Industry Committee on March 19th, 2013

[Daniel Rubinstein]

As we mentioned in our opening remarks, we're looking at the spectrum policy of the federal government. It obviously has an impact on rural deployment of the 700-megahertz spectrum. It will as well on the 2,500-megahertz spectrum when that happens. The TV white space spectrum, which I mentioned, also has application in smaller communities.

We're looking for the government to have a spectrum policy that works in rural Canada and to make sure that the policy objectives under the Telecommunications Act and under the CRTC's mandate are in fact proven to be meaningful in rural communities. That's where we've focused our energy.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Okay.

[A voice]

Do you have any questions, Hélène?

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

If we have time, may I jump in?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Okay.

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Thank you very much for the presentation.

I was very interested when you mentioned the spectrum auction. How would you like to see the spectrum auction ruled to really address the deployment in rural and faraway regions of Canada?

[Daniel Rubinstein]

The final decision on the conditions and licence was just made by Industry Canada, but I'll go over our submission again.

We felt that the rural deployment requirement, being based on the HSPA network and also applying only to carriers that have two or more paired blocks.... Industry Canada has been very clear on this. Their understanding is that the incumbent providers are going to be in the best position to offer 700-megahertz networks because they already have an HSPA network. We understand that. But we certainly have concerns that there's no real obligation, given the way the condition of licence is written, to make sure that there will be rural deployments. So you could have an incumbent deploy largely in an urban area for the new entrants. Of course the government is trying to weigh the need for competition for new entrants against the need for rural deployment. They're under no obligation to deploy in rural areas.

The auction will have to happen. We'll have to see who wins. Then we'll have to consider whether additional mechanisms are necessary.

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Would you like to see government reinvesting the money provided by the auction into deployment to help regions that are less served?

[Daniel Rubinstein]

It's not really necessary to link the auction with a policy to ensure rural broadband. But the government and the CRTC have all stated in the past that there's a role for public sector involvement in ensuring that where market forces aren't sufficient, there's rural deployment.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you, Mr. Rubinstein.

Thank you, Madame LeBlanc.

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

I was just getting going.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

We'll now move to Mr. Carmichael for seven minutes.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, gentlemen.

I'm going to come to your recommendations. I'd like to know a little more about them.

As I was thinking about them, and having listened to our previous witnesses and the minister's announcement last week, I'm curious as to your position.

When I look at some of what the minister announced relative to tightening the rules around increasing cell tower sharing, I think that will be good for big cities, but I'm not sure what that's going to do in rural Canada. I'll be anxious to hear what you have to say on that.

He also talked about “...expanding—and extending—the requirement for wireless companies to provide roaming on their networks to competitors”.

Obviously the goal of the entire spectrum auction is to increase competition, with a minimum of four competitors in each market, which is a good thing for all users, because ideally it will mean lower costs.

He also talked about delivering on policies for transferring wireless spectrum “with the objective of promoting competition in the wireless sector.”

I wonder if you could talk to those. I think much of that is more urban-based, perhaps. With regard to your point today on rural Canada, I'd like you to expand on some of that and I'd like to get your feedback.

[Daniel Rubinstein]

On the issue of tower sharing, FCM has had the position that co-location, which is the sharing of the tower, should happen as often as possible when the community wants it to happen. In an urban setting, sometimes if the land-use planning is trying to minimize the visual impact of the tower, you may not want co-location, because it tends to be more robust and have tiers of antennas. But if the municipality wants to have co-location, then it should happen.

There are provisions in the antenna protocol that we launched a few weeks ago to improve the process for municipalities so they know if a proponent has looked at co-location options. We're happy to see that the mandatory tower-sharing regulations are moving in a direction that will ensure their objectives are met.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

Is it beneficial, then, to rural communities to start fresh?

[Daniel Rubinstein]

It could be. We haven't assessed in any great detail the impact of the tower-sharing regulations. They were announced just last week. I'm not really able to speak on whether they'll have a certain impact. But there's a potential there that is welcome.

In terms of the issue of competition, as I said, competition is important. It's important for consumers. There's no obligation on new entrants to deploy in rural areas. That's why we had the submission we did on the rural deployment requirement.

On the issue of transfers, there's a potential there. It's something we're looking at, and we may submit something in writing on the consultation over the next month.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

Okay. Maybe we can address some of your recommendations.

You touched on a couple of areas that I thought were quite interesting. Your number one was with regard to connectivity standards in the north. Talk to us a bit about that. What was the recommendation, and how much deeper did it go than just that?

[Daniel Rubinstein]

I'd encourage the committee to look at the ACIA report. It goes into specific examples of how federal departments are unable to deliver services in northern communities that they normally would in the south due to either insufficient bandwidth or lack of redundancy—or latency; if you only have a satellite connection, then you can't really do real-time entry into a database, because you have a four-second latency.

The report focuses on the need to improve that connectivity standard. We have endorsed the recommendation in that report for a holistic strategy to look at northern connectivity not in an ad hoc way, so not necessarily an Industry Canada program here or a CRTC decision there. We need to look at it in a holistic manner so that when 2016 comes, and the current set of subsidies expires, there's a comprehensive solution that takes into account that user demands are increasing every year.

Right now, usually what happens is you benchmark to a certain level, you have a program to meet that benchmark, and then you're left sort of static until the next step. There needs to be a system that accounts for that constant evolution in connectivity.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

That's interesting. I mean, when you talk about the delivery of health service, that makes a lot of sense.

As far as service parity standards between communities, between north-south, how do you equate that, particularly the north-south? I'm anxious to hear how that becomes realistic.

[Daniel Rubinstein]

Again, it's assessing what an acceptable minimum standard is. The CRTC, as I think was mentioned in the last hour, has made a decision that the minimum standard for all Canadians should be 5 megabits of service by 2015. Obviously, if you have a program that only delivers 1.5 megabits per second, which some of the programs under the Broadband Canada fund have done, there's a gap.

Obviously the minimum level is increasing, but you do want to have a plan that if in the south the standard of 5 megabits per second is a minimum, then it should be in the north.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

Yes. I'm hopeful that's a realistic objective in the short term.

[Daniel Rubinstein]

It's a necessity. For government services, for consumers, for business, it's a necessity to have that connectivity, and for it to be real-time access as well.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

Great.

What's my time, Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

You have a little over a minute.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

Okay.

You talked about the ICT development strategy. Could you give us a little more information on that?