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There are some real cases of data roaming bill shock. A lot of people really don’t know that it can get really expensive, really fast if a smart phone connects to a foreign data network.

Many devices have settings to help avoid roaming bill shock.

One of the settings lets you disable the cellular radio; the other commonly found setting is to disable data roaming, but allow calls and text messages to come through. Both of these options will usually let you log in to WiFi hotspots at your hotel or coffee shops.

I actually think that devices should come pre-configured with data roaming disabled as the default setting.

For some reason, I am not feeling sympathetic to the latest story that was created by CBC’s Go Public. From the time I first heard about it, a number of questions ran through my mind.

CBC’s headline reads “Dad gets $22,000 data roaming ‘shock’ from Fido”.

In fact, there was no bill for $22,000. The kid used data that would have cost $22,000 if Rogers had not first adjusted the bill to reflect the prices that would have been charged if the parent had signed up for a discounted data plan. But that doesn’t attract eyeballs the same way.

The video clip that aired is introduced by an announcer who said:

A Burnaby man is going public tonight after getting a $22,000 phone bill.

That simply was not true. CBC was wrong. As it turns out, he never received a bill for $22,000. CBC knew that. In fact, CBC shows the bill in the video (the image reproduced here is from a freeze on the 1:08 mark of the CBC video). You can clearly see that the total bill, including regular monthly charges and tax comes to only $1400. That is a lot, but barely 5% of the headline.

From the bill, we can see that this is a family that was fully aware of possible data roaming charges. The bill shows a regular US data roaming subscription. In the story, the parent describes visiting the Apple store to find out how to avoid charges.

However, the 11 year-old son got a sunburn and was left in the hotel room with the family iPhone to play with. As the story goes, the kid turned on data roaming and spent 3 days watching YouTube videos.

Normally, a text message is sent to warn customers that welcomes the user to a foreign land and provides instructions on rates and how to manage roaming costs. For example, one of my phones recently received one that said:

Rogers TIP: You’re Roaming. Stay connected with an affordable and easy to use roaming offer. If you don’t already have one, simply click http://rogers.com/m/apac (no charge) to quickly view your options. Without a roaming offer, regular roaming rates are $3/min $0.75/txt $0.03/kB (+ taxes). FYI: Email, browsing, Visual Voicemail, MMS, IM, BBM & Apps use data. If you still require assistance please call Rogers free of charge at +1-514-734-7699

According to the article, no such message was received, although it is not known whether such an incoming message was deleted.

Contrary to the paragraph in the CBC story that claims “Currently, the only way for a customer to access data outside the country for less — through their carrier — is to buy a roaming package, before leaving”, you can subscribe to discounted data plans once you arrive in your destination.

The bill appears to reflect a substantial reduction in the charges that might otherwise have been incurred. We are told that the kid consumed 700MB of data over three days, two of which are on the current bill. From the vidcap of the bill, we can see that there is a line item for a 75 MB package plus overage charges for another 327 MB. That means that next months bill will have another 300 MB or so. This month’s data bill is $1200; next month, at the same rate, will be about $1000. It is a lot, but there is no bill for $22,000.

And contrary to the opening of the news story, there was no bill for $22,000. The author of the CBC story says that she isn’t responsible for the intro. In a tweet since removed, she wrote: “@CBCGoPublic: That was intro to story not written by me which aired hours ago. Story clearly stated $2200. I am done here.”

In fact, the story talks about $22,000 four times (plus the headline and the caption to the video) before you get to the 9th paragraph, where it states “Fido immediately said it would cut the bill to $2,200.” Cut the bill? There was no $22,000 bill. All evidence seems to be that the only bill that was sent was for $2200.

Just a sensational headline, under the banner of the national broadcaster, perhaps intended to influence CRTC members who are considering such matters as part of the Wireless Code of Conduct. It might have been interesting to hear if CBC asked the parents how they felt about leaving their child unattended in a Mexican hotel room for 3 days. Did CBC check the deleted messages folder to see if the warning text message was accidentally erased?

I am sympathetic to many cases of data roaming bill shock. This just isn’t one of them.

