I appreciate Alec Saunders bringing further attention to my travels on Tuesday. Many people are unaware of how broadly it is defined. The CRTC says that Telemarketing is:

Unfortunately, this definition means that when your school PTA, or kids’ hockey team, or scout troop calls you to tell you about their upcoming car wash, cookie sales, school play – these are ‘telemarketing’. If you want those calls banned, then you are more of a scrooge than Dickens could conjure.

When the seniors’ Golden Age club wants to notify their members about an outing to Stratford, that is telemarketing. Same as inviting them to Bingo next Thursday. Go ahead and think that, in your fantasy land, you can change the way that 80-year-olds communicate and you can get them to use viral marketing and Web 2.0 tools. Who is going to buy them their computers, pay for their training or tell them that the world has passed them by? Not me.

I’d like to be a little more practical and let people choose the communications tools they want to use and make sure that the regulatory framework is more permissive.

Let’s try to remember that the vast majority of telemarketing calls are positive experiences for three stakeholders: the caller, the recipient and the telecom carriers that provide the facilities and transport for the sector. It is your insurance agent calling you to tell you about new options for your home insurance renewal, your bank, your alumni association, your church, your ski club, your car dealer booking your next oil change. It even includes your kids calling grandma and their aunts and uncles to sponsor them in the school walk-a-thon.

By the way, unless your grade 3 class happens to have a registered tax number, Parliament didn’t grant them an exemption from having to first check the national do not call list. And even if they do have such a tax department break, if you read the phone companies submissions, they would have wanted you to first reprogram your home phone line to display ‘Riverdale School Walkathon’ before your kid started calling for sponsors, or selling gift wrap and chocolates.

With government cutbacks, it is the charitable and non-profit sector that supplements an ever-shrinking social safety net that we, as Canadian, cherish as a defining characteristic of our national moral fabric. Let’s not impose restrictions that unreasonably prevent charitable organizations from doing their job.

That is why I went to Ottawa on Tuesday. The transcripts will soon be posted. Let me know your thoughts.

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Update: [May 4, 2006]
The transcripts are now available.

I’ll be in Ottawa for the day today (May 2) for the CRTC’s hearings on the Telemarketing Do Not Call List proceeding. I am helping a charitable group try to ensure that things like school kids clubs don’t get captured under the new rules. While registered charities are exempted under the legislation, there are a few details that aren’t clear.

On the surface, most of us would love to stop those annoying calls for carpet and duct cleaning, driveway sealing or whatever. At the same time, we want to make sure that there are no impediments to good causes, like charities and their related organizations, having access to cost-effective methods for reaching out to the community.

It, like many issues, is a delicate balance.

Speaking of balance, I have spent the past few days gaining a better appreciation of more physical exertion. Between planting trees and moving kids in and out of their student homes, I have gained a better appreciation for my more sedentary life at the office.

There is a certain feeling of accomplishment that you gain by digging a hole, planting a tree and filling in the hole again. You start and finish in a short time period. Objectives can be defined, accomplished and easily measured. There is a sense of satisfaction and immediate gratification.

Kind of the same as usually found in the world of telecom policy and strategy development!

There is a decision coming out in the next two weeks to settle the telephone companies’ appeal to cabinet of the CRTC’s VoIP Decision from last year. We have a new Minister, a recent report from the Telecom Policy Review Panel and recent Decision by the CRTC to set in place the framework for liberalization of the local telecom service market in general – not just VoIP. Keep in mind that the TPR panel said that cabinet appeals should be removed from the Telecom Act. That channel lacks transparency and results in battles of special interest lobby groups.

What does it all add up to? If we believe that the Minister will be moving forward with the reforms recommended in the TPR report (specifically, look at Recommendation 9-5) then you should expect cabinet to refuse to overturn the CRTC decision and reject the appeal. At most, they may choose to give policy direction to the CRTC – another recommendation of the TPR report (Recommendation 9-1) – and send the decision back to the CRTC for further review under the terms of that policty guidance.

The phone companies have been actively lobbying for the TPR reforms to be adopted quickly – it has been a while since we have seen such active representation from this sector in the OpEd pages. While they may have wanted a ‘pre-existing appeals’ exception to apply, it is more likely that they may just have to live with losing the VoIP appeal as collateral damage as part of the movement towards a new umbrella framework.

If it works out that Cabinet turns down the appeal, I’d call it losing the VoIP battle, but a step toward winning the overall war creating a new regulatory framework.

We’re going to take a break from Net Neutrality – soon. I suspect the ‘Save the Net‘ will be an issue worth exploring at The Canadian Telecom Summit in June – although the regulatory blockbuster panel has the Telecom Policy Review, Local Forbearance, the upcoming VoIP appeal [to be released in May] and a host of other things to keep the battle engaged.

Before I leave this issue, at least for a few days, we should mention the logical progression that starts with the structure of the internet itself. Because communications are peer-to-peer, content providers and content consumers are both customers of ISPs, purchasing appropriate levels of connectivity.

Some content providers [ie. all the major ones], host their content in multiple sites, buy very big access pipes connecting to one or more ISPs, etc. Some choose to move their content into colocated server farms, or telecom hotels, in order to provider enhanced security, managed service. Because this is a fiercely competitive business, the ISPs aggressively pursue this business, making various offers of additional enhanced services. Some content providers do co-branding deals with the ISPs (Rogers Yahoo, Sympatico MSN). In some cases, ISPs provide content themselves (eg. AOL/Time Warner).

Eventually, the discussion between the service provider and its customer gets around to quality of service through the network. An ISP might offer guarantees (called a Service Level Agreement) to one of its customers.

Why is it, just because that customer is called a content provider, that the world is turned upside down with a movement to stop the greedy broadband monopolists? We’ll discuss this more at The Canadian Telecom Summit.

It started with a comment I left a few days ago in response to a Mark Evans post, where Mark was questioning the future of the newspaper industry. Then I read a quote from Joshua Micah Marshall that seemed to echo my thoughts, but I don’t think that was his intention. He is saying:

He goes on to say that the risk of a non-neutral internet is that all of the alternative voices won’t be heard.

Then I read Matthew Ingram’s posting on Web 2.0 – followed by Nicholas Carr’s Numbskull Factor, and that is how I ended up here. As an aside, I think the power of hyperlinking is underappreciated.

Exploring alternate scenarios. Isn’t it possible that all voices can be distributed the same way they are today, but within the same pipe of a commercial mainstream? You would still have a democratized global distribution network – like having an infinite number of community access channels on cable – to ensure that no voices are silenced (see my usual caveat that it is ok for nations to define some content as illegal).

The Web provides a platform for all – a global Speakers’ Corner – regardless of how off-beat their message might be. As Nick wrote:

To get back to the future of newspapers: the challenge in a fully democratized publishing universe, with no barriers to entry enabled by a global broadband distribution network, is for the voices of trust, authority and depth of knowledge to not only float to the top, but to be recognized and valued.