I understand that small ISPs are upset with the CRTC. When the CRTC first released Telecom Order CRTC 2019-288 in August 2019, not only would wholesale rates be coming down dramatically, but there was to be a retroactive rebate of a third of a billion dollars paid to the ISPs. A windfall profit for the owners of the independent ISPs, estimated to exceed $325 million dollars. That’s 325,000,000 reasons for the little ISPs. They must have thought they won the lottery.

It was no wonder the facilities-based major internet companies used every available channel of appeal: to cabinet, the courts, and back to the CRTC itself. Cabinet agreed with the major companies, announcing in August 2020 that “Canada’s Future Depends on Connectivity”, signalling that the government was looking for the CRTC to make changes to its 2019 ruling.

On the basis of its review, the Governor in Council considers that the rates do not, in all instances, appropriately balance the policy objectives of the wholesale services framework and is concerned that these rates may undermine investment in high-quality networks, particularly in rural and remote areas.

Sure enough, the CRTC found that it had indeed made numerous errors in the 2019 ruling, and reversed itself in May 2021 with Telecom Decision CRTC 2021-188.

Ever since then, the independent ISPs have been waging war on the CRTC Chair, launching personal attacks calling for his removal, despite the decision being reached by the entire Commission. I described some of that populist revolt last summer.

The association of independent ISPs, CNOC, upped the ante yesterday by filing an application [pdf, 124 KB] seeking to have the Chair recused from virtually any telecom related file for the rest of his term.

It appears to be more of an appeal to the populace, than a serious legal filing, with mischaracterizations of a court decision and a misquote attributed to the CRTC Chair. In an interview in the Toronto Star earlier this week, the article says:

“I went for a beer with someone I have known for many years …. And it ended up he chose to address a broadcasting issue a little of what Bell might be doing in the future,” says Scott in the wide ranging, nearly hour-long interview.

The CRTC chair says the meeting between the two executives initially had nothing to do with business.

“However, because we talked about business he (Bibic) properly recorded this as required by the lobbyist registration,” says Scott. “It was in my agenda and left in my agenda. I didn’t hide the fact it took place.”

But the application filed by CNOC (at paragraph 22) cites this as: “Chairperson Scott’s admission to the Toronto Star—that he “went for a beer with
someone [he had] known for many years” to “address” matters within the CRTC’s jurisdiction”, changing the meaning of the so-called admission. The Toronto Star article does not say that he went for a beer to address matters within the CRTC’s jurisdiction. The article explicitly says that “the meeting between the two executives initially had nothing to do with business.”

The characterization of the meeting by CNOC is quite simply a dishonest representation of what is in the Toronto Star article. Paragraph 22 of CNOC’s application changes the meaning of the so-called “admission”.

As to the Chair’s so-called “personal preference for facilities-based competition”, it is actually a statement endorsing CRTC and government policy going back almost 30 years. For example, in Decision 92-12 (a personal favourite of mine), we read:

The Commission considers that resale can provide many benefits, but it is not a substitute for facilities-based entry. Facilities-based entry permits sustainable and more broadly-based competition, thereby increasing the benefits to be derived from competition. A facilities-based carrier has more control over its facilities costs. Since a reseller leases its underlying facilities and operates at the margin provided for in the price of leased facilities and services, a reseller is at risk wherever carriers can reduce these margins.

A preference for facilities-based competition should be a qualification to be Chair. It is not a defect.

As I wrote last summer, a retired Director General from Industry Canada has said “Calling for the firing of the Chair because one is not happy with a decision is totally inappropriate. What is the point of having an independent regulator if that regulator could be fired whenever a disaffected party could convince the government to do so? … Populism has no place in the administration of fair regulation.”

CNOC’s application is unfair and smacks of desperation.

Over the past few years, I have discussed spectrum policy a number of times (likely driving readership down). Spectrum policy can be one of those deeply technical, painfully boring areas reserved for a specialized kind of regulatory technologists. But spectrum policy has the opportunity to improve outcomes for Canadians, if we get the policy right.

