Success Through Understanding Technology
Commentary and insights on policy issues in telecommunications and the Internet.
George Serentschy wrote an interesting piece in Terence Corcoran's Financial Post today, which I think is comprehensively mistaken. Mr. Serentschy, a former telecom regulator in Austria, became dismayed with the state of investment in European mobile networks, and has been testifying effectively against the idea of MVNOs (mobile virtual network operators) ever since.
Multibillionaire Barry Diller used to be chairman of Paramount in the 1980s and has now moved on to the Internet, being the head of Expedia and a number of other ventures. He spoke about the leadership of Netflix recently in the most favourable terms in a recent interview in the New York Times. His thoughts are relevant to those worried about Canadian content.
One of the strengths of the modern military is that they have determined to be and remain "learning organizations": tactics are obsessively analyzed, and information shared among officers, so that battles are won, casualties reduced, and what needs to be changed, is changed. The opposite seems to be true in telecom policy.
You have to hand it to McCarthy’s. Their communications legal luminaries have pursued the goal of subjecting the Internet to the Broadcasting Act since they first became aware of this loathsome innovation, sometime in the mid-2000s, when email attachments challenged the dominion of the fax machine in the legal profession. (I surmise).
The proposed review of our communications acts is about to proceed, but the problem is finding a significant issue that legislative change would solve. Of course, some improvements are possible. Yet I would gladly forego a few improvements, if the alternative would be to subordinate the Telecom Act to the purposes of the Broadcasting Act.
Timothy Denton's Blog Categories
Timothy Denton 
Paul Canniff