Industry Committee on March 26th, 2013

[Avvey Peters]

I think so.

[Bernard Lord]

Perhaps you could repeat the question, Mr. Braid.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

The question was about the current use of fibre technology and the prevalence of that particular technology today in Canada. If this is an important technology to enhancing connectivity for Canadians, how do we expand the use of this technology?

[Bernard Lord]

Obviously some of our members use that technology and have deployed that technology across the country. We think that to be able to satisfy all the needs of Canadians we'll need more than one technology. There isn't one bullet. There is no silver bullet. It's not one-size-fits-all. It's not just one solution for all of this.

If we share the objective of making sure that Canadians from coast to coast, where they live, have high access to high-speed, quality Internet at work, at home, at play, and everywhere in between, we'll need multiple technologies.

But we'd be willing to ask our members to provide us more detail so that we can help you with that and provide the details of where we're at exactly in terms of fibre deployment.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Great.

Just to continue our conversation more generally speaking here, how would you describe the state of telecommunications and wireless infrastructure in Canada?

[Bernard Lord]

Generally, I would describe it as being excellent, state of the art, leading the world in terms of speed, quality, capacity, and growth.

Just to give you a very specific example, last month at the CRTC hearing, when we were talking about a national code of conduct for wireless carriers and to help consumers across Canada, there were no discussions about the quality of the networks, the speed of networks, or dropped calls. All those things were secondary because they're taken for granted in Canada. That speaks to the quality of the infrastructure that we have from coast to coast. That's because in Canada carriers have deployed massive investments. When I'm talking carriers, I'm talking new carriers, old carriers, national carriers, regional carriers—they have all made massive investments to support wireless technology and mobile wireless technology from coast to coast, and we expect that to continue.

Another example of how things are shifting, and why I say it's excellent in Canada, is just a few weeks ago I was at the launch of the new BlackBerry Z10—

[An hon. member]

Hear, hear!

[Bernard Lord]

I thought you'd appreciate that, so that's why I mentioned it now.

During the launch, which lasted a couple of hours, they talked about all the capabilities of this device, but no one mentioned that this could actually make a phone call, because it was secondary. The fact that it makes a call is taken for granted. If you make a call from a wireless device in Canada, it's good quality, we rarely have dropped calls—it's excellent. It was all about the computing power and the mobile computer power, and how you can access high-speed broadband Internet wherever you are.

That's how quickly things are shifting in Canada. That's because of the investments that have been made and the fact that our networks are excellent. But the fact that they're excellent is not a reason to be satisfied and to simply sit on our laurels and think we've got it made. We know that to continue to satisfy the needs of Canadians and the expectations of Canadians to have the world-leading networks, the best devices, the best service on the best networks, we'll need to make more investments. That's why the issue of spectrum is so important to all of us.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Great.

With our remaining time I want to ask you about the protocol you recently established with the FCM. Congratulations on that particular milestone.

Could you elaborate a little bit on the purpose of the protocol and what benefits that will bring to municipalities across Canada?

[Bernard Lord]

I appreciate the congratulations, but those need to be shared with FCM. It was a joint effort. We reached out to them and they reached out to us.

Really, what's happening across the country is there's a massive deployment of new infrastructure and new sites, and that's needed to satisfy demand. We realize in some places there were some stumbling blocks. We wanted to improve the relationship and work more closely with local land-use authorities and municipalities. So with FCM we established this protocol, which we signed.

Basically, in the protocol our members, through our association, accept conditions that we would not have to accept under Industry Canada rules and regulations. For instance, for any site or tower that is less than 15 metres, currently under Industry Canada rules we don't need to notify the municipality and there's no need for public consultation. Under the protocol that we have signed, we accept that for every single tower and site in Canada there will be notification to the municipality and land-use authority. If the municipal authority decides that there should be consultation, public consultation, then we will follow through and have that public consultation.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you, Mr. Lord. I'm sorry the time is up, but I'm certain that you can expand on that as the meeting goes on.

Mr. Stewart now, for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And thank you to all the witnesses for coming today and the great discussion here.

Most of my comments will be aimed at Professor Middleton.

Thanks very much for taking the time to be with us today. I really enjoy your work, and I think we really need the kind of help you have to offer on our broadband and Internet in Canada.

You're saying we don't have a digital strategy. Well, I have a goal perhaps we can start with, and that is to increase the productivity of our largest cities, to make sure that our cities are competitive when businesses are looking around the world where they might locate, to make sure Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver are attractive sites to locate business from the perspective of broadband and Internet.

I'm struck by your article, “An Exploration of User-Generated Wireless Broadband Infrastructures in Digital Cities”. You give us four criteria by which we might evaluate, things that companies might find important: usability, reliability, security, and affordability.

I'm wondering about two questions. The first is, when we're thinking maybe from a company's perspective, how do our cities stack up against other cities around the world, perhaps using your four criteria, all of them, or one or two of them? And how can the federal government help to make things better?

I'll turn it over to you and maybe prod as we go along.

[Dr. Catherine Middleton]

Okay.

