More than 18 months into the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the early lock-down rules are easing as the overwhelming majority of those eligible are fully vaccinated.

Last week, I actually met with a colleague for a business lunch, my first in what seems like forever. It was the first time I was asked to produce my vaccine certification.

I think back to a seminar hosted by the International Telecommunications Society this past May, “Information Problems During the Pandemic” that featured Dr. Joshua Gans, Professor of Strategic Management, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. He advocated the use of significantly increased levels of testing, such as the rapid antigen tests available to businesses. “A pandemic is essentially an information problem, and if we solve the information problem, we can defeat the virus.”

So, why aren’t we doing more testing as part of solving the information problem?

It isn’t clear to me why such testing isn’t being carried out on a more widespread basis in schools, and indeed, why some areas (such as Ontario) are creating roadblocks for parents seeking to introduce student testing on their own. Contrast this with Quebec’s newly announced plan to expand testing to schools throughout the province.

I am interested in your experience with rapid testing.

Are you going into an office? What kind of testing is done at your workplace?

Do you test yourself regularly?

Are your kids going to school? Have they been tested and is there an official (or unofficial) testing regimen?

As we head into the Canadian Thanksgiving holiday weekend, I’d be interesting in hearing from you.

As I observed earlier this week, Globe and Mail columnist Rita Trichur recently wrote “Canada is the land where smart industrial policy goes to die.”

The same day, as if in response, there was an opinion piece in the Globe by Dan Breznitz and Daniel Trefler, “Canada needs a real innovation strategy – now”.

We do need a real innovation strategy. Desperately.

Too often, it feels like Canada’s “innovation policy” consists of throwing government funds at high profile companies to help pay for something that the company would do anyway, or giving money to a firm that is dying to help preserve some semblance of life-support for a hand full of jobs.

Dan Breznitz is a professor and the Munk Chair of Innovation Studies, in the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy; Daniel Trefler is the Douglas and Ruth Grant Chair in Competitiveness and Prosperity at University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.

Why do we want innovation?

We want innovation because it is the driver of improved living standards. Furthermore, for rich countries such as Canada, it is the only way to create and sustain high-paying jobs. But high-paying jobs for whom? Which takes us to our second question.

What kind of society do we want? As Canadians we want a healthy society built on an economy that generates good jobs for all, rather than extremely high-paying jobs for the few. This is essential to remember since too often in Canada when we talk about innovation, we mean the Silicon Valley model, the ultimate inequality-generating machine. The end point for any discussion of Canadian innovation policy must be good jobs for all.

Four years ago, Dan Breznitz spoke at The 2017 Canadian Telecom Summit and his keynote address is worth watching.

I encourage you to read the opinion piece in the Globe.

With Canada on the cusp of a long-overdue policy statement on the use of Huawei equipment in Canada’s networks, the major carriers have already made alternate arrangements. We may need to consider how to deal with smaller rural players using Huawei equipment to provide broadband service in otherwise unserved areas. But far more fundamentally, Canada needs a strategy to deal with the potential loss of Huawei as a funder of industrial and academic research.

What would happen to the human and intellectual capital at Huawei’s Canadian labs and on so many university campuses? What should we do?

As Canada’s new government gets organized, hopefully it will recognize that we’re long overdue for some innovation on Canada’s innovation policy. Canada doesn’t need to be considered the land where smart industrial policy goes to die.

The next lunch-time virtual learning event from the 5G Canada Council will be on October 26, from noon to 1:00pm (Eastern Time), entitled “Industry 4.0: The Importance of 5G in Keeping Canada Competitive”.

The fourth industrial revolution, or Industry 4.0, challenges enterprises to accelerate the digitization of their operations and integrate them into the wider digital ecosystem. This digitization will allow organizations to collect and analyse data in new ways that will result in greater efficiencies, better products and services, and understanding and meeting the needs of end-customers. To accomplish this transformation, enterprises will require not only more digital bandwidth, but also networks that enable mission critical, low-latency communications, seamless mobility, and integration of public and private networks.

Join panelists Jason Elliott, Head of Portfolio & Partnership Marketing at Nokia, and Samuel O’Halloran, Director, at Strategy&, part of the PwC network, as they discuss the importance of 5G in the transition to Industry 4.0 and keeping Canada competitive with its international peers.

Book your virtual place today.

Can changes to spectrum policy help Canada become more effective in bridging the digital divide?

I read some interesting articles recently that suggest we can do better. “Suggest” may be too delicate.

Writing in the Globe and Mail, Senior Business Writer and Columnist Rita Trichur looked at the election platforms of the major parties and came away disappointed. “Although the Liberals and the Conservatives are vowing to stop spectrum speculation, their proposed solutions are, in a word, weak.”

