According to a CP newswire story, the Newfoundland government is looking at participating in a consortium deal to build a second fibre link to the mainland. The group would be made up of Rogers, Persona and MTS Allstream.

Newfoundland needs an additional link, as last weekend’s telecom crisis demonstrated, but government money isn’t the way to build it. Instead, the government should exert its influence to ensure the consortium includes Bell Aliant, the operators of the current link. At the very least, it should be a condition of using the government cash.

Aliant should provide capacity on their existing ring in exchange for the same on the new facility. But why would they do that? After all, Aliant already operates a survivable ring, according to documents they filed with the CRTC in 2004. It wasn’t the transmission ring to the mainland that knocked Newfoundland off-the-air last week. Why should Aliant help its competitors?

The alternative is that the government might consider operating its own network. Worse still would be the federal and provincial governments both dropping off the current Aliant network and no longer being the biggest customers for Aliant’s capacity or even acting as customers for the new consortium. What good is having your own fibre if you lose your biggest customers, including the capacity currently being sold to the consortium members.

Trade capacity in order to keep the public sector out of operating its own network. That is how consumers of all 4 carriers benefit – lower costs and improved reliability.

In early September, we wrote about the challenges for Nortel as it looks at business units in which to invest resources for the future.

Nortel has announced that municipal WiFi will be one of those areas. Research Triangle Park, North Carolina has been selected as the home of Nortel’s municipal WiFi laboratory.

The lab focuses on research and development of broadband wireless solutions that will allow municipalities and operators to realize simplified introduction of new wireless services and applications to boost economic development, improve public safety and give citizens easier access to government services. The lab also gives Nortel a collaborative environment in which to fully test and integrate an expansive ecosystem of partners to provide municipal applications.

I can’t help but wonder if Toronto Hydro’s selection of technology from Siemens and BelAir Networks may have cost Canada the opportunity to host Nortel’s investment that favours the establishment of the lab in RTP. Will Nortel’s opportunities for municipal WiFi deployments be given a boost by its Government Solutions division (formerly PEC Solutions)?

More on Nortel’s WiFi plans is at Mark Evan’s All Nortel blog.

Through the summer, we wrote about Bell’s application to raise Centrex rates and the subsequent opposition filed by the Federal government.

On Friday, the CRTC gave final approval to the Bell price increase, rejecting arguments to allow customers out of their contracts in the case that the telephone company initiates the tariff increase.

The Commission said

if the Commission were to direct the Companies, as has been essentially suggested by MTS Allstream, to modify the terms of their Centrex tariffs, and by extension other tariffs, so as to provide customers with the ability to reduce or eliminate their use of a service during the term of a contract period without incurring any penalties, the Commission considers that incentives for the ILECs to continue to make available discounted pricing plans for their customers would be greatly reduced.

This seems disingenuous. According to the CRTC, customers can’t be let out of their contracts when the phone companies raise their prices, because of a fear that ILECs may no longer offer discounts for long term contracts if customers aren’t bound to stick it out. What about the idea that a contract is binding on both parties? What good are discounts if the ILECs get to raise the prices of their own will in the middle of the term?

The ILECs created their own disincentive for customers to sign up to long term contracts, since there is apparently no assurance that the pricing will be maintained. What Allstream sought was for the Commission to permit customers to hold ILECs accountable to offer the committed prices for the duration of the contract period. You would think this wasn’t a novel concept.

Who won in the end? We’ll see if the rate increase was worth the loss of goodwill when these contracts are up for renewal.