Conversations on our home phone line started to get filled with static, off and on, last Thursday – just before I went on a business trip to my field office – testing fixed wireless broadband in Muskoka for the weekend.

By Friday morning, the line was completely dead. In order to check whether it was my inside wiring or the problem of my primary local exchange carrier, I arranged for one of Canada’s leading regulatory technology legal minds to stop by the house and we were able to isolate the problem to the network side.

He then called my local carrier and placed a trouble report. The repair bureau initially said the technician would be out sometime during the day on Saturday. We asked for the time to be narrowed and we were told to expect the technician between 8 am and 12 noon.

At noon on Saturday, I was informed in very clear terms by my daughter that the technician had not yet arrived. She succinctly asked if I would be so kind as find out how much more time she could devote to minding the house to be prepared for the visitor (I am paraphrasing).

When I called 611, I was told that 8-12 is ‘only indicating a preference, not a commitment.’ The technician showed up at 5:00 (so much for caring about my preference for morning), changed the pair and used the secondary drop that serves our home and left at 5:30.

Problem is that the phone stopped working again less than 15 minutes later.

After calling 611 again, I was told that a technician would absolutely be back between 8 and noon on Sunday. Guaranteed.

Hmmm. I think I have heard that before. But with sincerity, I was assured this would be in the morning, not just indicating a preference.

To be honest, my real preference is for my phone to work. If I can’t get that, my next preference would be for a repair to last more than 15 minutes. It’s only when preference number one or two aren’t delivered that I want the repair technician to show up within a 4-hour window.

Is that really too much to ask for?

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As I mentioned Thursday, the CRTC released its annual monitoring report on the state of competition in Canadian telecom. One of the interesting sets of numbers to look at in the CRTC’s monitoring report is capital spending.

I like to look at capital intensity, defined as the amount of capital per dollar of revenue. It is interesting to see that the wireline industry is investing twice as much, per dollar of revenue, as the wireless industry.

In 2002 and 2003, wireless revenues were in line with the industry at large: roughly a quarter of total wireless revenues and their capital spending was roughly a quarter of total industry investment. But in 2004 and 2005, the wireline business spent almost 20 cents out of each dollar of revenue in capital, while the wireless industry dropped to a low of 10 cents.

There are some fundamentals at play in both sectors. It is interesting to see that the wireless sector is able to grow revenues with declining capital, while the wireline side must fight just to minimize revenue erosion and increase investment at the same time.

As a historical artifact, look at the statistical outlier in 2001 – the aberration of new entrant capital spending driven by ‘Field of Dreams’ business plans of the dot-com bubble.

5-1-1

The CRTC has assigned the 5-1-1 access code for the provision of weather and traveller information services, on the condition that the services remain free of charge.

This was a delicate proceeding for the CRTC, in that the competing application was from the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention for the number to be used for crisis intervention and suicide prevention services. At the end of the day, the CRTC was concerned about overlap and confusion between other N-1-1 codes.

The Commission considers that the services to which CASP proposed that the Commission assign the 5-1-1 code are already being provided or could be provided through 2-1-1 services.

There are a few conditions placed on the new phone code assignment. First, the CRTC is requiring that the service remains free of charge. Second, the Commission is requiring the 5-1-1 weather and travel service providers to track roll-out information, such as locations where the service is available, which service is available, and the number of calls. The Commission is also directing that these details be tracked separately for weather and traveller information. The intent is to ensure that there is broad usage of the code for the purposes set out in the application. Finally, the CRTC asked the service providers to track their public awareness campaigns.

The industry will have 6 months to implement the number change from the time a request is made. Watch for 5-1-1 to launch early in 2007.

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