The CRTC was messing with our minds today.

They delayed their regular 11:00am release of news until 2:00pm, which led many of to think that the VoIP reconsideration was coming out this afternoon. I know that I wasn’t alone, because Denis Carmel, the CRTC director of public affairs, just sent a note to let us know that the VoIP decision is being released at 11:00am on Friday.

As a result, my daily blog entry will be delayed on Friday until around noon.

By the way, the reason for the CRTC’s delay in releasing its Thursday news? The end of August is time for the renewal of a lot of broadcast licenses.

Technorati Tags:
CRTC, VoIP, Mark Goldberg

The Globe and Mail carried a report today that BCE is putting together a $1B IPO for Telesat as a consequence of a sale falling through. BCE has been quick to say that its intention was always to take a portion of the company public.

Accounts from the original February announcement seem to confirm BCE’s statements. An outright sale would have been a change in course and would have been complicated.

Any sale of a majority of Telesat would require creative ownership structures, due to Canada’s foreign ownership restrictions on such facilities. Many veterans in the Canadian telecom sector are familiar with such arrangements – let us know if you need help putting together your bid.

In any case, BCE selling just 20% of the company by way of an IPO avoids the possibility of running off-side. As the Globe account notes, this is an asset that will benefit from a relaxation of the foreign investment constraints.

Technorati Tags:
BCE, Telesat, foreign ownership

Let’s keep a focus on the subject of illegal internet content.

In Canada, we can view the issue from the perspectives of kids’ internet safety (see KINSA) and hate. We brought the subject of Illegal Content to the floor of The 2006 Canadian Telecom Summit with a session featuring compelling presentations by Paul Gillespie of the Toronto Police Child Exploitation Unit and Bernie Farber of Canadian Jewish Congress.

We applied some of these learnings in last week’s application to the CRTC and that action has moved the discussion to radio talk shows and news headlines from coast-to-coast.

Michael Geist writes:

If there is an effort to develop an appropriate policy framework, it will need to include complaints mechanisms, a presumption that the content is lawful and must be disproved by a high standard of evidence, an opportunity to challenge blocking requests, appropriate judicial oversight, and full transparency about blocking activities.

We agree.

We would also want to explore the possibility that blocking not be mandated, but perhaps hold out an incentive for carriers and ISPs to subscribe to the scheme. ISPs that participate could be absolved of any liability – both for carrying illegal content that was not correctly flagged and for blocking content that should not have been blocked – as long as the service providers implement the prescribed blocking solution. It gives ISPs the ability to point to others to apply blame in either direction.

We also believe that research into technology solutions should accompany the policy framework development. BT has had its Cleanfeed project operating for two years now and it has since been adopted by 3 Scandinavian countries. These are solutions in operation in familiar democratic regimes.

This is not a case of Canada adopting Chinese-styled limits on civil freedoms; it is moving Canada back into a leadership position in exploring ways to exert its sovereignty in cyberspace.

When Canadians are threatened, shouldn’t they be able to rely on their own instruments of justice?

The Toronto Star carried my letter to the editor this morning, in response to Michael Geist‘s article in Monday’s paper.