Her article noted that the Liberal platform said that if wireless deployment milestones aren’t met by spectrum holders, the government would “mandate the resale of spectrum rights and reallocate that capacity to smaller, regional providers.” As Ms. Trichur observed, this may sound nice in theory, “but let’s not forget that smaller regional providers may not have the financial wherewithal to pick up that slack. In fact, Western Canadian cable company Shaw Communications Inc. is selling itself to Rogers Communications Inc. precisely because it determined that 5G investments would be too costly to handle on its own.”

This is a point that merits repeating. Many of the spectrum licenses were awarded on a Tier 2 basis covering an entire province in a single license, or in the case of a handful of provinces, 2-3 licenses to cover the entire province. The deployment milestones in those licenses are generally based on a percentage of the total population within the license area and can be satisfied simply by serving the major urban centre at the heart of the licenses. The major carriers have generally deployed networks in both urban and rural areas. In the latest Communications Monitoring Report, the CRTC observed that 99.7% of Canadians had access to mobile service by the end of 2019 (two years ago). Twenty-four out of twenty-five Canadians (96%) had access to LTE.

We have seen 5G deployment announcements from the major carriers showing hundreds of communities, large and small. The issue with spectrum under-utilization has generally not been from the major carriers; the problem has been with companies that have speculated and squatted on spectrum set-asides.

That takes us to another article I read, focusing on improving spectrum policy to help with bridging the rural divide. TELUS writes, “Recent government policies have made the digital divide in Canada worse, not better. Across Canada, but particularly in rural areas, better policies are needed.”

The TELUS article links to a series of reports:

• Spectrum policy is disadvantaging rural Canadians. Unlocking available and unused spectrum could immediately boost hundreds of thousands of homes to 50/10 Mbps.
  Cracking the rural broadband challenge: How to undertake a nation-building exercise, leveraging a core set of business principles, to extend connectivity to rural, remote and Indigenous communities across Canada. [pdf, 5.9MB]
• A report on rural connectivity concludes that spectrum set asides hurt rural Canadians by diverting it away from carriers wanting to deploy it and allowing the spectrum to lay unused.
  The Government’s Spectrum Policy Will Reduce the Quality of Wireless Services for Rural Canadians [pdf, 1.5MB]
• A GSMA Intelligence report that concludes that, where 5G spectrum is held back from the market unnecessarily (e.g. through set-asides), then 5G services are likely to suffer and operators may overpay for spectrum, risking network investment and harming consumers.
  5G and economic growth: An assessment of GDP impacts in Canada [pdf, 3.3MB]

TELUS says “In particular, poor spectrum policy has allowed this crucial element needed for rural connectivity to remain unused, leaving some Canadians without suitable Internet.”

The new government brings with it an opportunity for a fresh look at spectrum policy, perhaps as part of the development of an accelerated connectivity strategy.

Ms. Trichur wrote, “Canada is the land where smart industrial policy goes to die.”

It doesn’t have to be that way.

I’d like to greet the new government with optimism.

Maybe, just maybe, things will get better, smarter, more effective, even if it is just a little bit better, a little bit smarter, a little bit more effective, every day.

India has among the world’s lowest prices for mobile services. But India is learning that there is a cost to winning the race to the bottom.

Last week, Reuters reported that India’s federal cabinet approved a relief package for its telecoms sector, including a four-year moratorium on spectrum fees.

India’s telecoms sector ran into trouble in late 2016 with the entry of billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio, sparking a price war that has forced some rivals out of the market and turned profits into losses.

Despite relief going forward, Indian carriers have billions of dollars in outstanding adjusted gross revenue payments owed to the government. Vodafone Idea owes roughly $7 billion in telecoms dues, according to Reuters’ examination of regulatory filings. Bharti Airtel owes the government $3.5 billion.

Price wars have produced great deals for consumers in the short term but service providers have been left unable to invest. A recent story in India Today says “India ranks 122nd globally in terms of mobile network speeds” according to data from Ookla, the company behind Speedtest.net.

Two years ago, I looked at a similar situation in Israel when I wrote “Low prices, at a high cost”. Following aggressive government intervention, prices in Israel fell, but so did the quality of the networks. “The massive reductions to revenues caused major reductions in capital expenditures, network roll-out and expansion, market capitalizations of the participants and even the number of employees.” As I said at the time, “The short term consumer benefits from policies driving low mobile prices may lead to higher and broader economic costs in the long run.”

A colleague of mine likes to say that a healthy telecom sector is one that generates sustainable competition, competition that is not just competing on price but also fostering investment in digital infrastructure to provide consumers with increasing quality of services.

As we have discussed so often before, it is a matter of balance. Two weeks ago, I wrote “there is a difference between “affordable prices” and “rock-bottom prices”.” There is a need to be able to cover the costs associated with expanding coverage and investment in advanced technologies.

India is another example of what happens when regulators and policy makers ignore the delicate balance between the competing objectives for: universal access; investment in high quality telecommunications services; and, at affordable prices.

No one wins a race to the bottom.