Search Results for: incentives to invest

Which of my blog posts attracted the most attention in 2019?

Looking at the analytics, these 5 articles had the most individual page views:

1. “Retooling Rewheel’s reports” [July 15th, 2019]
2. “A cautionary tale of political interference” [October 7, 2019]
3. “Where do you think the money comes from?” [August 22nd, 2019]
4. “The economics of Canadian telecom” [December 11th, 2018]
5. “Supporting junk science” [March 11th, 2019]

In fact, “Retooling Rewheel’s reports,” the post about the NERA Economic Consulting’s report saying policy makers and regulators should ignore the ‘fatally flawed’ Digital Fuel Monitor (by Finland’s Rewheel Research), was one of my most viewed pieces of all time.

I should give an honourable mention to “Maintaining incentives to invest” [March 4th, 2019] and “Better data leads to better policy making” [January 28th, 2019].

Some of my posts from the past were apparently being used as reference materials, such as “The Inside Wire: CRTC rules on telecom carrier access to buildings” [July 1, 2003] and “Unplug the digital classroom” [October 7, 2012]. I am happy to see that my archives are providing some value, in some cases more than 15 years later. Take some time to poke around through the archives found in “My back pages”.

Thank you for following me here on this blog (and on Twitter) and engaging over the past year.

Let me extend to you the very best wishes for health, happiness and peace over the holidays and in the year ahead.

Before I went on vacation, I left a few posts to whet our appetites in anticipation of today’s filing of a report by the Competition Bureau. In “Climbing the ladder of investment” [November 12, 2019], I provided a number of quotations endorsing facilities-based competition from the past quarter century of Canadian regulatory proceedings. In “Do market results rule out the need to mandate MVNOs?” [November 18, 2019], I cited a report from Scotiabank that said “regulators face a delicate act of balancing competition and investment incentives. A wrong move could have years of unintended consequences.”

In its follow-up comments to the CRTC [pdf, 2.4MB and Matrix report, 3.0MB], the Competition Bureau withholds a wholesale endorsement of mandated MVNOs, instead recommending additional measures to support regional facilities-based competitors to derive the greatest consumer benefits. Indeed, the Bureau observed that MVNOs may drive lower prices and greater choice, but also could threaten the “progress in enhancing competition in this industry to date.”

While MVNOs can have positive effects on pricing in the marketplace, they are unlikely to deliver the benefits of sustained and vigorous competition that facilities-based wireless disruptors are capable of providing. The Bureau is concerned that the introduction of MVNOs would disproportionately affect these wireless disruptors, putting at risk the positive effects that they have had on pricing, and may impact long-term incentives to invest in high-quality networks in Canada.

Instead, the Bureau recommended that the CRTC should adopt policies focused on incentivizing and accelerating facilities-based competition from disruptors.” It suggests such measures as mandated seamless handoff, more effective tower sharing and site access rules, and updated roaming rates.

The submission by the Competition Bureau appears to agree with my November 18 post, saying “there are promising signs that policies aimed at promoting facilities-based competition are paying dividends.”

Further, the Bureau wrote “All else equal, facilities-based competition is the most sustainable and effective form of competition.” Further, the Bureau observed “A broad MVNO access criteria may also deliver competition, but at a cost.”

As the Bureau concludes, “[facilities-based] competition has not yet reached its full potential and a mandated MVNO policy applied broadly risks undermining the steps taken by wireless disruptors, without much certainty that the MVNO policy will significantly decrease pricing.”

As I indicated in last week’s post, “Scotiabank believes the filing by the Competition Bureau will carry significant weight.” Rather than supporting the CRTC’s call for mandated wholesale services for MVNOs, the Bureau is endorsing measures aimed at accelerating and expanding competition from existing market participants, thereby promoting a climate that supports continued network expansion and investment. That appears to reaffirm support for a model of facilities-based competition.

Earlier this month, I wrote about “Maintaining incentives to invest,” asking how a change in regulatory framework might impact investment levels by incumbents and the regional carriers. What are the broader economic impacts of Canada’s mobile industry?

Earlier today, the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA) released a report [pdf, 0.5MB] prepared by Nordicity that examines “The Benefits of the Wireless Telecommunications Industry to the Canadian Economy in 2017”. This is the 10th annual version of the report.

Nordicity found:

• In 2017, Canada’s wireless industry contributed $27.5 billion to the Canadian GDP, an increase of 9.1% from $25.21 billion 2016.
• The major contributor to this overall GDP increase was the $1.22 billion increase in the contribution of wireless network operators to the GDP.
• The wireless sector generated 151,550 full-time equivalents (FTE) jobs in 2017, including direct, indirect and induced effects — an increase of 13,500 FTEs or 9.8% from 2016.
• Canadian facilities-based network operators made capital investments in Canada’s wireless infrastructure totaling $2.92 billion in 2017 — an increase of $0.34 billion or 13.2% from 2016.

Robert Ghiz, President & CEO of CWTA, will be speaking at The 2019 Canadian Telecom Summit, taking place June 3-5 in Toronto. Have you registered yet?

According to the Montreal Economic Institute (MEI), the CRTC has outlived its usefulness.

“Since Canada has successfully transitioned from monopoly to competition, there is a case to be made that the CRTC should be phased out as Canada’s telecommunications regulator.” That is one of the conclusions of the 5th annual edition of “The State of Competition in Canada’s Telecommunications Industry,” released today by MEI [pdf]. Instead of a sector specific regulator, the report says oversight of the telecommunications industry could move to a more general regulatory framework under competition law.

