• Addressing some remaining sore points in Canada’s mobile services: international roaming and Canada’s world-leading contract lengths.
• Do not let future spectrum auctions act as a deadweight tax on connectivity: Reinvest all spectrum proceeds back into Canada’s digital economy
• On not feeding the dinosaurs: be wary of legacy business models and interests capturing the digital agenda, actively invest in new models and in disruption
• Invest in policy that enables any/all Canadians to be creators and innovators
• Waive tax on the pipes: Exempt wired and wireless data service from GST/HST
• Establishing better metrics and targets to measure Canada’s digital competitiveness

LINK: Read the full text here

Fortunately for the rest of us, our friend David Eaves (who btw is on fire with prescient commentary these days) was on the scene. His thoughts here are absolutely essential reading:

But these moments aside, the more I reflect on the conference the more troubled I feel. I can’t claim to have attended every session but I did attend a number and my main conclusion is striking: Canada 3.0 was not a conference primarilu about Canada’s digital future. Canada 3.0 was a conference about Canada’s digital commercial future. Worse, this meant the conference failed on two levels. Firstly, it failed because people weren’t trying to imagine a digital future that would serve Canadians as creators, citizens and contributors to the internet and what this would mean to commerce, democracy and technology. Instead, my sense was that the digital future largely being contemplated was one where Canadians consumed services over the internet. This, frankly, is the least important and interesting part of the internet. Designing a digital strategy for companies is very different than designing one for Canadians.

…

Indeed, case in point was listening to managers of the Government of Canada’s multimedia fund share how, to get funding a creator would need to partner with a traditional broadcaster. To be clear, if you want to kill content, give it to a broadcaster, they’ll play it once or twice, then put it in a vault and one will ever see it again. Furthermore, a broadcaster has all the infrastructure, processes and overhead that makes them unworkable and unprofitable in the online era. Why saddle someone new with all this? Ultimately this is a program designed to create failures and worse, pollute the minds of emerging multimedia artists with all sorts of broadcast baggage. All in the belief that it will help bridge the transition. It won’t.

The ugly truth is that just like the big horse buggy makers didn’t survive the transition to the automobile, or that many of the creators of large complex mainframe computers didn’t survive the arrival of the personal computer, our traditional media environment is loaded with the walking dead. Letting them control the conversation, influence policy and shape the agenda is akin to asking horse drawn carriage makers write the rules for the automobile era. But this is exactly what we are doing. The copyright law, the pillar of this next economy, is being written not by the PMO, but by the losers of the last economy. Expect it to slow our development down dramatically.

Amen. The whole post is essential reading: Canada 3.0 & The Collapse of Complex Business Models

What Canada needs most of all is digital policy that actually drives disruption. Policy that maximizes the creative and innovative potential of any Canadian not just legacy Big Content. Let’s make Canada a nation of creators, not a nation of consumers. Let’s make digital policy and copyright policy that maximizes the distribution potential of the internets rather than blocking, throttling or criminalizing the tubes at the behest of walking-dead distribution models.

Give ‘em hell.

here’s the deets:

Canada’s Digital Compass will draw a community of Canadians who are passionate about digital transformation to submit and vote on ideas that could help position Canada to lead the digital economy. Weekly competitions will take place on five topic areas and winners from each competition will participate in a final showdown on May 4, 2010 where the top three ideas will be chosen. The three winners will be awarded tickets to the Canada 3.0 conference at the University of Waterloo on May 10-11, 2010 where their submissions could be presented to attendees.

Link: PWC Digital Compass

The good news is that the Government is belatedly doing the right thing. They’ve recognized that their policy aims for stimulating industry competition are at odds with the facts on the ground, and at odds with Canada’s antiquated (pre-internet, pre-mobile phone industry) Telecom Act.

One might argue they should have done this before the 2008 spectrum auction. Thereby the feds could have given all the new entrants as well as the incumbents a more fair and level playing field for raising capital. Boy are some still bitter about that.

But not to worry, there’s still the big 700Mhz spectrum auction to come. That’s the real good stuff. And wouldn’t you know it, there’s also a yawning government deficit for which some of that foreign capital may slot in just nicely.

By the way, if you think that all this extracting billions from the telco industry by spectrum auctions will ultimately lower your wireless bill, you may in fact be dreaming.

But whatever, bring on the foreigners. Giddy-up, this business is gonna get interesting.

Tony’s stock options just went way up. So did Dave’s. Those next capital calls are looking much easier now.

