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January 21, 2012

Outgoing CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) Chairman Konrad von Finckenstein has enjoyed his years as the agency's top manager, but now he vows to make some big changes to the commission and the way it will do things in the near future.

Overall, his tenure covered a tumultuous five years in the industries he regulated-- an era of mega-mergers and exponential growth of broadcasting over the internet and wireless communications. And like any other agency or entity that is about to experience drastic changes, it still leaves a lot of questions that remain unsanswered.

Since the CRTC doesn't regulate anything on the web or in wireless communications, how will Canadian content be protected in the future? Does it need to be? How should the feds respond when telephone, cable and television companies fuse into one?

The time has come, von Finckenstein says, to face facts-- the old separation of telecom and broadcasting is obsolete.

He advocates a single act to cover both sectors and a single regulator for broadcasting, telecom and even wireless spectrum-- an area currently managed by Industry Canada, another agency ill-equipped that critics have long said needs some drastic changes in the new decade.

"Whether you talk, whether you send video, whether you send a an email, it's just bits and bytes that are being sent over the same wire," he said in an interview. "That has completely changed our traditional definition of broadcasting and telecom as we used to know it not so long ago.

"It's time to review this legislation, it's now more than twenty years old. We want a system that carries bits, carries them efficiently and gives Canadians as much access as possible and for at least the next twenty years going forward."

At age 66, the plain-speaking, career bureaucrat with the suffer-no-fools reputation is a leading voice within the Canadian government for embracing the global digital revolution.

The Conservatives promised a digital economy strategy in mid-2010 but have yet to produce a plan. There seems to be no sense of urgency. They have mused about changing foreign ownership rules for telecom firms since 2009, but have yet to move. And an auction of even more wireless spectrum is scheduled for this year, but the rules have yet to be revealed, one more time.

Industry Minister Christian Paradis says that a copyright bill was a key pillar of the digital strategy. Those changes have been discussed by Ottawa for the past 15 years, and yet there's nothing that came out of it during all that time.

And Von Finckenstein envisions something a lot broader. He points out that other countries, including Australia, France and the United Kingdom, have appointed ministers to oversee all things digital. Such a position does not exist in Canada and very little government discourse revolves around the issue.

He says the cabinet hasn't acted on his ideas yet, and shows no signs of change. "We haven't seen any movement on this front at all, but that's partly because of the political landscape of minority governments and partly because it's a very difficult issue and not easily tackled."

Von Finckenstein's time at the CRTC was punctuated by controversial decisions, tension with cabinet and the creation of several new initiatives. Although the Conservative government is firmly geared toward cutting regulations, the CRTC chairman introduced some new ones, albeit not all were that popular.

For example, last fall, he placed new restrictions on big media corporations that hold both distribution interests (cable or satellite) and broadcasting networks, ensuring they couldn't keep TV programming away from competitors.

He also forced cable and satellite companies to contribute to a fund to help support local television stations.

There were also a number of consumer-oriented initiatives-- a do-not-call list for people who dislike telemarketers, better 911 service for mobile phone users and a commissioner for telecom complaints.

And some of von Finckenstein's decisions were sent back to the drawing board by cabinet. The commission rejected wireless company Globalive's bid to launch a new cell service, deeming the company was not Canadian enough. Cabinet overturned that ruling later, however.

Even more notable was the CRTC decision to allow big internet service providers to impose usage-based limits on the smaller providers to whom they sell excess and wholesale bandwidth. Industry Minister Tony Clement was very public of his disdain for the decision, riding a public backlash against the CRTC.

Von Finckenstein now says candidly that he realized that the commission's decision needed to be revisited as he sat before a parliamentary committee trying to explain it.

"Whether I like the way the minister viewed this or not is totally irrelevant," he said. "You've got to give him credit. He was right. This was a bad decision and it needed to be reviewed and we did it."

As far as his successor goes, von Finckenstein believes he or she should come with a certain experience. "You certainly should understand governance, you should understand legal relationships and you should understand business, because, after all, this is a business, it's a business that has a huge social impact and that affects all Canadians," he said.

Von Finckenstein has some advice for the new Chairman-- keep your independent wits about you and don't get co-opted by big business. "You go out, consult and meet with as many stakeholders as are involved because, you live very much in a bubble here, so everything you look at is through the telecom or broadcasting or communications point of view," he said.

"You go to B.C., half the people there haven't even heard of the CRTC, that's very important to realize." As for his own future, Von Finckenstein says he's looking forward to some golf time and to spend more time with his grandchildren.

In other mobile news

Beginning Wednesday, existing and new T-Mobile subscribers who sign up for a premium data plan, which consists of five to ten GB of data each month can get the mobile hot-spot capability for free, but they need to ask for it.

Customers could also ask for a mobile album feature, which provides 10 GB of cloud storage for media. But again, they still need to ask for it. You don't ask, you don't get.