The report also contends that, despite what it calls “simplistic and misleading” comparisons, Canadian wireless prices are competitive.

“The average bill that Canadians pay for their wireless and internet services keeps increasing not because they have to pay more for the same services, but because they are paying more for more and better services.” The MEI report cites numerous international metrics that Canada has some of the highest quality wireless networks in the world, and comparisons of prices rarely account for service quality.

According to the report, “Wireless carriers in Canada invested on average US$78 per connection between 2010 and 2016, almost twice as much as their European counterparts, which only invested $40.”

Looking at the regulatory framework, the report observes, “The main concrete difference so far between the FCC’s and the CRTC’s approaches to net neutrality has been the steadfast opposition of the Canadian regulator to zero-rating. … In banning innovative and pro-competitive targeted pricing plans, the CRTC has not protected the integrity of the internet; rather, it has raised prices for certain consumers and lowered prices for no one.” This is a familiar refrain to my readers for whom I have made the same observation over the years.

A little over a week ago, I asked on Twitter “What if #CRTC had given market forces a chance to work?”

MEI points out the irony of the CRTC, having an agenda of increasing competition in Canada’s wireless marketplace, ended up banning an innovative pricing plan from a new entrant (Videotron). According to MEI, that ultimately hurts Canadian consumers. Similarly, the report takes aim at the CRTC’s overly prescriptive Wireless Code as having “reduced consumer choice and limited the ability of carriers to develop innovative customer offerings.”

In this instance — as in many others — Canadians would have been better off if the CRTC had relied on market forces instead of attempting to manage the competitive process.

The report points to the December 2017 wireless price war sparked by Freedom Mobile’s $50 per month 10GB plan as evidence of the market’s competitiveness. Quoting the 12-year old report of the Telecom Policy Review Panel (TPRP), MEI says “the Canadian telecommunications industry has evolved to the point where market forces can largely be relied on to achieve economic and social benefits for Canadians, and where detailed, prescriptive regulation is no longer needed in many areas.”

It has been more than 12 years since the TPRP’s report was issued and, as discussed above, the CRTC has shown few signs of restraint in its approach to telecommunications regulation. While it has abandoned its prior focus on retail regulation, it has also expanded mandatory network access schemes, created policies that dull incentives to invest, and rewarded product imitators instead of product innovators. If maintained, these policies are bound to hurt Canadian consumers in the long run.

…

Although dismantling Canada’s telecommunications regulator might meet with stiff opposition from partisans of continued heavy-handed regulation, it would be of net benefit to Canadian consumers and to Canada’s economy. The CRTC—while a necessary actor in Canada’s telecommunications landscape during the transition from monopoly to competition—has outlived its usefulness.

No doubt, the assertions made in the MEI report will feature prominently in the Regulatory Blockbuster at The 2018 Canadian Telecom Summit, taking place June 4 – 6 in Toronto. The Regulatory Blockbuster will feature leading advocates from Bell, TELUS, Rogers, Teksavvy and Ice Wireless.

Have you registered yet?

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[Update: May 8, 11:50am] The MEI report author has an opinion piece on the Financial Post website, entitled “The CRTC should celebrate its 50th birthday by giving up telecom regulations entirely” with the caption “Martin Masse: You may be wondering why exactly we still need a dedicated telecommunications regulator. We don’t”.

Canadians benefit from some of the most advanced and efficient wireless and broadband Internet services in the world. Further, penetration and usage rates for newer wireless technologies like tablets, smartphones and LTE connections in Canada are among the highest for industrialized countries.

These are among the findings of The Montreal Economic Institute in the 2016 edition of its report on “The State of Competition in Canada’s Telecommunications Industry” [pdf, 5MB].

According to its authors, Martin Masse and Paul Beaudry, the publication of the report was motivated by the mistaken impression given by some observers that Canada’s telecommunications industry compares poorly with that of other jurisdictions.

The report attempts “to dispel the notion that Canadians pay uncompetitive prices for low quality services.”

It argues that government and CRTC interventions in the wireless and wireline sectors could lead to unintended consequences that might jeopardize investment and innovation.

The release is timely as parties prepare final written submissions for the CRTC’s Review of basic telecom services. The authors urge Ottawa to resist intervening in the broadband Internet sector as it has in the wireless sector.

Any CRTC attempt to declare broadband an “essential service” and to regulate and subsidize it would be a solution in search of a problem, as broadband is well on its way to becoming ubiquitous simply through the normal course of technology adoption.

The report charges that the CRTC’s wireline wholesale decision, under appeal to the Federal cabinet, ignores the lessons of Europe, “where two decades of network sharing regulations and an obsession with price competition has led to a decline in mobile revenues and underinvestment in network infrastructure.” The authors call for Cabinet to modify the CRTC’s decision, and in renewing a commitment to the 2006 Policy Direction, “remind the regulator that infrastructure deployment is key to Canada’s long-term economic prosperity and should be encouraged, rather than deterred.”

Interventionist policies aimed at helping smaller players gain market share can have harmful effects on innovation and weaken incentives to invest in and deploy new infrastructure.

The report concludes: “Canada already has dynamic and competitive markets in telecommunications, and there is no need for costly and counterproductive policies that merely promote artificial competition.”

In releasing the report, the authors endorse the Bell acquisition of MTS announced earlier this week.

These issues and much, much more will be explored at The 2016 Canadian Telecom Summit, taking place June 6-8 in Toronto. Have you registered yet?