Heckuva morning at The 2006 Canadian Telecom Summit. Sir Terry Matthews, Canada’s enthusiastic teecom entrepreneur delivered a strong message as a lead-in to the annual Regulatory Blockbuster.

Janet and the boys (Mirko, Ken, Jean and Chris) again brought life to a subject that might otherwise not make for entertainment.

Minister Bernier spoke to a packed room, announcing that this morning, the goverment had delivered its first policy direction to the CRTC, instructing it to place market forces at the forefront of its decision-making process.

At lunch, Darren endorsed the Telecom Policy Report, saying the TPR got it right. Darren recommended 4 priorities to the Minister:

– Remove restrictions on win-backs
– Amend Telecom Act to give effect to reliance on market forces
– Enhance regulatory effectiveness by matching CRTC size and skills to the policy approach
– Establish Telecom Competition Tribunal

The Canadian Telecom Summit appears in 3 of the 4 Toronto dailies. The National Post included a two page centre spread in the Financial Post section. The Globe has an article as does the Toronto Sun.

Help me understand a fine point of journalistic integrity. When there are leading telecom consultants in the audience, why would the National Post and Globe and Mail seek quotes from analysts who weren’t even at the Summit?

Update: The Toronto Star, which hasn’t covered the Canadian Telecom Summit in 4 years, came out of the dark in a story that featured a discussion of Monday’s Illegal Content session. Their reporter thought we were in Mississauga (The Toronto Congress Centre really is in Toronto). Maybe the Star’s reporters have been missing the conference because they are going to the wrong location!

More coverage of the opening day at The Canadian Telecom Summit, discussing Monday’s Community and Private Broadband Network panel can be found at itBusiness.ca.

The National Post carried a preview story of The 2006 Canadian Telecom Summit in this morning’s paper, kicking off a discussion of some of the regulatory issues that will be canvassed over the next 3 days.

The opening 3 keynotes, from Vonage founder Jeff Citron, Palm Americas head Michael Moskowitz and Ericsson CTO Nikos Katinakis got things going.

Messages included the future of mobile TV – including highlights from Palm’s MOBIfest. A new enabler for mobile blogging. Nikos spoke of some of the early success stories for service providers.