On the other side, look for Vodaphone or t-mobile to buy Bell/Telus by sometime tomorrow.

LINK: Canada may consider foreign control of telecoms

Brush up on the announcement and initial reactions here: Peter Nowak has excellent coverage today of the CRTC call (long time coming) on net neutrality in Canada. Michael Geist and Ars Technica offer some balanced opinion.

What everyone seems to agree on is that CRTC’s framework is reasonable, and is highly progressive relative to where the debate was just a year or more ago. We’ve argued in the past for economic solutions to ISP capacity which is what the CRTC is also stressing.

When it comes possible dirty tricks with packets, the problem will be in enforcement. It’s not clear that the framework will result in ISPs changing any of their current practices (other than increased disclosure). For those of us on teksavvy connections, now perhaps stuck for all time at 5MBps and throttled during all waking hours, that doesn’t sound too hopeful.

Under the framework if there are violations, it’s up to consumers to make a complaint. In the event of a complaint it would then be up to the CRTC to take however long it might take to follow up (for example, it’s now taken about 3-4 years since the ISPs started toying with throttling/DPI for the CRTC to address the issue of net neutrality) and when the CRTC makes a ruling they may side either way. The ISPs have a fair degree of leeway in deciding when traffic management is “needed”.

The current framework also does not apply yet to wireless. The CRTC is promising a separate ruling on wireless. This concept concerns us. If you believe in a principles-based approach to policy, it confuses us how exactly the carrier’s particular choice of last-mile technology should have bearing on that.

Remember that the end game for true innovation in Canada will be the day we can all access fat pipes with a level playing field for voice, video, data and any other service across those pipes whether they be wired, wireless or any combination.

The real problem for now that we consumers want it both ways. We enjoy our convenient cable and dsl broadband, infrastructure which is in fact heavily cross-subsidized by the economies of scale and scope of the digital tv, home phone, video on demand etc. services that your carrier delivers through that same last mile connection.

What we want is our cheap, low-up-front-cost connection to be super fat and completely open without having to watch all those stupid adds on regular tv, or pay the ridiculous cable charges or inflated home-phone fees.

There’s only a few ways we can think of around that dilemma.

a) Either someone goes out and builds a net-new fibre to the home/office at an epic scale (with either public or private investment or both, and note that some cities/municipalities have acheived this sometimes with spectacular success). We’ll defer to Mark Surman on this one (Director of the Mozilla Foundation) who told us once “listen, if you really love the net don’t protest about it, if you want the net to be awesome, don’t expect/demand/ask everyone else to make the net awesome for you, go make it awesome yourself!”

b) We learn to suck it up and pay the full cost of open connectivity infrastructure in exchange for the benefits it brings us (Think a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per home for fibre depending on density). Think of it as part of the capital value of realestate, after homeowners and landlords pay full freight for furnaces, roofing, water heaters etc. internet is just another.

c) Live with our status quo. The CRTC’s new framework is reasonable, if it can be enforced. Increased service transparency may yield more aggressive competition on consistency of service speed and quality. We shall see.

1. Consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice.

2. Consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.

3. Consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network.

4. Consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.

5. Broadband providers cannot block or degrade lawful traffic over their networks, favor certain content or applications over others and cannot “disfavor an Internet service just because it competes with a similar service offered by that broadband provider.”

6.Broadband providers must be transparent about the service they are providing and how they are running their networks.

Where is Canada on Net neutrality and digital policy whatsoever? Well there has been consultation, but we don’t have one as yet. A policy that is.

What we do have is a toothless and rather bureaucratic CRTC that doesn’t even enforce it’s own mandates. They have a mandate that does not cover wireless, they are governed by two antiquated legislations the telecom and the broadcast acts and associate regulations, large parts of which have little salience in a world of digital media. We have an Industry Canada ministry that talks about creating competition but just as keen to take the money and run from inflated spectrum auction windfalls.

What this country needs, like any of our industrialized neighbours, is a clear plan that says yes, Canada does choose to be competitive in the global digital economy, and that we have goals and metrics to suggest which policy interventions (as needed) would help us reach those goals and to measure if those policy choices (e.g. the recent spectrum auction) are working or not. Is that too much to ask?

LINK: FCC Chairman Calls for Formal Net Neutrality Rules

#Canada 3.0 Conference is on right now and tomorrow, and already is featuring a big emphasis on mobile, and did we hear someone said Canada needs an ICT strategy? WirelessNorth.ca will be at 3.0 tomorrow taking about augmented reality, teh future, and how mobile will reshape business and the public/private sectors. But you don’t have to wait for that, already the twitter stream for #can30 is fantastic, you might tune-in and add a few new followers here.