With the news that George Takach has dropped out of the Liberal leadership race, there is no longer a candidate who puts digital issues in such a position of prominence in their campaign. The end of his campaign was news that was appropriately released on Twitter:

I am ending my #lpcldr campaign + supporting @justintrudeau to make Canada work better #cdnpoli bit.ly/jt-gt-en

— George Takach (@georgetakach) February 25, 2013

And with that, we will need to see who will take on the title of “digital candidate”. Mr. Takach had tried to recruit support from the gamer community, creating Geeks4George, to take advantage of the Liberal Party’s new “supporter” category of voters that doesn’t require full membership. As Warren Kinsella recently wrote, it is a category of leadership voters that appears ripe for gaming the system.

Who will provide the most serious voice for digital economy issues? Marc Garneau has been the Industry critic for the Liberals and has therefore owned party responsibility for the digital file. As I wrote before, from the beginning, Mr. Garneau has promised “As leader, I will place a relentless focus on the development of a balanced, creative, knowledge-based economy.”

Joyce Murray claims to have been first to include digital issues in her campaign. Citing her past experience as Minister of Management Services in British Columbia, Ms. Murray led the “Bridging the Digital Divide” project connecting 119 rural and remote communities. Strangely, the digital policy page acknowledges that 7 years later, BC still hasn’t achieved her goal (“Today, B.C. is very close to her target of 98% of communities connected to affordable high speed service”). Rural broadband projects use government money to subsidize broadband prices in regions without regard to financial need. It is a supply side approach that is politically expedient and popular, but we have seen that such programmes ignore urban households that find “affordable high speed service” to be not so affordable.

Like many candidates, Ms. Murray’s position paper is silent on policies that address the income divide which left more than 100,000 Vancouver households without a computer, let alone broadband.

With Mr. Takach out of the race, will a new digital candidate emerge? Where does the Digital Economy rank as an issue for the Liberal party leadership candidates?

Where is our National Digital Strategy?

Among industry observers and policy wonks, the question is seen as a running joke. How long has this been missing in action? Fifteen months ago, Michael Geist called it the government’s Penske File. Not that it is overdue by 15 months. It was already so late that we have been joking about it for that long.

It is a dark humour, because it really isn’t a joke. More like a national embarrassment.

In the meantime, the global digital economy pushes forward while Canada’s digital economic activity drifts rudderless.

To be sure, there is activity on the digital economy file, but there is no coherent strategy that sets objectives, goals or direction.

As a result, we have regulations being developed for anti-spam legislation that are among the world’s most onerous, without any assessment of the impact on the development of electronic commerce or the creation of additional red-tape. We have seen Canada’s spectrum policy lag way behind our trading partners despite traditionally being characterized as “fast-followers” of US spectrum allocations. The US completed its auction of 700 MHz 5 years ago.

Today, the FCC is hosting a Broadband Summit, “to identify and discuss best practices learned from broadband adoption programs and academic studies/surveys, and how implementation of these best practices can close the broadband adoption gap among Americans – particularly low-income households, racial and ethnic minorities, seniors, rural residents, residents of Tribal lands and people with disabilities.” As I looked at the agenda, I had difficulty thinking of which agency in Canada would convene such a session, or take action on its conclusions.

Three years ago, the FCC set goals for broadband service availability that would be easily attainable in the Canadian context (affordable availability of 100 Million connections over 100 Mbps by 2020). Its Broadband Plan [Exec Summary, pdf] also set spectrum release goals, a goal to lead the world in mobile innovation, with the fastest and most extensive wireless networks of any nation; public safety network goals; clean energy goals for real time tracking and management of energy consumption.

In Canada, we continue to fall further behind. We have had activity related to each of these lines, but without a goal in mind. Tactics do not equal strategy. Canada’s current approach is a recipe for dabbling, not leading in the digital economy.

The theme of The 2013 Canadian Telecom Summit is “Defining our place in a digital world.” We are going to look at issues including broadband wireless spectrum, next generation business models, consumers, business transformation and network evolution. We will be sure to search for ways to move forward in the absence of a national strategy.

It is the beginning of a new year. A chance to make a fresh start.

So perhaps, it is time for us to take a fresh look at a long overdue file, the national digital strategy.

In the absence of a formal national digital strategy statement, it is hard to point to any catastrophic failures in our ability to compete relative to the rest of the world. But that is hardly an encouraging statement of leadership in this era, is it?

