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On Monday, most parties filed their proposals in respect of the CRTC’s Consultation (2010-43): Obligation to serve and other matters. A few straglers came in late. Most of the material will be available shortly on the Commission website. In the meantime, the hyperlinks in this post will take you to a Scribd version of the referenced filings.

PIAC, representing a coalition of consumer groups, stood with the government of Saskatchewan and Sasktel as parties calling for an expansion of the current contribution regime to include a sustainable subsidy for high cost high speed internet services. The current system involves a tax on telecommunications services (other than internet services) to fund basic telephone services in high cost areas.

PIAC introduces its plan with a cautionary note, warning against doing any harm to the current system:

The Commission’s first goal in this proceeding should be to preserve Canada’s commitment to achieving universal and affordable voice (telephone) service. Therefore, whatever other adjustments are made for example to the basic service objective, obligation to serve or the local service subsidy, the Commission should ensure that such service is accounted for and protected.

Interestingly, on first review of the filings, it is hard to find service providers who support a subsidy program, even among the independent ISPs. The CRTC is urged to:

Not make any changes to the contribution regime that would increase the amount of contribution payable or result in the payment of contribution on retail Internet service revenues

and

Not introduce a high-speed Internet access element to the basic service objective
or to levy contribution on retail Internet services

This becomes one of the challenges of the universal service funding. How would the CRTC create a program to subsidize high cost broadband and avoid applying a tax on broadband internet services to fund the subsidy. If only legacy telecom services are taxed, then it artificially inflates the costs, serving to stimulate migration to IP-based over-the-top services, leaving fewer to fund the subsidy fund, raising the tax rate and thereby accelerating the migration.

How could this be considered technology neutral?

Although I did not go through all of the filings yet, it would be interesting to see evidence that there is actually a universal need to provide subsidies to all residents of high cost serving areas.

As we have observed before, rural and remote does not equate to low-income; often, there are substantial savings in housing costs that can offset higher prices for other services. Similarly, lower cost areas may still have prices for services that exceed the affordability level for some households.

Is it appropriate to artificially raise prices for economically disadvantaged households who happen to be in lower cost urban areas in order to benefit all residents of high cost serving areas?

Has anyone looked to see if there are more rural and remote residents who will be brought online by universal service proposals than the number of low income people who may be chased off the network?

Which group is representing these households?

The FCC offered a handy guide to its National Broadband Plan [pdf, 11.5MB, 376 pages] by way of a series of tweets. For your handy reference, here is what they said about each chapter, with links to the online version of each chapter:

• Chapter 1: It is time to connect America anew. Broadband is today’s great infrastructure challenge. We seek access for all
• Chapter 2: Goals: 100m homes w/ 100mbps; lead in mobile; affordable access; civic 1gbps; public safety network; lead in energy
• Chapter 3: Ecosystem is a cycle: apps & content drive devices drive network services. Many strong points, but can do better
• Chapter 4: Spur competition with spectrum release. Empower consumers with broadband performance labeling, like nutrition info
• Chapter 5: Spectrum: the great enabler. For mobile the need is unmistakable. Think 10 years ahead. Reform allocation system
• Chapter 6: Providers build networks on public lands. Improve utilization of existing infrastructure. Foster further deployment
• Chapter 7: Invest in R&D, long & short term. Use tax credits. Fund 1 Gbps testbeds on military bases. Urge experimentation
• Chapter 8: 2020 universalization target: 4mbps actual. Review every 4 years. Improve USF, form Connect America & Mobility Fund
• Chapter 9: Adoption:Pursue affordability. Consider free wireless. Launch Digital Literacy Corps. Make Web relevant, accessible
• Chapter 10: Healthcare: Incentivize e-care. Get better data & give patients control over it. Get centers connected
• Chapter 11: Education:Develop, broaden online learning; open content. Make use of data. Bolster e-rate for schools & libraries
• Chapter 12: Energy: Integrate broadband into the Smart Grid. Provide access to digital data; will result in lower consumption
• Chapter 13: Economic Opportunity: Small businesses should harness the Web. Promote virtual job training & placement, telework
• Chapter 14: Government Performance: Improve service delivery. Prioritize efficiency. Use government as a broadband anchor
• Chapter 15: Civic Engagement: Advance an open & transparent government. Utilize social media. Innovate. Modernize democracy
• Chapter 16: Public Safety: Create a public safety wireless network. Ensure cyber security. Roll out next-gen 911 and alerts
• Chapter 17: Plan will always be in beta. Establish a Strategy Council, a timetable for proceedings and a Performance Dashboard

More tomorrow – including relevance to Canada.

The FCC has been trickling out information about the contents of its National Broadband Plan over the past few weeks. Earlier today, it released the 6 page executive summary [pdf, 888 KB]. The report is scheduled for release Tuesday.

During a number of the consultation sessions, I got the impression that many of the speakers were confusing access to broadband with access to basic connectivity. For example, during the small business session, some speakers talked about benefits of having a website or a web storefront, neither of which need broadband at all. You want to make sure your web host is powerfully connected to multiple networks, but that doesn’t require a lot of power in the umbilical to the ‘net. 

In reading the goals in the Executive Summary, I was disappointed that one of the 6 items to be tracked “as a compass” over the next decade is:

To ensure that America leads in the clean energy economy, every American should be able to use broadband to track and manage their real-time energy consumption.

