As we suggested earlier this week, Cabinet has sent the CRTC’s VoIP decision back for reconsideration.

The Minister may be sending other indications about what he will be announcing next month at The Canadian Telecom Summit.

In addition to considering the progress that VoIP has made in the market, the CRTC will be able to reconsider the decision in light of the detailed work recently completed by the Telecommunications Policy Review Panel…

In order to encourage innovation and productivity, it is imperative that regulatory measures interfere as little as possible with competitive market forces… I look forward to reviewing the CRTC’s conclusions after it reconsiders this important decision.

Recall that the Telecom Policy Review panel released its final report and recommendations in March, making numerous recommendations to change regulation in the telecommunications sector, and to rely [to the extent possible] on market forces to achieve policy objectives.

Bell Canada’s response was swift to applaud the decision and it simultaneously announced that it will be appealing the recent Local Forbearance Decision to Cabinet:

The Minister is expected to respond to the panel’s recommendations in his June 13 address at The Canadian Telecom Summit.

What if the government doesn’t proclaim the Act to implement the Do Not Call List legislation?

The bill has passed – all that remains is an Order in Council to proclaim it. But what happens if the Conservative government gets cold feet (eg. concerns about costs ballooning like the Gun Registry, too much regulation, etc.)?

I’ve been listening to the various financial reports from the major phone companies this week.

Am I the only one who is tired of these boilerplate ‘Safe Harbour’ notices at the beginning of almost every CEO / CFO presentation? On the screen for 2 seconds and then moving on.

I think we all understand the origins. I am sure that we can thank the same litigious law firms that led to McDonald’s putting a warning on their coffee cups saying ‘Contents may be hot’.

I love the phrasing in these Safe Harbour slides:

Translation into plain language? While we want you to listen to this, and pump up our stock price, don’t even think about holding us accountable. What is undue reliance? Is it reasonable to place any reliance on these statements? The message I took from Mark Cuban’s blog is that shareholders need to be more activist. Like reminding companies about who owns who. If shareholders are the owners, shouldn’t management be willing to stand behind the statements they are making?

Why doesn’t the McDonald’s coffee cup say ‘Warning: Contents are hot’? Because then lawyers would file suit in case the coffee ever cooled down. Commitment, folks. Where is the commitment?

Companies: Stop trying to cover your assets so broadly that your warnings are like labels on jars of trail mix, warning ‘May contain nuts’.

The jar better contain nuts – otherwise you’ll be hearing from my lawyer!

Interesting disclosure from Bob McFarlane, CFO of TELUS on the conference call today.

He said that TELUS has been playing catchup with Rogers in some areas of wireless applications because of Rogers’ use of GSM and the greater number of applications that exist for that platform. He noted the earlier availability of RIM Blackberry as an example.

We can argue about whether or not CDMA may be a better network technology, but what is clear is that consumers are more concerned about what they can do with the technology – not the inner workings themselves.

Look at Betamax as a great example.

My daughter is studying abroad this year. She made an interesting observation on her blog as she commented about a student on her campus that chose to ignore a minute of silence being observed in memory of the Holocaust. Rather than being outraged, she wrote:

It strikes me as an appropriate point to take away from this experience – and I am very proud that she understands such fundamentals.

In a strange way, her views tie into a concern raised by some of the questions in the telemarketing Do Not Call List proceeding today, especially those in relation to possible limits on when people can place calls.

I have a problem being called at certain times of day, but I also have the ability to turn off the ringer. If the CRTC wants to limit professional telemarketers, I’ll let those folks fight their own battle about how it limits their freedom of expression.

I was more concerned about the spectre of limitations of hours of calling being imposed on public opinion research firms. Their association was cross-examined about whether they would agree to conform to such rules if imposed.

Talk about being on the hot spot. When I was asked the same question on Tuesday (testifying on behalf of volunteer based charities, I was not happy about it. In my view, the question is along the lines of legislating etiquette. Of course we would like everyone to be polite, use the right fork and don’t call after 10 pm (or during the World Series or Super Bowl). But should this be regulated?

In my respectful view, this would be regulation for the sake of regulation. I think that government should have to prove why they need to create regulations – and more than just a survey that says X% of Canadians find telemarketing calls annoying. Duhh.

Did anyone tell them that the government defines your neighbour’s kid, or grandaughter calling to sell girl guide cookies as telemarketing? Are those the calls the public wants to shut down? Are we going to make it an offense under the Telecom Act because a kid calls to sell school dance tickets too late at night?

Or should we gently teach them how to be polite, without making it a federal issue.

How about a common sense approach? Do you really think that making it a crime to call after 10 will make a professional telemarketer stop, or will it be more effective to just hang-up on them? Common sense says that you don’t make lots of successful sales calls at 2 am.

In a democratic society, I think you have the right to be stupid, you have the right to be rude and we should try to teach telephone etiquette, not legislate it.

Just don’t call me Sunday nights in the middle of The West Wing, if you know what’s good for you. I’ll file a complaint at the CRTC.