Spectrum can enable advanced broadband connectivity for Canadians in urban and in rural areas, for mobile and fixed applications.

Unfortunately, spectrum policy in Canada has seemed to singularly focus on stimulating mobile competition, without sufficient focus on other policy objectives. As a result, Canada may be missing the opportunity to leverage some capabilities that emerge from wideband 5G in a rural setting.

Let’s take a quick look at some of my posts over the past two years:

• Paying for spectrum policy • January 20, 2020
  An economist calculates that Canadians’ mobile bills include a hidden tax of 12-16% to cover the fees paid by carriers to the government for spectrum
• An insatiable need for spectrum • August 13, 2020
  Describing the need for the government to press forward more aggressively with the release of more spectrum.
• 5G spectrum policy drives economic growth • November 20, 2020
  Looking at a study from the GSMA describing expected economic benefits to Canada to be derived from the transition to fifth generation mobile technologies.
• Spectrum trafficking • May 4, 2021
  Commenting on how speculating in spectrum can be extremely profitable for some Canadian license holders.
• Spectrum scarcity driving up wireless costs • August 3, 2021
  Is Canada’s approach to spectrum policy driving up the costs of wireless services?
• Spectrum policy and the digital divide • September 27, 2021
  Can changes to spectrum policy help Canada become more effective in bridging the digital divide?

Can we do better with Canada’s spectrum policy?

Can we ensure competitive wireless operators have access to sufficient spectrum to serve their customers while restricting those who squat on spectrum, denying others from offering important connectivity for Canadians in rural and remote areas?

Recent articles in CARTT.ca have described failures by Canada’s Public Safety community to deploy 20 MHz of spectrum in the 700 MHz band that was assigned in 2017 [see: “Resource, leadership challenges flagged in discussion about public safety broadband network” and “The wait continues for Canada’s public safety broadband network”]. For more than a decade, Public Safety officials discussed governance under a committee called CITIG – the Canadian Interoperability Technology Interest Group – discussing how to get spectrum assigned and deployed. The first 10 MHz was assigned to Public Safety in 2012. By 2015, I was already writing that the government was moving too slowly.

Should “use it or lose it” rules be applied equally to the public sector, like the Public Safety network?

Can we prevent or limit arbitrage and speculation in spectrum that drives up the cost of service for all?

These are the kinds of questions that are at stake in the government’s “Consultation on a Policy and Licensing Framework for Spectrum in the 3800 MHz Band”, another key spectrum band for 5G services.

At a recent event hosted by The Logic (“Connecting Canada—5G, spectrum policy and closing the digital divide”), a TELUS executive suggested that aspects of Canada’s digital divide are unintended consequences of our spectrum policy.

How do we ensure that spectrum holders deploy the spectrum assets upon which some are squatting?

How do we ensure operators have sufficient spectrum to deploy world class fixed and mobile broadband services to Canadians in urban and rural settings?

Comments on Canada’s consultation on the spectrum policy for the 3800 MHz band are due February 15. Reply comments are due March 7.

As Canada prepares to examine another piece of legislation to control “online harms”, will the importance of diverse views be debated by parliamentarians?

A year ago, following the attack on the US Capitol by Trump loyalists, I wrote “Escaping the echo chamber”, expressing a concern that algorithmic news feeds can be depriving too many people of opposing viewpoints. As a result, readers are often presented with a limited range of perspectives, which are frequently left unchallenged, enabling single sided (and perhaps, false) narratives to be amplified within a social network community. This is not just a US phenomenon; we see that in the so-called Truckers Convoy on Parliament Hill, and frankly, we also see it among many responding to the protest.

There are less confrontational examples as well.

