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The Liberal Party’s 2013 leadership race may provide an opportunity for digital economy issues to be advanced by politicians of all stripes.

So far, the declared candidates have provided little in the way of detailed platform, but hints of priorities are emerging on their websites:

Marc Garneau has an explicit statement: “As leader, I will place a relentless focus on the development of a balanced, creative, knowledge-based economy.” We will be looking for more details as the campaign moves forward.

Although Deborah Coyne has a header on her policy page for “Building a Solid Economic Foundation: Prosperity through Creativity and Innovation”, the closest reference to the subject appears to be the establishment of yet another blue-ribbon commission. As I have written before, we already have a government that is great at launching studies; we don’t seem to be as good acting on the recommendations.

George Takach announced his candidacy at the MaRS discovery District this morning, a choice of venue that makes a statement itself. The Canadian Press is already calling him the e-candidate, with a plan to engage with gamers to crowd-source a digital bill-of-rights, the first elements of which are on his website. His economic policies speak of plans to introduce a new Digital Economy strategy – among other points of relevance to a digital issues: Embracing technological innovation; Investing in high-tech infrastructure; Introducing a new Digital Economy strategy; Overhauling Canada’s R&D approach.

George Takach believes there are other important “digital” issues that also must be addressed, including ensuring that all Canadians have high-speed access to the Internet – regardless of where they live – so they can take better advantage of the full potential of both the Internet and the Information Age and ensuring a balanced approach to digital intellectual property.

While it is encouraging to see digital issues take centre stage from a leadership candidate, the Takach campaign continues to talk in terms of a rural digital divide without addressing the issue of affordability. 

I would still like to see Canada create a program to ensure that all households with children have affordable access to a connected home computer.

I was unable to find any policy statements on the Justin Trudeau leadership website.

Whether you are a Liberal or not, the policy statements set out in this leadership campaign can influence the future platform and policy agendas for all parties.

To what extent will digital issues capture the hearts of Canadians?

You would think mobile devices should have killed off payphones by now. Those of us who have an alternative don’t go looking for a couple quarters to make a call from the shopping centre or the airport.

Most Canadians now have a mobile option, but 25% of households don’t. That is what is behind a request by PIAC for the CRTC to take a fresh look at the issue of access to pay telephones. The last time the CRTC looked at the issue was in 2002, with a Decision that came out in 2004.

The CRTC wrote at that time:

Based on information presented in this proceeding, the Commission considers that low-income Canadians, especially those without access to basic residential service, are more likely to use pay telephone service for important personal and emergency calls. The Commission notes that although wireless service may constitute an alternative for many consumers, it is not an affordable option for all.
…
The Commission concludes that, although demand for pay telephone service is declining, pay telephone service is still an important public service that wireless services have not rendered obsolete.

PIAC’s letter is asking the CRTC to expand the scope of a recent tariff filing to allow it to update the evidence last reviewed nearly a decade ago.

PIAC expects to raise issues of social utility of payphones and ideally to introduce evidence of payphone use by the public, in particular those persons living on low income. However, commissioning and compiling this information will take more time than is allotted for intervention.

PIAC raises a valid point. The CRTC should take a fresh look at payphone accessibility.

As this post gets published, I should be landing in Moscow, en route to the Baikonur Kosmodrome, to watch the launch of Xplornet’s 4G satellite.

On Friday, I wrote about how this new satellite is designed to bring faster and more affordable broadband connections to more Canadians in rural and remote areas, those who live and work beyond the reach of terrestrial facilities.

Xplornet is also making significant investments in regional infrastructure to support connectivity to its satellites. Last week, Xplornet announced the successful completion of a multi-million dollar 4G satellite ground station near Fort McMurray, Alberta. Xplornet is Alberta’s leading provider of rural broadband service. The Fort McMurray gateway announcement comes on the heels of a similar facility being completed near St. John’s.

This week’s launch of Viasat-1 will be streamed live. Early next year, a second 4G satellite, Jupiter, will be launched to complete the coverage. Xplornet is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in Canada to bridge the urban/rural broadband divide.

This week’s launch should be celebrated by all who have been working to advance Canada’s digital agenda.

I am off to Baikonur, Kazakhstan next week to watch the launch of Xplornet’s 4G satellite, designed to bring faster and more affordable broadband connections to more Canadians in rural and remote areas, beyond the reach of terrestrial facilities.

Xplornet has secured 100% of the Canadian Ka-band capacity on the Viasat-1 4th generation broadband satellite; it will use that entirely for rural broadband.

Together with the planned launch of a second, similar 4G satellite in 2012 and with its national fixed-wireless 4G network, Xplornet says it will effectively end Canada’s urban / rural digital-divide. ViaSat-1 can support customer download speeds of up to 25 Mbps. Its capacity is greater than the capacity of all current North American broadband satellites combined, with the ability to provide broadband service to 1.5 million customers in North America.

With the launch planned for Wednesday, Canada joins a group of other countries (including France, Germany, the UK, Australia and India) that have endorsed 4G satellite as the solution for ensuring universal access to affordable broadband. These next generation satellites deliver more than ten times the speed and capacity of current systems, at a much lower cost per customer.

I’m proud to be associated with the team at Xplornet and I look forward to sharing the excitement of next week’s launch with you. Be sure to monitor Xplornet’s countdown website for a live feed of the launch.

In April, the world celebrated the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s historic spaceflight, launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Later this month, a Proton M rocket is scheduled to lift off from that same facility, carrying with it Viasat-1, the fourth generation satellite that will power dramatic capacity expansion to provide rural broadband in Canada.

ViaSat-1 can support customer download speeds of up to 25 Mbps; its capacity is greater than the capacity of all current North American broadband satellites combined. Xplornet has secured all of the Canadian Ka-band capacity on this advanced satellite, and it expects the satellite service to be available to Canadians late this year.

The value of this new capacity was demonstrated with the 16 hour outage of Telesat’s Anik F2 satellite yesterday.

A game-changer in terms of ubiquitous broadband access in Canada, ViaSat-1 will allow for previously unavailable speed and bandwidth economics, and will provide Canadians in its footprint, which includes many remote areas, the opportunity to get a broadband connection that is truly fast and affordable.

Xplornet has a special website (4gsatellite.ca) that allows you to share in the excitement as launch day approaches. The space shot will be streamed to a live feed on that site.

I’ll be writing more as the countdown continues.