Which of my blog posts attracted the most attention in 2020?

Looking at the analytics, these 5 articles had the most individual page views:

1. “An expense gap in the rural digital divide” [October 21, 2020]
2. “An easy way to increase rural broadband speeds” [June 22, 2020]
3. “Words matter. Accuracy matters” [May 13, 2020]
4. “When a smart city plan isn’t so smart” [July 21, 2020]
5. “Toward a universal broadband strategy” [December 8, 2020]

Honourable mentions go to:

• “Look at the data” [July 7, 2020]
• “Canadian mobile services top G7 affordability ranking” [January 27, 2020]
• “Should broadband be a ‘public utility’?” [June 15, 2020]
• “Better data leads to better policy making” [January 28th, 2019]
• “When low prices constrain investment” [January 29, 2020]

Thank you for following me here on this blog (and on Twitter) and engaging over the past year. It has been a challenging year for all of us with the world depending on telecommunications networks to stay in touch with family, conduct business, go to school and virtually every aspect of our lives. For more than 9 months now, Canada’s communications industry has demonstrated leadership in its response to the pandemic, as I wrote in “Brave new world” in mid-March.

I hope the coming weeks give you an opportunity to connect with your family and friends, safely and telephonically. Let me extend to you the very best wishes for health, happiness and peace over the holidays and in the year ahead.

It’s mid-December and it’s that customary time for me to write a year-end wrap-up post.

Never before have I wanted to wrap up a year like this one.

For almost 10 years, I have entitled my year-end wrap up blog post using lyrics from Joni Mitchell’s “Circle Game”. As the year 2020 winds down, and much of the world continues to operate in a state of partial lock-down to reduce the spread of COVID-19, going “round and round and round” seems even more appropriate than ever.

In 2020, I have published around 106 blog posts (so far), up 50% over the past few years. In “A summer like no other” [Sept 2, 2020], I observed that my summer blog production (July and August) was triple the normal levels. Like many, I am spending more time in front of a computer and as most have discovered, telecommunications policy has come to be a critical issue as people work, study, shop and play at home.

The archives for this blog now include more than 2925 articles, chronicling trends and issues as far back as 1997. As I look at the analytics, I continue to find it interesting to see the search terms being used successfully to find these older, but often still relevant, pages.

We are hoping to be starting the New Year on a new web host and with a new site design. Like many of you, I’m looking toward a fresh start for 2021. Be sure to let me know what you think of the new look.

Unlike some armchair industry observers, I continue to be optimistic about the state of Canada’s telecommunications industry. A couple months ago, I celebrated 40 years working to build advanced competitive communications networks in North America. As I said at that time, I still wake up to new challenges that make it a pleasure to get to work each day.

I have found it to be particularly satisfying to see the role played by affordable and advanced communications in improving virtually everything we do. Those capabilities have never been needed more than over the past year. I am especially proud of the efforts by many Canada’s service providers to create targeted plans to close the homework gap among lower income families with school aged children.

I have said it before and it merits repeating: it has never been easier or cheaper to communicate. I can talk with my kids and video-chat with my grandchildren halfway around the world every day as though they are around the corner. For more than 9 months, I have been living and working in a rural area using a fixed wireless connection that does not meet the government’s speed targets, but I have found the service able to support multiple simultaneous HD video streams and to conduct business video chats, including hosting a variety of webinars and sessions for The Canadian Telecom Summit.

I have written a number of posts through the years calling for us to do more to develop a better understanding of those Canadians who have not yet adopted information and communications technologies. As I have written, “most government programs continue to focus on increasing “supply”, extending access to broadband. We need to ensure there are strategies to drive “demand”: increasing adoption rates among groups that could subscribe, but have not. That is a problem across all geographies, and is perhaps more pronounced in urban markets.”

Most of us would like to close the books on this year of the pandemic and many are looking forward, optimistically, to a more promising year ahead.

I am in that camp.

Last month, in his closing remarks at The 2020 Canadian Telecom Summit, Industry Minister Navdeep Bains said “I want to close by saying that these have not been easy times, but they have shown just what Canadians and our industries are made of. At no time have I been more proud of being the Minister of Industry.”

I am reminded of the exchange between characters in the 1995 film Apollo 13. Joe Spano, playing the role of NASA Director says, “This could be the worst disaster NASA’s ever experienced.” In response, Ed Harris, playing the role of Flight Director Gene Krantz replies, “With all due respect, sir, I believe this is gonna be our finest hour.”

