IIC 2011: Broadband wholesale access regimes; Still relevant?

By Perry Hoffman

OTTAWA - A Canadian and U.S. lawyer squared off on billing for bandwidth at the International Institute of Communications Canada conference yesterday with the American lawyer arguing that while wholesale access is a good thing, a government mandated regime may not be. Bryan Tramont, managing partner at Washington D.C.-based Wilkenson Barker Knauer, pointed to a 2010 study of 16 European countries and their efforts with respect to network unbundling and the impact on broadband penetration rates. “ found no correlation between the aggressiveness of unbundling and the broadband penetration rates when you control for other variables…like computer adoption and density,”...