Category: Other

The Harper government has just released word that it is making significant policy changes to ownership of the Canadian spectrum with respect to wireless telecom use.

The highlights:
Relaxing foreign ownership rules allows an influx of investment and capital into the Canadian wireless telecommunications industry. Wind mobile required an exemption from cabinet in order to proceed with their entry into the sector. Today’s announcement formalizes the government’s obvious inclinations towards foreign investment in telecom. However, the government does bear one strike against it as it famously nixed foreign takeover of Potash Corp two years ago to save Conservative seats in Saskatchewan. Populist protests such as last year’s Usage Based Billing imbroglio likely helped tip today’s decision. These announcements shows that the government reacts with popular opinion. The NDP will find it difficult to oppose with intellectual honesty as their nationalizing preference to larger industry directly opposed the easiest method by which prices would go down and service could improve; the NDP while backing consumer interests cannot be for telecom protectionism.

Spectrum caps will prevent companies from monopolizing ownership of the limited public good that is the wireless spectrum. What this will do is allow more companies to own parts of the Canadian spectrum, meaning increased competition and diversity of choice in the Canadian marketplace.

Rural spectrum. The government looks like it’ll force spectrum bidders to provide rural services should they wish to bid for more lucrative and profitable urban access. As Air Canada flies non-profitable routes to service major centres, the spectrum bidders will have to service what the government views as necessary infrastructure development as it sells its public good. I’m mixed on this aspect of the announcement because it will hinder deployment and innovation in an industry that has rapid technological turnover.

All-in-all a good announcement and the formalization of policy which will help introduce competition to the cartel of wireless providers that cause Canada to have among the highest wireless rates in the developed world.

From an earlier post seven days ago,

A lot of ink and broadcast bandwidth has been dedicated to 31,000 “complaints” filed with Elections Canada regarding the so-called Robocall Scandal. The opposition is trying to construct a media narrative of a broad orchestrated conspiracy. Elections Canada instead reports that 31,000 “contacts” have been reported. What’s the difference, you ask?

Well, let’s take a look at leadnow.ca’s petition. The second addressed recipient of the petition is William H. Corbett, Commissioner of Elections Canada. Today, Leadnow’s petition boasts 39,677. No small feat however, this petition was likely emailed out to leadnow’s list which has been built off of previous petitions (and campaigns). A signature petition to demand a public inquiry does not a specific complaint of voter suppression make. Indeed, for those looking for the truth in the matter, flooding Elections Canada’s inbox only makes it more difficult to find the needles of legitimate complaints (if they exist) in the ever-growing spamstack. Troubling has been the media’s tone and volume on these contacts as they are seemingly equating lazily clicking a mouse and joining (re-joining) leadnow’s mailing list with the effective filing of a police report.

And today we learn what we already knew,

Online form letters behind ‘majority’ of 31,000 robo-call complaints

Elections Canada says the bulk of the 31,000 messages it’s received from Canadians concerning fraudulent robo-calls in the 2011 ballot were merely form letters.

“The majority of those contacts were made via automated forms or online form letters,” agency spokesman John Enright said Monday.

Form letters such as those generated by activist website Leadnow.ca – which encourages Canadians to submit them – do not spell out an allegation about specific robo-calls but merely raise concern about the subject.