Throughout the past year, despite difficult operational and financial hurdles, Canada’s communications industry delivered world leading services that enable most Canadians to manage their lives and livelihoods through the pandemic. One might argue that the manner in which the telecom sector responded to the challenges of the year 2020 has been the industry’s ‘finest hour’.

To paraphrase Minister Bains, let me say that at no time have I been more proud to be associated with the telecommunications professionals driving Canada’s economy toward better times.

I hope you and your families have a happy, healthy, safe and peaceful holiday season.

I look forward to engaging with you in the New Year.

Early into the COVID-19 pandemic’s initial lockdown, Michael Sabia wrote an opinion piece in the Globe and Mail, “In this pandemic, governments will face three tests —including how best to restart the economy” [March 22, 2020]. At the time, Sabia was Director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. This past Monday, he was appointed Deputy Finance Minister, making his views on restarting the economy even more important.

Once the immediate crisis begins to recede, he said governments would “need to begin thinking now about a new generation of infrastructure”. He concluded, “Given the scale of investments likely required to reignite our economy, this is an opportunity to do things faster, more effectively and more coherently to secure our future prosperity in what will likely be a changed world.”

Today, CWTA released a study conducted by Accenture Strategy & Consulting, “Investing in Canada’s Digital Infrastructure: The Economic Impact of Wireless/Wireline Broadband and the Post-COVID Recovery” [pdf, 6.1 MB].

Accenture estimates that Canada’s telecommunications industry directly contributed $74.5B in GDP impact and sustained 638,000 Canadian jobs. Accenture reports more than $10B in private sector capital investment in Canada’s wireless and wireline connectivity in 2019.

The report is an annual review of the telecommunications industry’s impact on Canada’s economy. In previous years, the CWTA-commissioned studies focused exclusively on the wireless industry; this year’s report considers the impact of the wireless as well as the wireline industries.

Connectivity is no longer a luxury but a basic necessity for Canadians to participate in the digital economy. The exponential growth in digital traffic travelling across Canada’s wireless and wireline superhighways, proliferation of connected devices, and rise in NextGen infrastructure unlocking new business models and sparking innovation in the country, shows that the telecommunications industry has become a stable and dependable cornerstone of the Canadian economy.

The report says that the telecommunications industry will play a significant role in the post-COVID economic recovery and calls on the federal government to ensure a stable regulatory environment to promote a positive private sector investment climate for expanding network infrastructure and deploying the next generation of telecommunications technologies. The report notes the importance of government initiatives to provide funding to increase connectivity in underserved areas, but reminds policy makers that private sector investment remains “a key driver of expanding connectivity into these areas.”

Last year’s report from Accenture estimated that $26B will be invested in 5G network infrastructure between 2020 and 2026, on top of spectrum acquisition and billions of dollars for further investment in 4G wireless networks as well as expansion and enhancements to wireline networks.

Governments can also play a key role by identifying and greenlighting specific projects for public investment allocation on a timely basis and further coordinating the available programs, including the Universal Broadband Fund, Canada Infrastructure Bank Growth Plan, CRTC Broadband Fund, and multiple provincial funding programs.

As Deputy Minister Sabia wrote last March, “this is an opportunity to do things faster, more effectively and more coherently to secure our future prosperity in what will likely be a changed world.”

The complete report [pdf] is available on the CWTA website.

Governments at all levels, federal, provincial, regional and municipal have thrown billions of dollars at the challenge of extending the reach of broadband networks, but is there an overall strategy?

At the recent Rural & Remote Broadband Conference, Execulink CEO Ian Stevens observed that there doesn’t seem to be a strategy to tie together the myriad of funding programs.

In October, I observed that the ‘myriad of funding programs at all levels of government’ all seem designed to help offset the initial capital costs but there aren’t programs that look at the higher ongoing operating costs associated with rural and remote telecommunications services. As I noted then, there was a comment in the report of the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review Panel [pdf] noting that indigenous communities said they are “looking for a more inclusive consultation process in the development of any fund to support broadband buildout with more constant, stable, and accessible funding.”

Constant, stable and accessible funding. I have often said that governments tend to build things well, but tend to do a lousy job at maintaining that infrastructure. Look at our sewer systems, road repairs, municipal housing projects all stand in testament to this. The cynic in me would attribute this to the ribbon cutting photo op for new infrastructure, but little political goodwill generated by ongoing maintenance.