On Twitter last week, I noticed a small group of people who apparently couldn’t get past the Bell branding associated with Bell Let’s Talk Day. It was one thing for them to be unwilling to attach a #BellLetsTalk hashtag on their tweets. They went out of their way to criticize the initiative, criticize Bell, or use the occasion to complain about incumbent wireless gross margins in general. In one case, we were told “For the past few years, there has been a steady rise in the backlash to Bell’s annual “talk” day, but this is the first year where I’m seeing a clear gap: Universal opposition and criticism from everybody except institutional/gov accounts and public personalities.”

Of course, this statement doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

A “universal opposition” would be mathematically inconsistent with the year-over-year growth measured in interactions every year since the event began, including 2022 setting records once again. I read “Universal opposition and criticism from everybody” like a Yogi Berra-ism: “Nobody goes to that restaurant anymore because it’s too crowded.” Besides filing that criticism as one that didn’t age well, I suggested that the tweet demonstrates that the author may not be exposed to enough diverse viewpoints.

A few years ago, I wrote “Is social media better at breaking than making?”, that included some key points distilled from an interview with an activist credited with helping trigger the Tahrir Square demonstrations in Cairo, leading to the fall of the Mubarek government. Among other points, he observed:

We tend to only communicate with people that we agree with, and thanks to social media, we can mute, un-follow and block everybody else…online discussions quickly descend into angry mobs… It’s as if we forget that the people behind screens are actually real people and not just avatars… Because of the speed and brevity of social media, we are forced to jump to conclusions and write sharp opinions in 140 characters about complex world affairs. And once we do that, it lives forever on the Internet… today, our social media experiences are designed in a way that favors broadcasting over engagements, posts over discussions, shallow comments over deep conversations… It’s as if we agreed that we are here to talk at each other instead of talking with each other.

I have mentioned before that I subscribe to the Toronto Star despite my frequent disagreement with its editorial stance. I make a point of reading the opinion pages and columnists precisely because I disagree with so many of them. I read a number of other papers online with a wide range of political leanings.

As I wrote last year, “When reading, we need to be able to distinguish between language that is insightful and words that are inciteful. Which words lead to constructive engagement and which words are those that are destructive? What facts are being omitted because they inconveniently don’t fit the narrative being set forward? Which authors are consistently reliable and which ones seem to prefer sensationalism over substance?”

That requires digital literacy training. Remarkably, too many appear to be lacking this basic understanding of a need to diversify our sources of information and cast a wider social net.

Parliament will be debating legislation that could limit speech that offends the sensibilities of some people. That is worrisome to me. In a 2019 post (“Regulating speech”) I commented on the need to be able to distinguish between content that is merely offensive, without being illegal. Earlier that year (in “Dealing with illegal content”), I wrote that “we need to consider the very high bar that has rightly been set in defining what forms of speech are illegal, as contrasted with speech that someone merely deems to be offensive.”

Just over 15 years ago, I was involved with a case involving an internet-based cross-border death threat. Ultimately, the case was resolved by a Virginia court that decided there were bounds on free speech, even by US standards.

I tend to subscribe to the view expressed in the film The American President: “You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.”

As I have asked before, how do we ensure that actions to deal with online harms are consistent with Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication”?

How do we protect our right to spirited speech, expressing diverse viewpoints, as we continue to promote healthy debate on issues, even when those views might offend the sensitive sensibilities of some?

In November, PwC released a series of reports on “The importance of 5G and the digital economy in Canada”:

• 5G, the digital economy and Canada’s global competitiveness [pdf, 1.7MB]
• The evolution of Canada’s telecom industry and the growing digital economy [pdf, 3.0MB]
• The importance of 5G and the digital economy in Western Canada [pdf, 2.1MB]

As PwC notes, the past two years of life under the cloud of the COVID-19 pandemic have accelerated several trends associated with a transition to a new economic model, such as increasing demand for digital connectivity and greater adoption of digital processes by businesses and households.

