You’ve probably seen the news already, but Tony Clement has stepped up to reverse the CRTC decision on Globalive and allow their mobile brand Wind to enter the market.

More on what this means for foreign investment and the CRTC in general to come.

Pic: one of many twitter responses this morning.

• According to Tony, Canada is still effectively a series of provincial duopolies (2 carrier concentration of 80-90% in most markets), with the 3rd highest costs and least customer satisfaction in the world. What we need is competition.
• Globalive is not pleased to be missing Christmas but is pushing ahead, expanding the network, keeping staff on while they sort through with the CRTC and industry Canada
• Tony is not yet acknowledging the possibility of not launching
• CRTC’s reversal came after globalive were legally approved by both Industry Canada and Dept of Finance. The CRTC’s choice was not one of law but a subjective decision, says Tony, and we disagree with their interpretation.
• Tony played up the charity work globalive employees have been doing – “has made our culture so much stronger”
• Wind (The globalive wireless brand) plans to launch with “all unlimited plans, no contracts, no catches*”
• Other than the catch that data will have some limits, or at least large buckets (this is not so unreasonable)
• Tony is keen on cool ideas like open application platforms. Although we don’t know what that means from a carrier perspective exactly.
• Wind will launch with blackberries (the latest) and other smartphones but not the iphone yet
• Asked about whether Canada should scrap foreign ownership rules – no says they are still important from a broadcast and cultural perspective
• What Tony really means is that Globalive doesn’t need (to wait for) legislation to change for them to launch

A few great, and essentially unanswered yet questions from the audience:

1) Globalive (and the likes of Quebecor) are more clearly intent on building long-term sustainable businesses, but how well will they compete against kamakazie marketshare strategies of any of the pure new entrants who could, potentially, be intent on gaining-marketshare-at-any-cost strategies in order to flip their businesses at the end of five years? (e.g. when the spectrum exclusivity rules for new entrants come off)

2) How does the UK wireless industry (for example, pick any G8 country) perform so well and competitively without the benefit of Canadian-style foreign ownership? Why does Canada keep such good company as Burma, Iran, North Korea in sheltering our wireless industry from international competition?

You might have noticed that short of owning precious spectrum licenses, neither you yourself nor any of your entrepreneurialy minded friends, are not allowed at all to set up any kind of radio tower of your own with a range any greater than a home wifi router. Why is that again?

Ladies and gentlemen, the other side of the story:

Michael Calabresse – The myth of spectrum scarcity:

“the only thing that’s scarce is government permission to use the airwaves”

Link: The Wireless Bandwidth Crunch: Where Will We Find More Spectrum?
Link: Ecom America 2009 Video: The Myth of Spectrum Scarcity (Michael Calabrese)

Originally presented at FITC Mobile 2009 in Toronto.

From Today’s NationalPost:

Globalive Wireless has been racing to bring its offering to market as quickly as possible. By next summer, without the delays occasioned by the CRTC review, Globalive Wireless would have launched its services in many Canadian markets, employed an estimated 2,000 people and spent over $1 billion building its network.

The incumbents responded to the threat of new competition in predictable ways: they cut prices and suggested they would provide better customer service. Fair enough although one wonders whether that would have happened without the threat of more competition. Somewhat more cynically, they sought to game the regulatory system in a way that could delay and seriously complicate the introduction of wireless competition.

LINK: Wireless Wars: Barriers to new providers -Ken Campbell CEO Globalive Wireless
Funny that Rogers doth not protest. It’s almost like they know that as the one carrier selling out iphones, blackberries, and rocket sticks faster than they can back up the trucks, that they are the least of whose lunch will be eaten by the upstarts.

Anytime a vendor is granted a monopoly by the government, we should expect that vendor to manage their monopoly to maximize profits. When we license spectrum to mobile carriers, or TV networks, we are granting (or selling) them a monopoly over the management and use of a shared social resource. It is like giving the major oil companies an exclusive license to all of the oil in the US and expecting them to aggressively invest to increase the efficiency of extraction to drive down the price of gas at the pumps. The much more likely commercial reaction would be to extract slowly and manage the availability of the resource to keep the price and their profits high.

So, I for one am convinced that we do not use spectrum efficiently. Only a small portion of this important resource is in active use at any one time, and even when it is in use, most applications tie up a lot more spectrum than they need.

