TORONTO – Canada’s regulatory framework for access to passive infrastructure by telecommunications carriers needs to be modernized, according to a report released yesterday by the C.D. Howe Institute.
The report, Building Bridges for 5G: How to Overcome the Infrastructure Barriers to Deployment of Canada’s Next-Generation Broadband Networks, authored by Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP partners Leslie Milton and Jay Kerr-Wilson, and associate Paul Burbank, highlights the importance of next-generation wireline and wireless broadband networks for Canada’s economic growth and for social inclusion and post-pandemic recovery.
“A critical input to the effective and efficient deployment and expansion of these next-generation telecommunications networks is timely access, on reasonable terms and conditions, to the “passive infrastructure” that supports wireline and wireless telecommunications network facilities and the land on which these structures and facilities are deployed,” the report says.
While 5G will require use of traditional passive infrastructure, it will also “require the dense deployment of small antennae or “small cells” on non-traditional supporting infrastructure, including buildings and all manner of street furniture such as streetlights, signs and bus shelters, as well as telephone and electric utility poles,” the report explains.
“Each supporting structure must also be connected to fibre-optic cables in order to transport data at lighting speed, with ultra-low latency and ultra-high reliability.”
The problem is Canada’s regulatory framework for carrier access to passive infrastructure is largely unchanged from when it was established with monopoly telegraph and telephone infrastructure in mind.
“Not surprisingly, this regime focuses on the construction of “transmission lines.” A regime that does not expressly capture wireless infrastructure is plainly inadequate at this juncture,” the report says.
This presents a barrier to the construction of next-generation telecommunications infrastructure, according to the authors who go on to make seven recommendations on how to modernize and streamline the regulatory framework.
Among the recommendations the report makes is that the Telecommunications Act be amended “to make it explicit that carriers’ “qualified right of access” – that is, the right of carriers under the Act to access rights-of-way and other places for the construction, operation and maintenance of a transmission line – and the jurisdiction of the CRTC over such access encompass both wireline and wireless transmission facilities.”
Most of the report’s other recommendations also involve amendments the Telecommunications Act. Many of them are along the lines of clarifying the CRTC “has explicit authority to address access issues involving both wireline and wireless facilities, on all forms of support structures and on all lands,” the report says.
The authors also recommend a consultation “on amendments to Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada’s antenna-sitting procedures to address small cell deployment and delays in antenna siting.”
If the recommendations are implemented, they will “eliminate many of the obstacles carriers face when expanding their networks, and facilitate timely and cost-effective construction of the communications system that will power Canada’s post-pandemic recovery and economic and social prosperity in the digital economy,” the authors say.
To read the full report, please click here.
