Search Results for: affordable

You will recall that in April, Australia announced plans to spend A$43B (around $40B in Canadian funds) on broadband. That money, to be spent over the next 8 years, is to get a network capable of delivering 100Mbps service to 90% of the population, and the rest of the country will get served by next generation wireless and satellite service.

Well, guess what Canada? We’ve won.

According the CRTC’s 2009 Communications Monitoring Report, 94% of Canadian households can already get a terrestrial broadband service. 80% of us can be reached by cable modem service; 84% can get DSL. Most of Canada’s cable companies have now launched DOCSIS 3.0 based service, with data rates up to 100 Mbps available.

The rest of us are already within reach of wireless and satellite.

The private sector is delivering more service, to more Canadians, with competitive choice of suppliers, without government intervention and without taxpayer cash and without us having to wait 8 years.

With the announcement of the next steps for Canada’s $225M broadband stimulus package due any day now, a question remains how should the money should be spent to stimulate higher rates of adoption?

Improving broadband adoption requires a focus on more than just building more terrestrial availability. Customers have to see the value of subscribing. I have written before about leading a horse to water… [here and here].

Everyone who wants broadband internet in Canada can have it – but at what price. How can we help make rural broadband more affordable and accessible? How do we convince more users to take a drink?

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Update [September 1, 11:10 am]
Industry Canada has now released its Call for Applications.

The Progress & Freedom Foundation has released a submission by its president, Kenneth Ferree, to the FCC [pdf, 345KB] that makes for an entertaining read. C’mon, how many regulatory submissions are able to squeeze in a citation for Nietzsche by the top of the second page?

I found that many of the arguments are as applicable to Canada as the US market for which it was targetted. As the press release states:

Ferree takes issue with claims that a duopoly in landline broadband markets would necessarily be, by nature, market failure. Instead, because of the high fixed costs associated with networked industries, price competition between too many providers could impair investment.

How many competitors should there be? We hear similar complaints in Canada.

As Ferree’s paper observes, a failed market might observe excessive returns by market participants. But, as the paper observes for the US (and equally applicable in Canada), the supposed duopolists aren’t making excessive profits. Margins for network providers are consistent with other companies. Other so-called duopolies exist in other sectors without the same calls for government intervention, such as Coke and Pepsi; or, Lowes and Home Depot.

By far, my favourite line from the submission deals with the issue of broadband adoption among people that have access to competitive supply of services:

As hard as it is for some in Washington to believe, there may be a large swath of middle-America that would rather sit on the front porch, sip lemonade, and chat with their neighbors than update their profiles on Facebook.

I have written about this phenomenon in Canada [here and here]. What we define as affordable, universal access isn’t enough to get people to subscribe.

The submission is a great contribution to the debate about the role of government in intervening in the marketplace for broadband services. Lines like “When confronted with actual facts, the advocates of heavy-handed regulation are forced to retreat to rhetoric” serve as a challenge to move beyond sound-bites into genuine analysis.

Tech Media Reports is writing about the calls from National Film Board and the CRTC for the development of a national digital strategy, about which I wrote last week. I am quoted in the article.

The article talks about what is going on in other countries:

In January Britain released its national digital strategy. Dubbed Digital Britain, the strategy lays a path for Britain to revamp its knowledge-based economy. Its key objectives aim at upgrading infrastructure, creating dynamism in investment, creating content specifically for Britain, a fair and universal accessibility to digital and developing infrastructure and skills.

Last fall, France released its strategy called France Numerique 2012. Loaded with more than 150 recommendations, the strategy is designed to restore growth and modernize France. It also aims to increase broadband accessibility to all French citizens by 2012 at affordable rates—less than US$46 per month. New Zealand’s Digital Strategy, was also released last fall and contains provisions to boost the economy, create sustainability and vibrant communities.

Will Canada take up the challenge of developing our own vision of how to stake out the country’s place in the knowledge economy?

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national digital strategy

Our friends at Arnold & Porter have released a paper [ pdf, 197KB] that looks at the “non-discrimination” and “network interconnection” obligations attached to the US broadband stimulus program. In particular, funding recipients are required to adhere to obligations at least as strong as those found in the FCC’s Internet Policy Statement [found here].

As we have written a number of times, the FCC’s 2005 policy statement is not particularly onerous by Canadian standards, which already captured these concepts in legislation in the Telecom Act. The A&P; paper raises some interesting questions, such as the potential for applicability of these obligations to wireless networks, in light of the fact that, to date, they have only been applied within the wireline context (ie. to telco and cable networks).

We have a session looking at Building Broadband at The 2009 Canadian Telecom Summit, taking place in June in Toronto. The session features the leaders of Barrett Xplore and Sasktel, companies that are profitably providing universal broadband in some of the most remote areas in Canada. In addition, Ian Collins of Cogeco Data Services and Derek Slater of Google will provide views of the role of fibre in urban residential and business broadband. Mike Dixon, of Motorola’s Wireless Networks group rounds out the panel.

Affordable, universal access to broadband service is an achievable goal. Accelerating its deployment delivers immediate jobs constructing the networks as well as the long term economic benefits of a more connected populace.

Early bird registration rates are available until the end of this week. Have you registered yet for The 2009 Canadian Telecom Summit?

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broadband, Canadian Telecom Summit

Once again, a diverse group of stakeholders south of the border is looking at how to achieve universal accessibility to broadband internet service.

A loyal reader pointed me to a story in yesterday’s Washington Post that describes a group of technology and telecom companies, unions and public interest groups agreeing to develop a roadmap to deliver affordable high-speed Internet access to every consumer.

An article in Network World yesterday points to Cisco’s renewed call for a national broadband strategy.

Momentum is building for a national broadband strategy to be a priority for economic renewal in the new Congress and the Obama administration.

When will Canada look at how we can deliver broadband to the doorsteps of all Canadians and go further – to encourage more of our households to come online? Can a consensus approach be developed?

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broadband