TORONTO – Since we live in an age of convergence, where more and more lines are blurring in telecom and media, it doesn’t make much sense to open one sector to foreign investment while keeping that same door closed to the other.
That was part of the message CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein carried to delegates of the Canadian Telecom Summit on Tuesday morning. “I don’t think you can meaningfully separate broadcast and telecom in the age of convergence,” he told conference co-chair Mark Goldberg in the “fireside chat” format.
Foreign investment has been the hot issue at this year’s CTS, given Industry Minister Tony Clement’s announcement on Monday and the follow-up discussion of the Regulatory Blockbuster panel on Tuesday.
While the cable, radio, television and telecom industry is set to tackle (again) the idea of increasing the amount of foreign investment allowed in Canadian telecom companies, cable operators are pushing to make sure they, too, will benefit from any new investment or ownership rules.
(For some very recent background on that, click here, too.)
Cable, of course, is governed under the Broadcasting Act, which is focused on cultural protection, while telcos fall under the Telecom Act. It won’t be easy to open up the rules for just one, given both offer the same services as the other. And, if you open it up for cable, why leave broadcasters out, as Rogers, for example, has espoused.
Von Finckenstein was concerned (as many Regulators are) about the “unintended consequences” of maintaining historic investment restrictions on broadcasters and not cable, satellite or telecom.
“To separate them – you can do it conceptually and legally, but really doing it against the way normal business operates,” he added.
Some of those unintended consequences, some say, would be dramatically weaker broadcasters, unable to access the same level of foreign capital to spur growth in the same way the companies they rely on for transmission would be able.
A big part of the problem, insists von Finckenstein, is the fact we still have three acts (the two mentioned above, plus the Radiocommunication Act) and two agencies (CRTC and Industry Canada) overseeing cable, radio, television and telecom. As the chair has said numerous times over many months, that has to change.
“It’s inefficient and doesn’t make sense,” he said of the current legislation, which was written based on how “we can control access.” The internet and all it enables means “our control of access is fading as we speak.”
