its management and direction.

It seems that CTF has fallen out of touch with its funding community.

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Update: [January 25, 9:15 pm]
Heritage Minister Bev Oda has called a meeting of the funders of CTF.

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CTF, Shaw, Videotron, CCTA

Rogers just keeps rolling along. Earlier this week, Rogers’ market cap exceeded Bell’s for the first time. Its stock price continues to rise into record levels, almost as though retail investors missed the news that there was a 2:1 split.

And now, customers are opening their mail to learn that prices are going to increase, effective March 1, “due to increased operational costs.” Internet goes up by $1 and cable TV increases by $3.50. It is a demonstration of confidence in the market.

I have to admit, it is hard to complain.

If a customer bought just one share of Rogers stock a year ago for $48.50, today they would have 2 shares worth $38 each. That goes a long way toward covering next month’s price increase.

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Rogers

The Toronto Star had an article about the downtown WiFi trial that Toronto Hydro has had running for the past four months.

With speeds of up to 5Mbps, It was found to be the fastest of 41 municipal networks tested by Novarum Consulting‘s latest quarterly ranking.

Of course, you need to keep in mind that One Zone has 230 access points and the number of people on the network at any time has ranged from 270 to 900. There seems to be lots of capacity – where are all the users?

Will people pay once the trial period is over? Do the economics work? David Dobbin, president of Toronto Hydro Telecom, will be talking about One Zone at The Canadian Telecom Summit in June.

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Toronto Hydro Telecom, Canadian Telecom Summit

The headline on CNN Money.com reads “Tech giants push for Web free speech”. The article talks about Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Vodafone working with human rights and press freedom groups to draw up an Internet code of conduct to protect free speech and privacy of Web users.

That part of the article is fine – and speaks of a noble effort. The parties aim to produce a code holding companies accountable if they cooperate with governments to suppress free speech or violate human rights. The intent is to counter such trends as the increased jailing of Internet journalists, monitoring of legitimate online activity and censorship.

Care needs to be taken that we recognize that with free speech comes responsibility. David Butt, a lawyer who works on child exploitation issues says:

There are important lessons to be learned from the print media experience on both sides of the freedom of expression debate as it blossoms anew in an internet context. Governments, it seems, must learn all over again to keep their digital paws off political expression. Private interests, it seems, must learn anew that certain very limited kinds of expression (hate speech, and child abuse images for example) are socially destructive and must be prevented and condemned. And once again, the economic interests of powerful actors must not be allowed to muddy the waters, particularly if the result obscures victimization.

The 2007 Canadian Telecom Summit, June 11-13, includes a session examining Canadian perspectives on dealing with various forms of Illegal Content on the Internet.

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David Butt, illegal content, Canadian Telecom Summit

Roberta Fox, has an article about the Nortel-Microsoft Innovative Communications Alliance in her most recent Foxgroup Flash newsletter.

She asks when will we see the real power of converged computing, telecom and mobility? While we have seen demos and videos that promise a unified future, she wonders about the challenges in deploying such solutions and what could be the real business benefits when this is possible.

Roberta writes that service providers need to walk the walk:

For the industry as a whole, we suggest that you start using your own current unified communications products throughout your organizations within all job roles.

This will not only help your own organization evolve, but more importantly from a customer perspective, you will get to understand and develop the migration plans, technology and skills evolution plans and hopefully figure out real, tangible business benefits that can be obtained through the vision you are trying to sell to us as customers.

Need I mention that Unified Communications will be a session at The 2007 Canadian Telecom Summit?

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Nortel, Microsoft, unified communications, Roberta Fox