5G is the latest rage-o-rama of the telecom buzzword industry. It is providing the carriers with yet another excuse to fight network interconnection from smaller users. In this sense 5G is a two-fold layer of BS.

Occasionally a disaster brings a dose of reality into the consideration of abstract issues. The COVID19 pandemic points out a glaring mistake at the heart of the BTLR report.

The carriers are agitating the regulator to be deeply concerned about 5G. Articles appear in the quality press about why 5G will generate the need for capital, and why the CRTC should not allow MVNOs in consequence. Reduced profits through more competition will make it more difficult for Canada to compete against other nations more richly endowed with 5G networks. I am reminded of an expression by PT Barnum of certain people born every minute, which my censorious software will not permit me to write.

https://www.cpac.ca/en/programs/crtc-hearings/episodes/66153138/ 

Good morning/afternoon Commissioners, Staff and Hearing participants.

The Internet Society Canada Chapter is pleased to appear before you on this issue.  My name is Timothy Denton, chairman of the Internet Society, Canada Chapter and to my right is Matthew Gamble, a director of the Internet Society, Canada Chapter.

Darren Entwhistle, Grand Chief of the Telus Nation, has threatened that the jobs of 5000 Telus employees and the reduction of investment if they have to reduce prices by 25% or accept mandated MVNOs. I was led to wonder whether he will have them flogged on their way out the door. 

 https://www.cpac.ca/en/programs/crtc-hearings/episodes/66152098/ 

How could any group of seven apparently sane and certainly highly educated specialists believe that Canada will legislate into being a system of state control of communications as pervasive, as illiberal and as unfree as what they have proposed in the final report of the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review (BTLR), which they submitted to the federal government last week? By grossly expanding what is called “broadcasting,” the report’s authors aim at nothing less than a statist counter-revolution against the internet.

My colleague Philip Palmer wrote the following on the BTLR, and I take the liberty of publishing it here.

The first comments on the final report of the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislation Review Panel (“the Report”) have largely focussed on the proposed extension of broadcasting legislation to internet content providers, such as Netflix, YouTube and on-line news services. I agree with those commentators who find the broadcasting recommendations truly appalling. However, the equally radical proposals for telecommunications have been lost in the general noise.

Michael Geist wrote: "Should the government regulate those [Internet] providers and creators, it will be engaging in perhaps the most extensive speech regulation Canada has ever seen on the demonstrably false premise that doing so will level the playing field, support Canadian stories, or save a production sector that is thriving in the internet age."

I would add "extreme" and "unconstitutional" to the description.

Yeah, I know. I know nothing. But I keep having this strange uncanny feeling. Maybe 5G is not the coming thing. Maybe the intensification of equipment that is necessary to make high frequencies work cannot be successfully installed at a cost people are ready to afford. Maybe it is pushing the possibilities of technical advance to the point where we arrive at the Concorde. 

I have been reading the Prime Minister's mandate letter to Navdeep Bains, the Minister of Industry, Science and Economic Development. After pages of fluff (or quasi-religious ideology for those who believe it), we get  to the juicy stuff.

France, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Australia, Finland, Israel, Japan, Korea, China: these are some of the countries that have adopted policies granting competitors access to the facilities of larger telecom carriers. Yet all these countries are wrong, according to the Montreal Economic Institute (see “The CRTC needs to get out of the way,” Gael Campan, Oct 31).

When people tell you who they are, you should listen.

Sometimes the only sensible way to look at corporate behavior is as if companies were like crocodiles. Crocodiles need to eat, and any flesh will do: you, your daughter, your dog, your cow, or a deer in the woods. You are just lunch. Nothing personal.

Then at times the crocodile gets angry, and it becomes personal, intentional, and political.

With the publication yesterday of the revised terms of the government's direction to the CRTC, the Internet Society and Canadians have gained a significant victory. Or so we hope.

This submission, authored principally be Philip Palmer of the ISCC Board, with the assistance of Matt Gamble, also of our Board, sets out the Society's position on the MVNO reconsideration, in Telecom Notice of Consultation 2019-57. He also devised a new name for facilities-based consultation, shortened to FBC. He called it "faith-based competition". Cruel but fair.

I may be adding two and two and getting seventeen, but I suspect there is a connection between Tim Wu's thesis in "The Curse of Bigness" and a recent article about our Competition Bureau, which is pondering getting rid of the "efficiency defence".

Pierre Karl Péladeau, owner and head of Videotron, spoke at the Canadian Club lunch yesterday (Monday April 8, 2019) at the Chateau Laurier. He was unusually charming. The two thrusts of his speech were that

·       Internet-based services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime were cutting into the revenues available for Canadian televisual productions, and

•        Bell services in Quebec collect much higher royalties per head than  does Videotron, assisted both by CRTC actions and its indifference. 

Christine Dobby of the Globe and Mail reported last week that an old colleague of mine from Department of Communications days had committed a no-no by accepting a million dollar contract from the Axis of Evil while still working for the government of Canada. (With apologies to Bell - they are really not that bad).

I agree with this, wholeheartedly. To hell with facilities-based competition, as a concept.

https://www.cdhowe.org/intelligence-memos/konrad-w-von-finckenstein-direction-crtc-re-competition

Tim

 Greetings. I was forwarded your recent blog and regretfully have to say you are misstating my views. Since 1978 I have urged a directive power and had that endorsed by Lambert, economic council and indirectly the Law Reform Commission. I supported Bernier’s directive even though it came close to amending the legislation. I have no problems with the principle of a directive although I think Bain’s has a strong hint of the same shopping list approach found in the Telecom Act and thus gives the CRTC considerable discretion in following, unlike Bernier’s.

Esteemed Professor Schultz:

So noted.

Denton

First, Navdeep Bains is owed our thanks for intervening with the CRTC by means of his proposed directive. It says all the right things, and it will almost certainly do some good. I will proceed to talk about how the obvious intent of policy directives can be avoided by the regulator, and not always in bad faith.