The answer to how we stack up against the world isn't an easy one. I'm not aware of a good source of data to measure that. Akamai, which is the contribution distribution network, broadly speaking, produces the report each quarter on the state of the Internet. They used to look at cities, so they measured broadband speed in cities, and the last time they did that was 2011. They've stopped doing it because it's just too complicated, I think.

But at that time, of the top 100 cities with broadband speeds around the world, there were two Canadian cities on that list: Victoria was in 81st position, with average speeds of 7.5 megabits per second, and Oakville was in 97th. That's really the only hard data point we have from 2011.

More recently, their 2012 third-quarter data shows that 70% of Canadian connections are above 4 megabits per second, but we're not in the top 10 internationally for average or peak connection speeds. Much of this data is consumer data, but it's still measuring the ability to connect into businesses, and so on. It seems that we don't have really good data, but the data we have suggests that Canadian cities are not world leading in terms of speeds of broadband. If you look at some places that are, they're places like Chattanooga, in Tennessee, where the municipal utility has built out a gigabit-per-second broadband network there. What that has done is it's become a huge hub for regional development. Companies from across the U.S. are moving into Chattanooga because there's this broadband connectivity there.

The question becomes, how could we do something similar here? What would be needed? Clearly, there are opportunities to build particular spaces, so build industry, industrial parks, build networks, build regions...providing this high-speed symmetrical fibre connectivity, and drawing business into that.

To the extent that municipalities can help with planning, it's not so clear exactly how the federal government drives that at the municipal level, but, clearly, any initiative that it can do to help foster that would be good.

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

Can I jump in for a second?

I did notice from your article that you said a lot of municipal efforts to do this have failed, essentially, or they've stopped doing that. Is there something we can learn from those failures as to how we might rejig investment to again bring our cities to the same level as Chattanooga, or Seoul, or somewhere else?

For example, I have EA Sports in my riding—lots of uploads, lots of downloads. They have contractors all over the world. Connectivity is going to be a huge thing; it is a huge thing for them. I want to keep them in my riding, and this is essential, I think, to make sure we have this.

Again, we've discussed a lot about the market here, but you have looked at different models. Is there something that perhaps our municipalities could do that would work?

[Dr. Catherine Middleton]

Well, one successful Canadian municipality, one of the ones we looked at years ago that is still managing to maintain good connectivity, is the City of Fredericton. Fredericton is interesting because the municipality owns that fibre ring, so they're able to take excess capacity on that. They're providing a whole lot of companies...but in taking excess capacity, they make that available to citizens. Because they own that fibre ring, they're able to decide where they're going to extend it to. It's a case of an alternative provider.

I think to the extent that the municipal governments or federal governments can help bring in some additional competition to make those services available, that's going to help.

In terms of what has worked elsewhere, I think it's that vision. In Chattanooga, as an example, it's very clear that the entire local government recognized the value of this connectivity as an economic development initiative. It wasn't just that we want faster broadband so that people can watch YouTube; it was, if we build this network, at this speed, in this community, business will move into this community.

I don't have an answer to this, but the question is, why aren't we seeing more of those types of networks being built out in Canadian communities? Certainly, we're seeing some evidence of that, but it's not across the board.

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

That's a great answer.

I'm just wondering if any of the other panellists would want to jump in on thinking again about cities and how our cities compete.

Ms. Peters, you mentioned municipalities.

[Avvey Peters]

I did, and the one example that a lot of cities are looking at is what has happened in Kansas City with Google's Fiber to the Home project. I think that's a result of a strong partnership between a company that had a vision to do something really interesting and a municipality that was open to it. So that one bears looking at, certainly.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you very much, Mr. Stewart and Ms. Peters.

Now we'll move on to Madam Gallant for seven minutes.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Lenehan, previously this committee heard that high-speed Internet would not be available to 100% of Canadians, with current technology, due to geology and topography.

Are you telling us that regardless of geography, Xplornet can connect all Canadians to high speed?

[Allison Lenehan]

Yes.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

So you're familiar with the eastern Ontario broadband fund?

[Allison Lenehan]

We're very familiar with them, yes.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

We're told that even with that money the companies cannot provide coverage to Head, Clara, and Maria, around Algonquin Park, Greater Madawaska, Bonnechere Valley, and Brudenell, Lyndoch and Raglan, even though the mother of all telephone companies has the wiring and the capability of doing so. We cannot get it.

So what, in your estimation, is the obstruction?

[Allison Lenehan]

I can't speak to what you heard before, but if you think about how we get the service to various stakeholders, home or business, we use two forms: terrestrial, from a tower; or satellite. So depending on where you are, we have look angles that can provide the service directly from—in the case of some of these more difficult to reach places—a satellite to a home or business. It does not have the obstructions you usually have on a land line or on a tower. Our elevation is such that we go above mountains and trees and point directly down. Think of it as satellite television, in terms of its availability and its look angles and how you can get service. Our look angles are very similar to that, providing service from our satellite broadband.

So between wireless towers and satellite, we cover 100% of Canada.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Even with the satellites, publishing companies—we actually have some out in the hills—say that the files are corrupted during transmission because they're just too big for a satellite to handle. Are the new satellites we're getting into, the constellation, going to take care of this?