PwC promotes the need to have a healthy domestic telecommunications sector to support the deployment of 5G, saying “jurisdictions where network operators were in poorer financial health had slower deployment and adoption rates.” PwC invites readers to read the first report for a discussion on the digital economy and implications on Canada’s global competitiveness associated with delays in 5G deployment. In that report, we read how the competitive landscape is being reshaped for mobile operators by hardware, software and service providers. PwC asserts that Canadian mobile network operators (MNOs) are “sub-scale relative to multinational digital economy players, whose business models are enabled by connectivity but do not invest in network infrastructure.” Further, PwC expects technological disruptions over the coming years from Low Earth Orbit satellites providing broadband internet, and the introduction of embedded SIM (eSIM) technology that “could be used by equipment manufacturers to disintermediate telecom operators.”

The second report makes four main points:

1. The telecommunications industry is a core enabler of the digital economy;
2. Canadian MNOs are relatively small compared to international peers, suppliers and new competition;
3. Globally there is a trend of consolidation in the telecommunications industry; and,
4. Canada needs to ensure its telecommunications industry can support the needs of the digital economy

Among the highlights, PWC observes that Canadian mobile operators spend a higher proportion of their revenue on capital investments than many peer countries. For example, the capital intensity (measured as a ratio of capital expenditure to revenue) for Canadian operators averages at 18%, five percentage points (or nearly 40%) higher than operators in the US and Australia at 13%.

The third report in the series zooms in on Western Canada looking at how 5G connectivity is expected to enable new “use cases”, such as automation enabling smart mining, connected and autonomous vehicles, and automated smart farming. “5G-enabled use cases require broad ubiquitous coverage to reach businesses outside urban areas (mining, agriculture, oil & gas, etc.) and enable use cases that are reliant on continuous connectivity (e.g., autonomous vehicles).”

According to PwC, Canadian mobile operators face three significant challenges: the cost of 5G driven by capital costs required to install new equipment, densify infrastructure and the
increased operational costs required to keep up with data use; Increased competition in the digital economy including hardware, software and service providers such as Google and Amazon; and, Canada’s current lag in spectrum allocations and the complexity of regulations for accessing passive infrastructure.

To deploy 5G at pace, and overcome these challenges, Canada will require a healthy telecommunications industry that has well-capitalized MNOs capable of funding national 5G deployment. To achieve this, Canada needs a supportive regulatory framework, that should: (i) maintain an appropriate level of market incentives, drive improved customer value and investment in innovation (ii) maintain predictable and fair regulations while being flexible to accommodate the evolving needs of the digital economy and (iii) consider the significant benefits of the digital economy, the role of 5G in enabling it, and the broader competitive landscape within it.

Canada requires a healthy, well-capitalized telecommunications industry to fund deployment of our national 5G networks.

I remember speaking with a reporter at one of my conferences who told me she always makes sure she gets the story right, even if it means that she doesn’t necessarily get the story first. That often means needing to get multiple sources, which is a challenge when trying to get a scoop on a major breaking story.

The need to apply that kind of rigour has stuck with me.

I generally try to go back to primary sources to confirm statements, rather than rely on reports that cite those sources. As a result, I’m often the family fact-checker when someone wants to confirm something they saw “on the internet”.

As many of us know, a lot of times those things turn out to be false. As it turns out that you can’t even trust official government websites to always get it right.

For example, last May, in an edition of Statistics Canada’s Daily looking at “Access to the Internet in Canada, 2020”, the agency wrote:

Over two-thirds of Canadians have Internet download speeds of 50 megabits per second or more
For those respondents who knew their advertised Internet connection speed, 72% reported Internet download speeds of 50 megabits per second (Mbps) or more. An Internet download speed of 50 Mbps or more allows users to do online activities such as supporting multiple users at a time, streaming ultra-high-definition video with more than one connected device, or quickly downloading a high-definition movie. This indicator can be used by the Government of Canada to track its objective to make broadband connectivity with a download speed of 50 Mbps and an upload speed of 10 Mbps available to 95% of Canadians by 2026.

