Disruption

Terrence Corcoran take the government to task today in an article at the Financial Post.  He asserts that the government has muddled their priorities when it comes to promoting competition before liberalizing rules governing foreign investment.

The future promises at least another decade of tangled policy, court battles and regulatory chaos — and delayed innovation. No other outcome is possible so long as the government intends to set the policy agenda exactly backward. The plan, as frequently outlined by Industry Minister Tony Clement, is to first get all the spectrum allocated and settle all the competition issues, including installing a range of competing companies. Only then will the government look at changing foreign-ownership regulations.

The spectrum will allow the NBN Co to deploy a fixed-wireless network that will be capable of delivering minimum broadband speeds of 12 megabits per second to the last seven per cent of the nation outside the fibre footprint of the $36 billion national broadband network. The Australian

It is interesting to contrast the broadband situation in Canada to the one unfolding in Australia.  After years of being frustrated by limited competition in the market, the country elected a left-learning Labour government that decided to roll-out a broadband network controlled by the government.  Telstra, the incumbent telco operator, will not longer control access to the customer.  They were also compelled to sell their local loop assets to the new government controlled enterprise.

Google Inc. unveiled a digital-content service that gives publishers a bigger cut of subscription sales than a competing program introduced yesterday by Apple Inc.

Sasktel has announced that it does not plan to employ usage based billing on its wireline Internet services.

“As we said last week, bandwidth is not unlimited and that is the crux of the issue. We believe there are many potential solutions to this challenge. We’re asking for our customers’ help to build Internet options that work for everyone.” Calgary Herald

Let’s hope that Shaw is genuine in its interest to pursue “many potential solutions” instead of charging customers a punitively high bit transmission fee even when the network is not congested.

As reported at Michael Geist’s blog, The Canadian Network Operators (an association of independent ISP’s) have asked the CRTC to broaden the scope of the proceedings to examine the broad water front of wholesale high speed access services instead of a more limited review of pricing options.

Letter to Robert Morin 20110211 Final (1)

t’s not usage-based billiing but the imposition of it on ISPs that the government won’t tolerate.

...would the government prohibit them from distributing the signals of their broadcasting companies over their own networks? A little over a year after publicly warning banks to stop using their websites to sell insurance, the federal government has proposed new...