Yet there are clearly higher operating costs incurred by telecommunications service providers in low population density markets, including: spectrum fees amortized across a smaller user base; installation and repair technicians have extended non-productive ‘windshield-time’, driving between customer locations; equipment endures harsher environmental conditions, located in remote, difficult to access locations, with less than optimal power reliability.

To offset these higher costs, there used to be a fund operated by the CRTC designed to allocate funds to companies offering telephone service in rural and remote areas. That fund began to be eliminated 4 years ago when the CRTC established its own Broadband Fund. In the introductory notes to Telecom Regulatory Policy 2016-496, the CRTC wrote that it will establish a mechanism to fund continuing access to fixed and mobile wireless broadband Internet access services, and fixed and mobile wireless voice services.

The terminology “continuing access” is important, because it parallels Section 46.5(1) of the Telecom Act:

46.5 (1) The Commission may require any telecommunications service provider to contribute, subject to any conditions that the Commission may set, to a fund to support continuing access by Canadians to basic telecommunications services.

In establishing its Broadband Fund, the CRTC refers to this section of the Act for its authority, but I wonder if the framers of this section of the Act intended for a continuing rural subsidy program to be shifted to a selective capital funding competition.

Was the CRTC following the best approach when it decided to develop its own capital subsidy system in place of ‘continuing’ support for high cost serving areas?

As I wrote a few weeks ago, there is a long history of the government using the communications sector as an alternate tax and wealth redistribution system. In the case of the Broadband Fund, telecommunications service providers are funding capital projects that would otherwise wait for a government funded program.

There is no question that we need more capital funding for rural broadband projects. As I noted a month ago, CRTC Chair Ian Scott told the ISP Summit that the Commission’s last call for broadband funding (in November 2019) drew “600 applications with a combined ask of more than $1.5 billion,” far outstripping the capacity of the Broadband Fund.

But, that doesn’t mean the CRTC Broadband Fund needs to be bigger. Indeed, should the CRTC be in the capital funding business at all? As I asked in November, “Is CRTC’s broadband fund fundamentally flawed?” “When other agencies and departments at federal provincial and regional levels of government are already in the business of awarding grants, did we need the CRTC to create yet another broadband capital funding program?”

At the very least, shouldn’t an overall broadband strategy take a look at how we will ‘support continuing access’?

The past month has been a busy season for on-line conferences and webinars. In October, I wrote “Finding advantages in learning online”, talking about the ease of joining online sessions for continuing education.

Another opportunity is coming up next week with the release of a new report, “Investing in Canada’s Digital Infrastructure: The Economic Impact of Wireless/Wireline Broadband and the Post-COVID Recovery”, being presented by Accenture and the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association.

The report is the subject of “The Digital-led Recovery: The Role of Telecommunications in Canada’s Economy & the Post-COVID World”, a one hour webinar to be held December 9, at 11:00 am Eastern time.

The session will look at the role telecommunications will play in the post-pandemic economy.

The event will be hosted by CWTA President & CEO, Robert Ghiz, who will join the Association’s SVP, Eric Smith, as well as Tejas Rao, Managing Director and Global 5G Lead at Accenture.

Registration is free.

The subject matter appears to complement a recent GSMA study discussing how 5G spectrum policy drives economic growth. Recall, that study found “5G will contribute US$150 billion in additional value add to the Canadian economy over the next 20 years”, a figure that seemed to be in-line with an earlier Accenture study that forecasted a GDP impact of $40B by 2026.

Over the past nine months, the response to the pandemic has served as a catalyst for a digital transition, driving policy makers to examine ways to accelerate targets for universal connectivity. It’s worth considering another aspect to our forced transition to a work-from-home economy. In an interview last week in the Times of Israel, Aharon Aharon, the outgoing chief of Israel’s Innovation Authority, expresses some concerns about the potential impact on Israel’s renowned tech ecosystem. “Once employers get used to working with workers remotely, there are no limits on where they could be, he said. On the flip side, Israeli workers may prefer working in Israel for an international company with higher salaries and better conditions than those offered by a fledgling local startup.”

Those comments could be equally applicable to other geographies, and follow a recent survey that found that working from home raises productivity but may be negatively impacting the culture of startups.

As we look ahead to a new year, we need to consider how national policies can create advantages to benefit domestic technology companies, technology workers, and the economy as a whole.

It has to start with ensuring world class digital infrastructure and digital literacy.

What are the next steps?