The last sentence, the government’s objective (mirroring the CRTC’s objective) is to make broadband connectivity with a download speed of 50 Mbps and an upload speed of 10 Mbps available to 95% of Canadians by 2026. However, the first part of the paragraph indicates Statistics Canada is tracking the speed of the service to which people subscribe, not the speeds to which they have access. I may have access to extremely fast speeds, but choose to subscribe to a lower speed for many different reasons. The indicator discussed in that paragraph is clearly looking at subscribed speeds, not available speeds.

We can quibble about what speeds people need for various online activities, but tracking subscribed speeds simply does not and cannot help the Government track its objective of available speeds.

This isn’t the first time that people have confused adoption with access in the government (and CRTC’s) broadband objective. I wonder if the word “access” is the cause of the misunderstanding. We want everyone to have the ability to choose a 50 Mbps connection, which some people write as “we want everyone to be able to access a 50 Mbps internet access”. Having the ability to access is the objective; having a 50 Mbps access isn’t. Statistics Canada needs to correct its website.

In another instance, also from last May, a University of Calgary student relied on political hyperbole on a government website to claim “The federal government took the lead in providing service to low-income Canadians”, when referring to low income broadband programs that were in fact created by the private sector (Rogers and TELUS). It took years of cajoling to get the government to participate, despite virtually no government funding being involved. The paper was later amended to read “Federal government participation was key in expanding service provision to low-income Canadians.” The student had relied on hyperbole from a government website that had said “Connecting Families is an initiative of the Government of Canada”. The website now refers to the “Connecting Families initiative, in partnership with Internet service providers”. The difference between government partnering, versus government leadership, was significant because of the paper’s thesis promoting increased government intervention in telecom markets.

Even the CRTC website has been known to contain the odd error. Its Communications Market Reports website has a “changelog” that tracks changes and corrections. A few weeks ago, we noticed that the reported “Average Internet Data Downloaded/Uploaded per month, per subscription” was reported as the average of the uploaded data and the downloaded data, instead of the sum of those. The Commission now reports data uploaded and downloaded separately.

I am also reminded of some popular commentators who frequently display innumeracy, perhaps cheered on by those who share their perspective, if not their propensity for propagandizing. Sometimes, their basic data may be correct but accompanied by incomplete analysis, such as we saw last week in the false equivalency posted by TekSavvy, comparing 398 lobbyist registration reports by “Big Telecom” (defined as TELUS, Rogers, Shaw, Bell, Cogeco, and Videotron), with the 32 meetings by TekSavvy and CNOC. There are many problems with this post that implies the smaller ISPs aren’t getting a fair share of face time in Ottawa.

On the other hand, one might ask why Teksavvy and CNOC, with just than 10% of the internet services market had just about as many meetings (32) as Quebecor (34), considering the latter is a diversified company, a facilities-based carrier with more than 1.8M internet connections, more than 1.5M mobile subscribers, and more than 1.4M TV subscribers, on top of a range of other media operations.

A quick look at the scope of subjects being reviewed by the lobbyists demonstrates why it was completely reasonable for 6 major conglomerates with revenues of more than $60B and more than 150,000 employees to have had more meetings than the smaller wholesale-based internet service sector. Let’s take a look at the range of subjects that are covered in the government filings. Teksavvy reported that it talks to government about Broadcasting, Consumer Issues, and Telecommunications. CNOC reported the same 3 areas of interest. Rogers’ Lobbyist filing shows that discussions cover: Arts and Culture, Broadcasting, Budget, Consumer Issues, Economic Development, Employment and Training, Government Procurement, Health, Immigration, Industry, Infrastructure, Intellectual Property, International Relations, International Trade, Justice and Law Enforcement, Labour, National Security, Privacy and Access to Information, Sports, Taxation and Finance, and oh yes, Telecommunications. Bell reports 20 subject areas; TELUS reports 19; Quebecor shows 14; Shaw has 12.

Maybe, just maybe, this helps to show the fallacy of Teksavvy’s false equivalency.

All of this is to say that information provided on websites – even government websites – should be viewed with a grain of salt.

It’s important to question and even challenge sources.

Other than the information on this website, of course.