Why do we need broadband for this? Isn’t this a low bandwidth application? How many bits per second do you think it takes to tell you about your water, electricity and natural gas flow? How many bits do you think it takes to send a message to dial down the air conditioner or turn off the water? I was able to do this with a Radio Shack X-10 system and a touch tone phone nearly 30 years ago. Maybe I am confused.

Once the FCC realized that home health care won’t justify 100Mbps service, the regulator must have been looking for some other application that would appeal to the Democratic agenda. After all, how many of us are going to buy a Binford 9000 MRI machine to generate the high resolution images to transmit to Radiologists-R-Us for diagnosis? Instead, let’s set a goal to enable all Americans to have remote access to watching the meters on the side of their house – in high definition, no less! Of course, as I wrote before, earlier FCC consultations were equally modest in saying that broadband enables the IRS to save money with e-filing of tax returns, another low bitrate application.

This isn’t the only place that the Executive Summary fails to inspire. The FCC has set a bold vision for bringing affordable 100 Mbps service to 100 M households, the majority of American households. But for the rest of America, the plan falls short. Over the next 10 years, the FCC wants to have 4 Mbps service universally available. That’s it. 4 Mbps to the hinterlands after another decade of subsidy.

There is much to applaud from what is rumoured to be in the FCC’s plan to be released tomorrow. For example, it is encouraging to see the drive to improve digital literacy.

Maybe the executive summary doesn’t do the plan justice. I hope to find greater inspiration in the full document.

On Tuesday June 8, The 2010 Canadian Telecom Summit will be featuring panels looking at International Perspectives on ICT Strategies and progress on the development of Canada’s National Digital strategy.

Have you registered yet?

Yesterday, Ericsson Canada announced that it is supplying Vancouver’s Wavefront mobile commercialization centre / incubator with HSPA mobile communications equipment and access to Ericsson’s Montreal Test Facility, one of the largest and most advanced telecom labs in Canada. Ericsson engineering support will also be available to developers should they need help troubleshooting applications.

Mark Henderson, president and CEO of Ericsson Canada, said:

The final piece of the puzzle for most wireless applications developers is testing their technology on a large-scale network. With this connection, developers now have convenient and affordable access to such a network as well as the support of our world-leading Montreal Testing Facilities.

Wavefront is a joint venture between industry and government, formed in 2007 to accelerate the commercialization of mobile applications and technologies. Ericsson Canada’s Montreal labs has the mandate for development of many areas of Ericsson’s global mobile product portfolio.

On Monday June 7, Ericsson Canada CEO Mark Henderson will be delivering a keynote address at The 2010 Canadian Telecom Summit.

Have you registered yet?

I had a quick look at a 56 page slide deck issued last week by the FCC [pdf, 858KB] and I came away thinking that there are still too many people that confuse the need for more broadband with the need for basic IT. It is somewhat shameful that this is the impression left by a presentation by the communications regulator and policy maker in the US.

Don’t get me wrong. I would like to see all of us have access to symmetric 100 Mbps or Gbps connections at affordable prices – and by affordable, I also include the cost of government assistance (because I happen to pay taxes). But too many of the examples of broadband benefits that were contained in the FCC’s National Broadband Plan: National Purposes Update were less dependent on broadband and more in need of putting computers into the hands of more people first.

Take e-filing of taxes. The slide deck talks about savings of $2.50 for the government to process an electronic tax return instead of paper. This resulted in savings of more than $300M over 5 years. But filing taxes doesn’t need broadband; it needs computers. The amount of data exchanged between the home and IRS in e-filing is trivial.

I have written about this before [such as here and here]. Two years ago, I tied together the idea recently announced by the UK, to put the adoption of computers into the discussion of adoption rates for broadband:

Maybe Canada needs to look at targeting broadband subsidies based on income, regardless of where people live. There is a gap in the level of connectedness among lower income Canadians in urban markets as well. Maybe it is time to consider making PCs and broadband part of our social welfare system.

On another page of the FCC presentation, on the education front, there was a scary bullet:

16% of public community college campuses have high speed broadband v. 91% of research universities

Help me here. Is it really possible that nearly 1 in 10 “research universities” don’t have broadband? What kind of research goes on at these universities? Is it really possible in the year 2010 for a university in the United States to give degrees or apply for research grants without broadband connectivity for their researchers? I guess you can apply for grants, but what funding agency will actually give money to such a school? Either the statistic is wrong or the FCC should be concerned about the failure of university administrations at nearly 10% of the nation’s campuses to bring their basic research and education needs into the 1990’s, let alone the second decade of the 21st century.

Before the US gives another penny to upgrade broadband under the stimulus program, can someone help set some basic priorities? By the way, yesterday, the FCC released the results of a survey of about 5000 households, with the results interpretted to conclude that cost and digital literacy are the biggest impediments to increased broadband adoption in the US [press release, survey results, survey questions].

The FCC’s mandate may have been set too narrowly – to develop a national broadband plan. Nations really need to develop broader digital strategies – encompassing all aspects of ICT strategy.

The 2010 Canadian Telecom Summit will have special sessions on Tuesday, June 8 that look at International Perspectives on ICT Strategies, followed by a session looking at Building Digital Canada. Early bird rates expire this week. Have you registered yet?