…

I have heard a couple of reasonable arguments against increasing the amount of open spectrum. The first is that the government needs to grant a limited monopoly in spectrum in order to create an incentive for an operator to invest in the network that will operate in that spectrum. I am not an economist but I do know the cost of network infrastructure is coming down fast, and I suspect that it may already be low enough that network operators can create business plans that are attractive to private capital. More intriguing is the possibility that networks could be built in open spectrum as a series of interconnected networks like the Internet. This would radically reduce the capital requirements for any single network node, and likely lead to the creation of very efficient network back bones just as we have seen happen with the Internet.

A more subtle version of this argument is that a government granted monopoly creates the profits that fund the research and development spending needed to increase the efficiency of spectrum use. Advocates of licensed spectrum will likely point to the absolute size of their investment in R&D and argue that they will not be able to do that unless they have a monopoly that generates the profits needed to support that R&D. The problem with that argument is that there is no evidence that that R&D is creating real consumer benefit, and there is at least anecdotal evidence (I spent my early career poking around Bell Laboratories) that large, over-funded, research groups are an inefficient way to get innovation to market.

…

The $7.2B the administration has committed to broadband infrastructure appears to be headed for shovel ready projects by established telecom carriers to deploy outdated and inefficient technology that will perpetuate their market dominance and dampen innovation. This is the wrong kind of government intervention into the market. It is not that it is not well intentioned, and I am not qualified to talk about it’s effectiveness as a stimulus, but it will not have nearly the lasting impact that it could have if it were targeted at disruptive innovation in open spectrum. Why? Because access to those dollars will be a highly politicized process that will result in the firms with the most access getting the most dollars. Those firms tend to be the incumbent telcos and cable companies who have an obligation to their shareholders to maximize their profits by defending their duopoly. They have no interest in more open spectrum that would create an incentive for private capital to finance wireless alternatives to the wires that they now control to the home.

If the administration were to create more open spectrum, they would be creating a vibrant market. They would actually be taking the politics out of the management of communications. It may be tough in these times to walk away from potential revenue from the auction of spectrum, but the administration can have a much more profound and lasting impact on the quality of life of all Americans by opening up spectrum than they every could by putting stimulus dollars in the hands of the incumbent duopoly.”

Think wifi. Wifi works one of two tiny bands of unlicensed “open” spectrum. You don’t need a license to set up a wifi network. It just works.

The world needs (a lot) more open spectrum. Unfortunately for Canada we don’t have a market big enough to go it alone, we need the US to go first to establish a large enough market for good standards, devices and markets to emerge based on open spectrum. Spread the word.

LINK: Open Spectrum is Good Policy

Cellular and Personal Communications services (PCS) have been issued by the Minister for systems operating in the bands 824 to 849 MHz and 869 to 894 MHz for Cellular and 1850 to 1910 MHz and 1930 to 1990 MHz for PCS. Authorizations were assigned through a comparative review process in 1985 and 1995. In addition, PCS spectrum licences were auctioned in 2001. All these licences will be up for renewal at approximately the same time, April 1, 2011, and will attract an annual licence fee for the next 10 year licence term.

The Contractor will be required to complete a study that determines the value of Canada’s Cellular and PCS spectrum in the radio frequency bands 824.040 MHz to 848.970 MHz, 869.040 MHz to 893.970 MHz and 1850 MHz to 1990 MHz.

Industry Canada will take this value into consideration when it determines an annual fee for the renewal of Cellular and PCS spectrum licences.

Industry Canada is aware that there are challenges when trying to determine the underlying value of spectrum. The study should give consideration to, but not be limited by, the following: different frequency bands, different geographic areas, prevailing economic conditions, method used to assign spectrum.

The study should include a description of the proposed approach, data sources and methodology used as well as the rationale for the selection thereof. In so doing, a comparative review of differing valuation practices that could have been used and the rationale for rejecting them should be provided.

The study should assess the relevance of auction results for similar spectrum, both national and international, as well as other relevant market transactions that might be used.

What is the value of spectrum. This is not an easy question. And by that we mean that it’s not an easy question. It’s easy enough to come up with any aswer 42! but, like life the universe and everything else, it’s sometimes more important to be sure we really know what the question is.

How much could the government charge for spectrum?
How much should the government charge for spectrum?
Why should the government effectively taxing spectrum, effectively a tax on the very medium of desperately needed digital infrastructure?
What do they plan to do with the money?
How does this relate to Canada’s would-be digital strategy supposedly being talked up by Clement and others?