That's $19.99 in additional value for signing up for the higher end plans.

But the features won't be widely promoted in T-Mob stores, so subscribers still need to ask for them, just as customers have had to learn from word of mouth about the items on In-N-Out's not-so-secret menu...

And the offer is only available for a limited time, so people need to act fast.

The promotions are just the latest move for T-Mobile, which is attempting to win back customers and re-establish itself as an independent wireless carrier after its proposed merger with AT&T didn't go through. At the Consumer Electronics Show, T-Mobile CEO Philipp Humm struck a defiant tone, gleefully pointing out the freebies that AT&T had left it ($3 billion in a break-up fee, plus roaming agreements and wireless spectrum), and declaring that it was back on course as the industry's disruptive force.

The window does appear to be opening up a bit for T-Mobile to potentially reclaim some market share lost from the bigger players. AT&T, despite its push for more affordable service, decided to increase the pricing for some of its its data plans, which some believe could lead to a defection to lower priced options.

Over the past few months, AT&T has stepped up its aggressive offers in an effort to win over new customers. It is also offering more affordable phones such as the well-reviewed Nokia Lumia 710 for just $50.

Make no mistake-- T-Mobile still has an uphill battle to surmount. It's now the only major carrier without the iPhone, a gap it hopes to fill soon, but hasn't had much luck with it yet. But the wireless provider said recently that it could technically be possible with the next version of Apple's smartphone.

It's also the only major wireless carrier not yet moving to LTE technology, instead relying on its HSPA+ network, which it calls 4G but isn't. Yesterday, the ITU has clarified what it describes as true 4G service since there still seems to be so much confusion left in the wireless industry as to what really constitutes 4th generation services.

Nevertheless, T-Mobile's special discounts and promotions do help customers. A T-Mob representative said the company will offer such promotions from time to time without any national advertising, but will get the word out through digital advertising, its Web site, or in-store posters or brochures.

Many are available when you call into customer phone lines as well. T-Mobile's hot spot and album offer comes with the purchase of a 5 GB plan, which costs $89.99 a month, or a 10 GB plan, which costs $119.99 a month.

For prepaid customers, T-Mobile plans to offer a $50 mail-in rebate card for the Samsung Exhibit II or the Sidekick with the purchase of two months on a $50 Monthly4G plan. The offer starts on February 1st. A T-Mobile representative said the company plans to offer more promotions throughout the year.

In other mobile news

Mobile carriers and their partners in the wireless industry who've been long arguing that current 4G networks aren't really fourth-generation technology at all will be happy to hear that the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has finally agreed on what constitutes true 4G service, and it's a lot faster than what's on the market today.

At a meeting in Geneva yesterday, the ITU agreed on the technical specifications for IMT-Advanced-– commonly known as true fourth generation technology, and decided that LTE-Advanced and Wireless MAN-Advanced qualified for IMT-Advanced status as well.

So just how fast are IMT-Advanced technologies? ITU secretary general Hamadoun Toure said in a statement that IMT-Advanced technology will make the present day smartphone feel like an old dial-up Internet connection.

The feeling was also echoed by Francois Rancy, the director of the ITU's Radiocommunication Office, who said that "IMT-Advanced would be like putting a fiber optic broadband connection on your mobile phone, making your device at least 500 times faster than today's 3G smartphones."

Like LTE technology, the new 4G standard uses wireless spectrum more efficiently than older technologies, allowing higher amounts of data and voice to be sent over smaller amounts of mobile bandwidth. This efficiency will be even more critical as wireless operators from all around the globe struggle to cope with an avalanche of mobile data traffic.

The argument over what qualifies as real fourth-generation wireless technology and what is merely an upgraded 3G service hit a boiling point in December 2010 amid widespread marketing of WiMAX, LTE and HSPA+ as 4G services. The issue prompted the ITU to release a statement that seemed to concede that 4G had become more of a marketing term instead of a technical specification.

"As the most advanced wireless technologies today currently defined mobile broadband communications, IMT-Advanced is considered as 4G, although it is recognized that this term, while undefined, may also be applied to the forerunners of these technologies, LTE and WiMAX, and to other 'evolved' 3G technologies providing a substantial level of improvement in performance, spped and overall capabilities with respect to the initial third generation systems now deployed," the ITU said.

AT&T, Verizon Wireless and Sprint have all voiced their intentions to deploy LTE-Advanced, and Clearwire says the TD-LTE overlay for its WiMAX network will be "LTE-Advanced-ready." They're all currently marketing their respective LTE and WiMAX services as 4G, and T-Mobile USA advertises its HSPA+ service as 4G.

Sprint added last fall that its LTE-Advanced network would be considerably faster than the LTE service it's currently building. It will be interesting to see what term Sprint will call it in its marketing brochures.

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Source: The CRTC.

    This article was featured on Business 5.0 and on Tech Blog.