Although some like to point to the availability of ultra high speed internet access services in other markets, Canadians are leaders in adoption of social media and spend more time online than others. Canada’s software industry is faring well especially in gaming development and we have a strong application development sector. And the fact remains that most Canadians have access to broadband speeds well in excess of 100 Mbps.

Still, we can do better.

Many people, including many in government, confuse a digital economy strategy with a need to hand out cash for digital infrastructure or other forms of government spending.

I disagree. Releasing a strategy does not need to cost billions of dollars, despite the political attractiveness of a handshake in front of a ceremonial over sized cheque.

As I have written numerous times, the private sector has already been investing in infrastructure to deliver the supply side of the adoption calculus. While digital services adoption is a metric that is commonly used in global rankings, most people seem to focus on only one variable in the calculation. As a result, we have seen billions of tax dollars thrown toward broadband infrastructure in remote regions, with ever diminishing returns. The latest program saw close to $10,000 per household in subsidies, having the effect of permanently disrupting the business case for competitive supply of services.

Government handouts for internet access services should not be part of a digital strategy. Over the years, you may have seen that I am not a fan of most kinds of corporate government handouts.

So what is it that I am looking for?

I would like to see increased activity to promote demand. We need programs to ensure that low income Canadian households have affordable access to a connected home computer. It was nearly 5 years ago that I first suggested that we should consider computers and connectivity as part of Canada’s social safety net. Five years later the need is even greater. A little over a year ago, Greg O’Brien spoke of the embarrassment of relegating so many low-income Canadians away from digital participation.

We need skills development programs to increase the comfort that all Canadians have getting on-line. We need to ensure that all Canadians are able to access government services on-line.

Over the past year, more banks and utility companies started to charge fees to receive a paper bill. As a result, Canadians who can’t afford a computer or internet connection are precisely the ones getting hit with additional monthly charges. That doesn’t seem right.

We can do better.

In 2012, we saw the federal government launch red tape reduction programs, while at the same time preparing to proclaim an overly burdensome anti-spam law. The problem I have with Canada’s anti-spam law is that it goes well beyond stopping spam and will have the effect of inhibiting adoption of digital technologies by small business. A new restaurant or neighborhood business will not be permitted to buy an email mailing list to announce its opening, but can still print thousands of flyers to get dropped off by the post office. Does this make sense? The anti-spam law was prepared without an overall digital strategy and as a result, it contains provisions that over reach, that go beyond targeting spam and extend to restrict electronic commerce.

We can do better.

As we develop digital strategies. we need to make sure that existing programs that allocate funds for Canadian media development continue to be sustainable in a globally interconnected on-line world.

The digital economy strategy consultation was launched with great promise, uniting 3 government departments: Industry, Heritage and Human Resources & Skills Development.

It doesn’t take billions of dollars to enact a digital strategy, but it does require a commitment to follow a path once the strategy is enunciated. We need to start with take a vision statement that makes clear what we want a Digital Canada to look like – and then ensure that we engage in activities to lead us toward that goal.

That is what I want to see. As a country, we can do much better to lead in a digital world.

Is that asking for too much?

CRTC Chair Jean-Pierre Blais spoke last Friday at the annual dinner for the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC). In his address he made a number of important points that merit highlighting.

the public interest is much bigger and more complex than just looking after the interests of individual Canadian consumers. We must also consider the needs of Canadians as citizens and creators.

The Chair went on to explain that cost considerations are broader than just the rates paid by individual Canadians, but also include businesses. And he raised the issue of healthy competition and the Commission’s understanding that profit isn’t a dirty word:

This demands healthy competition among multiple service providers—all across the country, not just in major populated areas. In turn, this requires that businesses be able to profit from their efforts and investments. Having a fair chance to make a return on investment is crucial to encourage, and underwrite, innovation. That’s what leads to job creation and builds the foundation for our country’s economic future.

Of course, I was especially interested in his comments about the evolution of the basic service obligation:

In light of the growing importance of broadband to all aspects of Canadians’ lives, I can foresee the day when universal access to broadband will form part of the definition.

Thanks to investment by alternate service providers, virtually all Canadians have access to broadband services. Affordability is another matter. As I have written many times, affordable broadband service is a problem for urban and rural Canadians. Indeed, there are more Canadians in urban households who can’t afford broadband than those in remote and rural settings.

Will 2013 bring an increased examination of solutions to deliver broadband connections to all Canadians?