Month: November 2014

Shaw admitted this morning that it would continue to invest in facilities regardless of obligations to smaller ISPs to allow access to their facilities. While other incumbents  have occasionally nuanced their positions on this, their essential position has been that by allowing third party access to underlying facilities they will cease to invest adequately in […]

A good background on what is at stake in the essential services hearings is given by David Ellis here. This figure below, from the OECD, illustrates the situation we face in Canada.   David Ellis writes, referring to a previous CRTC witness, Reza Rajabiun:   As Reza pointed out yesterday in a terrific appearance at the […]

Calgary is building optical fiber capacity, even a network, and leasing out that capacity to all and sundry, according to its testimony. (A brilliant job by its counsel Mary-Anne Bendfeld). This is what Stockholm has been doing for decades. Stockholm has several cable companies and several telecom companies, all of whom ride on the municipal […]

You know when you are a telecom junkie when the essential services proceedings fascinate you. It may seem contradictory to my stated positions to say the following. I will do so anyway. The Bell position was admirably well stated yesterday. It is a question of tone. The tone control of Bell yesterday was superb. They seem to have learned […]

Watching the show at the CRTC Essential Services proceeding, I count the number of bad ideas that confuse the discussion. Commissioners have them put in their heads by years of listening to them, and have to ask questions predicated on them. This I understand. The purpose of a hearing is in large part to air […]

CARLETON PHD CANDIDATE  BENJAMIN KLASS, AND MIKE KEDAR, THE GUY WHOSE ACTIONS CAUSED LONG DISTANCE VOICE COMPETITION TO COME TO CANADA, HAVE WRITTEN A LETTER TO GOVERNMENT, INCLUDING THE CRTC, ON THE QUESTION OF CONSTRAINING THE MARKET POWER OF THE INCUMBENTS. IT IS THEIR LETTER. I POST IT BELOW. PROFESSOR DWAYNE WINSECK OF CARLETON SIGNED […]

In political life you may have to agree with people with whom you would rather not. So it is with Obama’s proposals for net neutrality. Common carriage is the plainest of doctrines: if you are are a carrier, you carry equivalent traffic at similar prices. The doctrine implies the existence of a regulator to determine […]

The CRTC is making a lot of good moves lately: eliminating the requirement to give 30 days’ notice before abandoning a cable subscription is both sensible and substantially good. And insisting on making decisions based on evidence is right, and  taking pride in basing one’s decisions on evidence is understandable.  Running the risk of being […]

The regulatory debate this week at CNOC’s ISP summit  was a jolly good Australian-style punch-up between Michael Geist and Jonathan Daniels of Bell.  My former colleague Len Katz spoke to the audience on the same day. He confirmed my view that the “ladder of investment” and the obsession with size continues. His view was that CNOC […]

The Canadian Speech from the Throne (SFT) is the traditional method for the government to announce its policies and proposals for the coming Parliamentary session. The most recent one signals important changes to the regulation of telecommunications and broadcasting, in a strongly interventionist direction. A wise head of regulatory affairs for a large Canadian multi-media […]

Our planning for it is deplorable, at the moment. An Internet-centric 9-1-1 needs to be planned by people who understand the Internet. Does this not seem obvious? Then why is our planning process excluding them? Because we have no adequate planning process. Here is a presentation I made at the Toronto ISP Summit in November […]