#Tonight is mobile monday in Toronto at MaRS, there are a couple seats left…. West coasties might want to catch the next momovan event later on the 22nd.

#Tonight is SaveOurNet.ca sponsored Internet town hall meeting at the Gladstone in Toronto. WN will be there too. this is of course just one part of…

#NetChangeWeek so get out there, and add your voice, your energy and your brains towards making Canada the connected, innovative innovative we could be.

Did we leave anything out?

In the world of “mobile ubiquity,” Canada lags behind.

Mobile and wireless devices have changed our world, and as they lead the next revolution – beyond 3G and into the super-speeds of 4G networks – network access will be everywhere.

But with the exception of Research In Motion, the Vigo IP Platform, QuickPlay, Marble Media, and a host of bright young micro companies, we don’t get it. Our internal market has been too small to propel a profitable local industry, data rates have been too expensive, appetite for risk and access to Canadian carriers too limited.

Canadian companies need to move fast to be prepared to embrace the next generation of networked enterprise, educational and entertainment activity. Data rates, though they are getting more affordable, are still high compared with global standards. Mobile penetration lags, and access to capital, distribution and markets are the largest inhibitors to local growth.

Application marketplaces provided by Apple, Nokia, Google, Mozilla’s Fennec and RIM are providing some opportunities for developers of content, they are not yet the drivers of economic and innovative growth. The recent expansion of carriers, and the demands of subscribers will force increased levels of competition among all carriers, which will almost certainly put downward pressure on mobile voice and data plans.

HOW DO WE CATCH UP?…

LINK: Will Canada miss the next wireless revolution? (GlobeandMail)

Sara Diamond is president of the Ontario College of Art and Design.

” A new Harris/Decima survey finds that 72% of Canadian households now have access to a wireless phone, up from 64% in 2006. Commissioned by the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA)”

it gets better

“Canadians continue to be some of the most enthusiastic mobile phone users in the world” said Bernard Lord, CWTA President and CEO.

Than you Bernard, give us a second while we try and mop up the vomit of sycophantic incredulity now splattered down our shirt fronts. As we work on that, how about a wirelessnorth challenge? We hereby declare! WirelessNorth.ca will give $100 dollars to anyone who can identify any comparable country worldwide (let’s define that as greater than 1M population and close to or greater GDP per capita to Canada) with a lower wireless penetration rate than Canada. Hint: there isn’t one. But nonetheless, we’re serious, see if you can prove us wrong.

To get you started, a few quick wireless penetration stats from select countries you may have heard of:

USA 82% penetration 2008
UK >100% 2006
ITA >100% 2006
Fra >90% 2006
Ger >85% 2006
NZ >80% 2006

You can argue that the wireless industry has been getting a lot better in Canada. But we still suck. As an industry, all we’ve achieved, is to be last place by less than last year. go Canada.

“We are obviously responding to a specific concern, which is the imposition of charges for unsolicited text messages,” Harper told reporters today in Victoria, British Columbia. “We think this is completely unfair to consumers; completely unwarranted.”

Now there’s insensible about waiving fees on unsolicited txt messages (how about the same for unsolicited telemarketer calls eh?) the catch is that Bell and Telus already claim to credit consumers for “spam” messages. So this new policy may not mean much.

Buried under the headlines though is the story with real far reaching implications:

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission would also be empowered to block “unfair charges” in the future, and the country’s telecommunications act will be amended to create a “code of conduct” for wireless services, Harper said.

To date the wireless industry has not been subject to CRTC regulation. This is huge (depending on your opinion of the CRTC’s efficacy). Sadly though the conservatives have stopped short of another likely remedy, relaxing foreign ownership rules to spur greater competition. This “is not the time to move forward” on loosening ownership restrictions says Harper.

On balance however, this announcement is progress and probably good news for Canadians. For better or worse it does seem likely that Harper will still be in his seat after this election.

At WirelessNorth.ca we’re strongly in favor the conservative (or any other party) spending less effort on quashing arts & creativity in Canada and more on building a globally competitive wired/wireless telcom infrastructure and related industries in this country.

A code of conduct to enforce reasonable consumer protections is a good idea. Starting to relax foreign ownership would have been a good idea too.

Link: Canada to Ban Fees on Some Text Messages, Harper Says