So go ahead and put in your offer to tell the govenment what you think about that. (we have half a mind to). But, be warned your answer can’t cost the feds more than $150,000 CAD.

LINK: Study to determine the value of Cellular and Personal Communications Services (PCS) spectrum in Canada

• MTS Allstream Inc.
• Sky Surf Canada Communications Inc.
• Wair Inc.

This is a relatively narrow bit of spectrum but enough, in theory, to pump up some broadband wireless from the ground to the air. As in internet on Air Canada (and maybe westjet, porter etc.). A couple airlines offer the service in the US already (Delta, Virgin and soon Air Canada too actually). Bear in mind it’s not quite as easy to do the same thing in Canada. A) Canada is big B) There’s lots of pretty big empty parts C) there’s fewer planes in the sky to drive economies of scale. That being said, with only 2Mhz each way, maybe you don’t want to many other planes sharing your airwaves.

Those of you oldtimers (2006ish) may remember and lament the old Boeing conexion satelite internet service. Sadly it came and went before it’s time. Those were the days before *everyone* had a wifi device (or three) and, more crucially, before power plugs on aircraft seatbacks (major FAIL). But, unlike ground to air, satelite internet worked on long haul transatlantic flights quite nicely.

Previously on WirelessNorth.ca: Woo! AirCanada bringing in flight wireless

Last year, Telus asked Industry Canada to publicly review Globalive’s ownership structure (globalive-under-fire). However, their request was turned down.

Now, Telus is questioning the legality of Industry Canada’s 5-month long extensive ownership review of Globalive. They are asking CRTC to publicly re-examine Globalive, so that they can have their own say in it. More on Toronto Star here:

http://www.thestar.com/article/622883

Do they want to create roadblocks for Globalive, or delay their launch?

Tony Lacavera, Globalive’s CEO, has also posted about this on wirelesssoapbox.com. He says, “There are a lot of people in the telecom industry looking at WirelessSoapbox so if you have something to say about this latest move by Telus – I’d invite you to share it here.”

LINK: Re-examine wireless start-up, Telus urges

Here’s what we know. Globalive (our only new nationwide entrant) has partnered with Alcatel in the west and Nokia in the east to build them a cellar network. The bad news is they are, reportedly, still in phase of locating acquiring tower real estate. To make life a little more difficult, Globalive is also catching some flack for using a lot of US labour (really Alcatel’s labour) rather than hiring the local talent apparently ready/able to do the work. Take that for what you will.

This is, of course, funny because our government -over much lamentation of the incumbents- mandated something called “tower sharing” in the recent spectrum auction. Meaning that the existing carriers were supposed to share space on their towers with the new kids whenever “reasonable”, “safe” and “practical”. Unfortunately None of the new entrant CEOs we’ve spoken with have particularly optimistic about tower sharing arrangements.

You would thing that after burning through the better part of two billion in a slugfest of an auction last summer, that the hard part would be over for Canada’s new Wireless Entrants. Word is though, that the rollout of wireless coverage across a country this size isn’t so easy either. Leaving aside the obvious challenges of the vast geographies, lets not mention the global economic collapse (not a fun time to be going back to the well for more capital) the new entrants current challenge is finding tower space. Or urban spaces for new towers.

Elsewhere in the world this wouldn’t be as difficult a problem. In the US, europe and many civilized countries, a majority of towers and cell sites are owned by 3rd party companies, vertical wireless hotelling/hosting businesses.

Theoretically, it’s really nobodies interest to have a lot extra tower sites. Municipalities and locals don’t like it, towers and antennas are usually ugly. Finding real estate, building the tower, routing power and data backhaul is expensive so it makes for considerable scale advantages to share.

In Canada though, we don’t have an independent, competitive tower industry. The towers are , by and larger, all owned by the big three. They do share or trade tower space amongst themselves. By share, our sources tell us, you mean “grudgingly” and “like children”.

Contacts a certain big red carrier have been suggesting they will be doing all they can to fill up their towers with equipment, any equipment, just to not leave space for the new entrants. Don’t be surprised if you see the Rogers’ family own toaster-oven staplegunned to a cell tower near you, and so forth.

Altogether, signs don’t point to “likely” that we’ll see meaningful new wireless coverage in Canada this year.