Month: May 2015

Our dot ca registry, CIRA, announced this morning that the Canadian Interoperability Technology Interest Group (CITIG) has won a grant to study institutions for next generation 9-1-1.  CITIG is a not for profit emanation of the Chiefs of Police, Chiefs of Fire and Chiefs of Ambulance associations. Philip Palmer and I are the contractors who will execute […]

A day later and I realize that the admonition to “do nothing” should be limited to not amalgamating the Broadcasting Act with the Telecommunications Act. The rest of the scheme I propose is an active engagement with the meaning of the Internet. At the conference at the University of Ottawa yesterday I made sure to […]

I am at a conference in the University of Ottawa on the subject of “Rebooting Canada’s Communications legislation”. I was on the first panel. My position on changing legislation is quite simple. Do nothing. The CRTC administers three statutes: the Telecommunications Act, the Broadcasting Act, and the Canadian Anti-Spam Act (CASL). The Telecommunications Act is […]

The Financial Post published my response to the Montreal Economic Institute’s idea that what we need is exactly three physical cellular networks, rather than four. I find the MEI is a reliable voice of pre-Internet ideas of telecommunications. The number of networks is largely irrelevant; what traffic they carry, and how they interconnect, is the supreme consideration. […]

The issue is not the creation of a fourth national carrier, however meritorious that idea might be. Nor is three the appropriate number, nor one, nor two, nor six nor any whole integer between one and 10 to the fourth power. The appropriate number of carriers is the wrong question, and I think the CRTC […]

Should video entertainment coming to people through the Internet be regulated under the Broadcasting Act? I debated Jay Thomson of the CMPA yesterday before a group of entertainment industry lawyers. The topic was Resolved: that over the top television should not be regulated under the Broadcasting Act.The scene was in Toronto at the Law Society […]