I received a private comment about one of my net neutrality posts from an anonymous admirer saying:

Hmmm. While the internet may have evolved from the US defense department, I would submit that it’s growth and popularity arrived when its power was unleashed by private investment – culminating in that thing they called the ‘tech bubble’. The internet, in the hands of government, was nothing like the service that has been built, improved, expanded, morphed and driven by profit-motivated corporations.

My concern with governments getting back into the provision of public communications services is that they may get tired of the planning, the investments, the ongoing management required to keep services state of the art and provide uniform high quality service to all.

Look at the history of government run telecom utilities around the world. For that matter, look at the history of public works projects. They start out as a good idea at the beginning, but the upkeep turns out to be hell. It’s natural – there are other priorities that should come first for tax dollars. The trend is for government to withdraw from the industry, eliminating ownership and heavy regulation, not for it to re-enter the business as an owner.

Government-run telecom went out of fashion when the Berlin Wall came crashing down.

Bell’s Enterprise group has landed a major win that has to feel sweeter than most. Bell announced that it will be supplying an IP-based outsourced call centre solution supporting more than 6000 seats in almost 100 locations to TD Bank Financial Group.

Of course, it is always nice to win a deal of this size. There are two extra layers of icing on this cake:

• taking the business out from Allstream and beating TELUS, who have been trying to sell their hosted IP voice solutions for longer than any major carrier; and,
• TD’s Board of Directors includes Darren Entwistle of TELUS and John Bragg of Eastlink, the cable company that has been beating up Bell’s sister-company, Aliant, in eastern Canada.

Bell won this deal in a regulated framework. Would TD have paid less in a forborne environment? Enterprise Presidents Isabelle Courville of Bell and Joe Natale of TELUS will appear on a panel together at The Canadian Telecom Summit on June 12-14.

On Monday, Mark Evans wrote a piece on Net Neutrality Ignorance. I am not sure I agree with his contention that

I think we could argue that our Telecom Act is already clear on points of discrimination and in carriers acting on the content of transmissions. More recently, as we have written before, the Telecom Policy Review panel examined the issues and came out with what we termed ” A Solomonic balance of interests.” The CRTC has examined the question and has said that it will deal with contraventions as they arise. Which they are doing.

It is hardly a ‘cautious Canadian approach’. We have existing legislation that covers much of the concern. We have had a review of the issue, with active public participation and had a report issued already. Are we really in limbo or do some folks just not like the current balance? I think we are ahead of the pack on this one, despite some people not being happy with the outcome – but duhhh… what else is new in Canadian telecom regulation?

Mark’s post refers to Save the ‘Net advocate Dave Weinberger, who writes about the potential loss of Innovation, Open Markets, Free Speech, Creativity and Democracy itself! Let’s look at one of his arguments:

Where does he get the idea that carriers “block users from being full-fledged creators”? Did all of the carriers in Dave’s area conspire together to refuse to sell him symmetric access? Or, does Dave really mean to say that he was too cheap unwilling to buy a business grade high speed internet access service with loads of upload and download speed. Apparently, Save the ‘Net folks wants symmetric access for $40 per month – or maybe they want government provided municipal service, so that they get other people to pay for their service.

Let me explore this paragraph a little further. We are supposed to believe that carriers are conspiring with the Hollywood studios to keep little guys from publishing content. This conspiracy presumably extends to the carriers coercing the studios to pay extra fees for their content to be carried, in exchange for the carriers prohibiting little folks from being full-fledged creators.

I guess all of the studios and carriers must be on side with this conspiracy – otherwise, I can’t wait to see Oliver Stone’s movie version.

I have been continuing my reading on the theme of Network Neutrality and came across the Washington, DC based Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Policy Studies. A long name for a consultancy – but they probably needed the extra words in order to distinguish themselves from a concert hall in Arizona – I’ll call them Phoenix for short.

Phoenix released an interesting report on Network Neutrality with a somewhat counter-intuitive conclusion that merits repeating here.

The arguments put forward by Phoenix are thoughtful and may be beyond the reach of many of the purveyors of hyperbolic rhetoric involved in this debate. But there appears to be some sound reasoning.

I have written before that I find much of the dialog from some of the participants to sound more like Marxist manifestos – “the internet belongs to the people” and “broadband monopolists”. Phoenix argues that forcing internet access providers to provide commoditized, vanilla service will serve as a disincentive to further market entry. And the net effect [excuse the pun] would be to exacerbate the limited availability of choice for consumers and content providers alike.

One of the highlights of each year’s Canadian Telecom Summit has been what we call “The Regulatory Blockbuster.” This year, that session takes place on Tuesday, June 13 and will feature the regulatory chiefs from Bell, TELUS, Rogers, Shaw and MTS Allstream.

People go to hockey games, saying they want to see lots of end-to-end action, but we know they really are hoping for a good fight. At our event, folks want to see the scratching, hair-pulling, body-slams and tag-team action as Janet and the boys duke it out together. In a civilized setting, of course.

Some of the participants are in rehearsal already. In case you missed the FP Comment section on Saturday, you should have a look at Ken Engelhart’s article followed by Mirko Bibic’s reply.

I consider their exchange in the paper to be an exhibition game to prepare for the main event. Since it represented a warm-up round, the Post gave Mirko an advantage by showing him Ken’s piece in advance. There will be none of that in June.

It will be an all ad-lib affair at The Canadian Telecom Summit. With the Telecom Policy Review panel report, the Local Forbearance Decision and an upcoming Cabinet ruling on the VoIP appeal, there are lots of hot issues to be explored.

Don’t miss the action!