IT’S INSTRUCTIVE, TRAVELLING to a country where spectrum policy seems focused on what’s best for citizens and not what’s best for the government itself.
In her keynote to the annual CTIA Conference in Las Vegas which we attended last week, acting FCC chair Mignon Clyburn laid out just what the Federal Communications Commission has done and is doing on the wireless front, in good detail. It was a straightforward account of what is going on with the spectrum file Stateside; concrete strategy geared towards the public interest, clearly spoken by a government official in a way that I have never heard set out so well by any public official in Canada.
The FCC has moved quickly and decisively on spectrum because as data requirements continue to escalate in size and speed, finding adequate spectrum to accommodate growth and feed the economic efficiency and prosperity broadband wireless can deliver to citizens is an enormous ongoing challenge.
Clyburn spoke of the upcoming voluntary incentive spectrum auction that involves U.S. TV broadcasters giving up their spectrum (which we also covered the last two times we were in Vegas, at the CES Show in January and the National Association of Broadcasters’ convention last month) and more importantly of a myriad other spectrum issues in front of the FCC – and what the agency is doing on those files.
“While the voluntary incentive auction proceeding receives much of the attention these days, it is hardly the only wireless engagement in our portfolio. Consistent with Congress’s directives in the Spectrum Act, we are moving forward with plans to auction 10 megahertz of spectrum in the H Block, and 55 megahertz in other bands, as required by the Act,” she said. “We not only plan to clear and reallocate spectrum. The FCC is continuing to promote new strategies to use spectrum more efficiently. We are promoting innovative ways to share spectrum, such as facilitating small cell technology in the 3.5 GHz band.”
She also noted that the FCC and the Commerce Department are meeting next month to finish recommendations on sharing in the 1755 – 1850 MHz band and that the FCC has initiated a proceeding on air to ground mobile broadband service in the 14 GHz KU band, geared at improving Wi-Fi in planes.
Of course, I know there are many good folks inside Industry Canada who are working on all of these same files and have ideas on what should and should not be done, but spectrum management should not be under ministerial control. We have a federal government with almost no overt vision on wireless or a digital economy (a strategy for which was to be released in 2010, but which the Minister of Industry says is still coming, someday), beyond perhaps, how many dollars it can bring in during the next auctions and what it might mean in votes, if they can spin decisions, or lack thereof, the right way.
Right now the ministry is lurching through a crisis it helped create. As three of the newest wireless companies teeter on the edge of going out of business, Industry Canada has slapped together a politically motivated spectrum transfer review which will only served to chill any outside investment in the sector and may well delay the 700 MHz spectrum auction. How many outside investors would put their money in Canada when the government seems to want to change the rules partway through the game? Would you want to play a game of hockey knowing the ref might decide in the third period that everyone had to use wiffle ball bats to play and maybe only a couple of designated players would be allowed to score, in nets that have been hidden?
Our Minister of Industry, Christian Paradis, has made embarrassingly few direct public announcements of what the governments goals are for wireless and spectrum policy, especially in the level of detail given by Clyburn. The last substantive thing the Minister said formally to and about the industry came in October at the International Institute of Communications Canadian chapter conference, where three-quarters of the speech are pure federal government talking points.
Thankfully, he did have a pronouncement on TV white spaces and that file is moving forward, as it is in the States.
However, that speech, as all of his ministerial speeches have been, was peppered with retread and tired political statements on the achievements of the federal government. Clyburn, who is acting chair while the FCC waits on Congressional approval of President Obama’s appointee Tom Wheeler, never mentioned the administration itself once.
“My goal during this transitional period is simple: to keep the agency moving in the right direction,” she said. “This requires three key things: openness and transparency, ensuring that the public understands and engages with the agency; expediency, processing and making decisions in as timely a manner as possible; and a continued focus on the consumer.”
This is exactly what she should be saying. This is exactly what the FCC should be doing. This is just what the CRTC is doing on the many files under its control. This is not what happens in the Minister’s office. Expediency? The Americans held their 700 MHz spectrum auction four YEARS ago and are deploying LTE all over the place with it right now.
What this shows me (and others) is that managing spectrum should fall under the jurisdiction of the CRTC and be out of the hands of the politicians altogether.
This is something former CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein knew well. Only an arms-length agency where no one is worried about the impact on polls should be permitted to manage spectrum for the benefit of all Canadians. In fact, Canada is alone in the western world with spectrum managed by the politicians. The U.S., England, Australia, France, Germany and many others, all have arms-length government bodies oversee spectrum.
“We now have fully integrated companies offering telephone, wireless, broadcasting and Internet services. It no longer makes sense to have a single regulator for wireline service providers, but two different civil regulators for wireless service providers. More to the point, the lack of regulatory coherence is an obstacle to innovation and competition, and makes it difficult to maximize economic and social benefits for Canadians,” said von Finckenstein back in 2010.
I’ll admit I don’t know what CRTC chair Jean-Pierre Blais thinks about this issue directly, but having heard him speak often enough, the quote above from Clyburn on transparency and openness and the focus on the consumer could have come directly from him.
Political dithering has left us frighteningly behind our southern neighbours and many others on spectrum development. The folks at Industry Canada have done the work. There is a spectrum road map. But as long as we have to wait for politicians to move, and to decide what's best politically, rather than what's good for Canadians, the farther behind we fall. Taking spectrum decisions from the hands of the politicians is the only way to make sure it can be managed, cleared and deployed in the way we all know it will need to be now and into the future.
