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There was an opinion piece on network neutrality published yesterday on The Street.

The piece argued (and was entitled) ‘Net Neutrality is Akin to Socialism’. Long time followers of this blog will recall that I spoke along similar lines more than 4 years ago in a piece called “Soviet styled monopoly“.

There was an opinion piece in The Australian last week saying that its National Broadband Network (NBN) is welfare for tech-heads.

I just wonder if the common folks on the street understand the issue or find any realistic likelihood in the possibilities of the doomsday scenarios being painted by some.

Some will pipe in and say that a problem already arose – and they will bring up the TELUS blocking incident.

Indeed, that incident proves that no new laws are required – just like new laws won’t keep my neighbours from rolling through stop signs.

Are people getting engaged with the thought of government getting more actively involved in the internet? Are we more willing to wait until a problem actually arises and deal with the issue at that time? Is it time for Canadian net neutrality advocates to find a new cause?

Catherine Middleton’s tweet last week pointed me to a report out of the Australian Senate Select Committee on the National Broadband Network (“NBN“) [ pdf, 1.2MB] that has a number of recommendations. By the way, you should add @catmiddleton to your must follow list.

The recommendations lead with:

That the Implementation Plan clearly states the government’s intention to prioritise the needs of underserviced communities, particularly those in regional, rural and remote areas, over those with comparatively well-serviced urban areas.

In other words, before you spend $43B to lay new fibre in urban locations that have working broadband, let’s start off with the outer reaches.

The report also calls for a rigorous cost-benefit analysis, open to public scrutiny, of the NBN proposal prior to acquiring assets. If the study concludes the NBN project specifications are unrealistic, not practical or uneconomical, the government is being asked to reassess its overall policy approach.

It is one thing to set a vision – it is also important that governments are prudent in spending. The Senate Committee also called for the government to advocate the development of new applications to facilitate economic development and improvements in health, education and energy efficiency. These were seen to provide greater opportunities for commercial viability of broadband networks.

That sounds like helping stimulate the demand side of the equation. It is nice to see the Australian Senate committee echoing our view that stimulus for broadband adoption has to consider more than just the supply side denominator; we need to consider stimulus programs for the demand side numerator as well.

The release of our report [ pdf, 944KB] was greeted by the popular media with an interesting reception.

We have provided a Canadian interpretation of the body of studies regarding broadband services. Many folks, despite evidence to the contrary, seem averse to any consideration that studies issued by reputable foreign institutions could contain errors.

Some criticisms of our report seem to reflect naivete, ignorance of econometrics or a lack of real world experience. I was struck especially by comments that ridicule the role of satellite in completing the job of providing universal access to broadband in our country – together with most nations. If Australia’s NBN can’t reach more than 90% of its population with wireline facilities, despite plans to spend more than $40B over the next 8 years, exactly what policy will do better in Canada?

Is satellite a perfect substitute for terrestrial solutions? No. But, it is unrealistic to expect any other technology to be able to serve the minority of Canadians who live in areas with low household density. Would armchair critics prefer to have rural Canadians wait indefinitely for fibre to the farm, rather than improve their accessibility through next generation satellite?

The current federal broadband program recognizes this reality:

The Broadband Program will be technology neutral, accepting a variety of wireline and wireless technology solutions, such as fibre, digital subscriber line (DSL), cable and wireless networks (ground based and satellite).

Canadian ISPs aren’t done; there is an ongoing need for more investment, to continue to compete to attract more customers and increase the service levels to those already on-line. Facilities-based competition isn’t just the domain of cable companies and telcos; there are hundreds of entrepreneurs with regional and national networks, competing with all forms of infrastructure.

The report indicates that service providers are already investing about $8B-$10B per year on their networks and there is no indication that this is coming to an end. That is a lot of money – about $50 per month per Canadian household in capital expenditures.

Broadband adoption has two components: supply and demand. Among the recommendations in our report were two suggestions to support each of these factors.

On the supply side, we have recommended that the government should continue to encourage private sector investment in infrastructure:

• Continue policies focused on fostering facilities-based competition
• Build on the past success of private sector investment by removing current policy and regulatory uncertainty regarding investments in next-generation networks

And on the demand side, an area generally overlooked by policy makers, we suggested that research is needed:

• Shift more attention to adoption issues (including adoption of next-generation services) and encourage socio-economic research focused on better understanding the obstacles to, and inhibitors of, broadband adoption
• Consider programmes to improve digital literacy and the use of incentives (tax-based or otherwise) to target and overcome any barriers to broadband adoption

Supporting programmes to increase demand and overcome barriers to broadband adoption are a competitively neutral approach to get more Canadians on-line.

What do you think we need to do to improve Canada’s broadband adoption rates.