How does the CRTC enforce an access order on a building owner? We’re about to find out.

On January 14, in Telecom Decision CRTC 2022-5, the CRTC told the owners of a multiple dwelling unit (MDU), Telegraph Square in Saint John, New Brunswick that enough was enough: provide Rogers with access to the apartment building “on reasonable terms and conditions” or “increasingly stringent regulatory measures will be applied to facilitate competition and maximize consumer choice.”

Those “increasingly stringent regulatory measures” were set out as:

• Within 15 days following the date of this decision, Bell Canada and any other LEC or carrier ISP already in Telegraph Square will not be permitted to provide services to any new resident of Telegraph Square and will not be permitted to provide services to a current resident that is not an existing customer of the applicable service provider.
• Within 30 days following the date of this decision, any LEC or carrier ISP present in Telegraph Square will not be permitted to modify or upgrade the services being provided to a current resident.
• Within 45 days following the date of this decision, the Commission will explore all regulatory options available to it, including issuing an order under section 42 of the Act and issuing a decision which could result in all LECs and carrier ISPs present in Telegraph Square not being permitted to provide any services to the residents.

In a letter dated last week, we learned that the building owners have apparently not met the Commission’s first deadline. In response to a January 31 letter from Rogers, the CRTC has asked Bell to identify what services are being provided to which units in the building as of January 29.

“Due to Rogers continuing to be denied access to Telegraph Square, the Commission’s enforcement of the MDU Access Condition, as set out in Telecom Decision 2022-5, will impact Bell’s provision of service to the residents of Telegraph Square.”

Does the CRTC intend to include mobile wireless services in the application of its regulatory measures?

It is an interesting case to follow, testing the effectiveness of increasingly stringent regulatory measures to enforce orders indirectly.

Will consumers be caught in the middle?

The following article, by Robert Ghiz, CEO of the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association, appeared earlier today as an OpEd in Hill Times [“Price decline shows Canadian wireless on the right track”].

It is reproduced here with the permission of the author:

Price decline shows Canadian wireless on the right track
Recent headlines have been filled with news of the rising cost of housing, food, gas, and most other consumer items. So, it may have come as a surprise to some when the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, Francois-Philippe Champagne, recently announced that the price of mid-level mobile wireless plans have decreased by 25% over the 21-month period ending December 2021, and that the price of larger 10GB data plans decreased between 22-26% during this same period; after having already fallen 31% in 2019 and also eliminating overage fees.

For those of us who watch the wireless industry closely, the announcement merely confirms what we already knew. The cost of mobile wireless plans has been on a steady decline while the quality-of-service and network coverage of mobile services keep getting better.

How did this happen? Did government regulate the price of wireless plans? Did they force telecom operators to allow resellers, companies that are not willing to risk investing in building their own networks, to sell network operators’ services at fixed wholesale prices? They did not. The government did what most countries have now done; it recognized that the best way to stimulate investment in connecting more Canadians with high-quality services while also reducing prices is to promote competition amongst the companies that build and operate Canada’s digital infrastructure.

By having to compete not only on price but also on quality and coverage, Canada’s national and regional wireless operators have invested over $100 billion in capital expenditures and radio frequency spectrum licenses to build, maintain, and expand some of the best performing wireless networks in the world. This is no small feat given Canada’s large land mass, low population density, high spectrum costs, and short building season. In fact, consulting firm PwC has ranked Canada as having the highest network building costs among G20 countries. It is no wonder that Canadian network operators have spent more per wireless subscriber in building their networks than their G7 country peers, and over 60% more than the OECD country average.

The impact of these investments is measurable. Canada’s wireless networks reach 97% of the Canadian population, with average download speeds that have increased 116% over the last five years; speeds which exceed those of most other countries including the United States. By investing in both wireless and wireline networks, the telecommunications industry directly contributes over $70 billion in GDP to Canada’s economy and supports nearly 600,000 jobs across industries.

But there is much more work to be done. As the COVID-19 pandemic has shown, the industry’s investments in digital infrastructure have been critical to maintaining economic and social activity. As Canadian businesses and governments continue to accelerate the digitization of their products and services, ongoing investment in expanding and enhancing our digital networks will be key to Canada’s economic recovery.

For example, Accenture has estimated that investing in the deployment of 5G wireless networks in Canada will contribute an additional $40 billion in GDP to Canada’s economy by 2026 and add up to 250,000 new full-time jobs in the same period. The increased capabilities of 5G technology will not only enable innovative new products and services and help bring connectivity to underserved communities, it will also help Canada reach its greenhouse gas reduction objectives. Accenture has estimated that the use of 5G and other mobile technologies have the potential to address 23% of Canada’s total 2030 emission reduction target by 2025.

Canada’s future depends on connectivity. But it can only achieve these results by ensuring that policies and regulations continue to encourage investment in digital infrastructure. Accenture estimates that the initial roll-out of 5G will require $26 billion in capital expenditures by 2026, plus billions more in acquiring radiofrequency spectrum rights. Achieving this high level of investment requires continued recognition by policy makers that competition among network builders, also known as facilities-based competition, is the only way to continue to deliver on the three key objectives of coverage, quality, and affordability.

Canada’s future depends on it.

Each month, Statistics Canada tracks a large number of components in creating its Consumer Price Index. I track those related to the telecommunications sector, including the cellular price index. Over the past two years, Statistics Canada’s Cellular Price Index has fallen 27.45% as can be seen in the figure below.

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?