Evidence of meeting #167 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was telesat.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:55 a.m.
Liberal
9:55 a.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks for a very good discussion. I'm glad we're able to get some additional testimony for the report we'd started.
Mr. Goldberg, I wanted to talk about the Telesat network, the constellation. Our committee went to Washington a few years back and learned about the north-south network they were launching—about 4,200 satellites, if I remember correctly. I'm wondering how that interacts with the Canadian constellation. You talked about a “fully meshed” system. Do we mesh with other countries as well?
9:55 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Telesat Canada
I can only imagine that the other constellation you're referring to is a constellation that SpaceX has in mind. These constellations are inherently global. There's not necessarily a Canadian one. There's not necessarily a U.S. one. They are backed by companies. Ours is a Canadian constellation in the sense that we're a Canadian company.
We'll need to coordinate our operations with theirs. We can operate on different portions of the radio frequencies of the spectrum; that's where most of the interference is. It's less an issue of the satellites physically bumping into each other—although that is an issue that we all have to be mindful of—and more an issue of us not creating interference to each other's signals.
9:55 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Telesat Canada
A body in Geneva that's part of the UN, that's called the International Telecommunication Union, allocates spectrum. I'm happy to say that Telesat Canada has priority rights to make use of the spectrum on a global basis, which we intend to use and our friends at SpaceX intend to use. They're secondary to us. They will need to work around our operations.
9:55 a.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
The coordination of our spectrum with their spectrum and our technology with their technology is something that we're currently engaged with.
9:55 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Telesat Canada
We are engaged. There will be engagement at the operator level, which is to say we are engaging with folks at SpaceX to make sure we don't interfere with one another, while recognizing that we are in the priority position. At the end of the day, it takes place at a government-to-government level. We'll need our regulator, our administration in Canada, ISED, standing up with their American counterparts to make sure this all works.
9:55 a.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Great. A lot of the solution will be the technology that's being employed, and—
9:55 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Telesat Canada
We are big believers that there's a lot of opportunity to innovate. Significant capital investments are required, but we can solve this issue. We're working on it.
9:55 a.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Great.
In terms of innovation, we had testimony on ground-based mesh technology. In my previous lifetime, we looked at nodes of intelligence on machines and at having redundancy on the machines instead of having some central control system where, if it fails, the entire plant goes down. If we look at ground-based mesh technology, is that something you're also engaged with—for example, phone-to-phone communications rather than phone-to-satellite communications?
10 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Telesat Canada
Yes. When we're ultimately serving mobile users, it won't be directly from the satellite to those mobile handsets. We'll provide a great big broadband pipe to a wireless tower anywhere in the world and that wireless tower will then communicate with the handsets and people's households, our own constellation. We don't think of our constellation as just a space-based constellation. It's fully integrated with a very advanced ground network. It is fully meshed, fully redundant. It also relies on artificial intelligence and machine learning in terms of how it's managing the traffic and handing off the traffic. It's a very resilient network.
10 a.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
How would Canadian innovators test new technology with you? What's the interaction?
10 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Telesat Canada
They just come to us. We're doing it now. We've already launched one of these. We're running tests with companies all over the world. We performed a test with Vodafone in the U.K., demonstrating how LEO constellations can support 5G connectivity.
We are working with Canadian companies as well, testing user terminals, testing compression technologies, testing all sorts of things. We're all very motivated to work with each other and to push the envelope of innovation. The good news is that a lot of that collaboration and co-operation are already taking place.
10 a.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Are you part of another network? I'm thinking in terms of machine technology. There was a network created that was called the Open Device Net Vendor Association. Anybody developing technology would have to be compatible with the DeviceNet technology so that Europe and North America could be on similar standards. Asia was always a little bit different.
Is Telesat part of a network or do people just directly connect with Telesat?
10 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Telesat Canada
Our LEO constellation will be fully and, I would say, seamlessly integrated with other terrestrial networks, wireless networks and fixed-line networks all around the world. Our constellation will operate within the Metro Ethernet Forum standards. These are the standards that all tier 1 telcos use to run their traffic. Our constellation will be compatible with the same standards.
10 a.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Thank you.
Mr. Ghiz or Mr. Seidl, you mentioned the regulatory confusion. Is there a regulatory gap that we need to be looking at filling with the Telesat network and ground-based networks? Do we handle all of this effectively through regulations now or is this part of the confusion that you mentioned?
10 a.m.
Eric Smith Vice-President, Regulatory Affairs, Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association
I can answer that.
That wasn't really part of the policy confusion we were referring to.
10 a.m.
Vice-President, Regulatory Affairs, Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association
In terms of our industry, our members, being able to utilize technology such as Telesat, absolutely there's the possibility. Technology is evolving. The laws of physics don't evolve, but technology does. Our members try to utilize the best technology for the best-use case. Canada's a huge country, so some people use wireless and some people use satellite. There are definitely opportunities.
10 a.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Is the CRTC fine with what's going on or are there any changes there that we need to look at?
10 a.m.
Executive Director, Telecommunications, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
No, we're very technology-neutral. We have certain levels we want to get to. We look for innovative solutions to get there.
10 a.m.
Liberal
10 a.m.
Executive Director, Telecommunications, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
Yes.
10 a.m.
Liberal
10 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
Thank you very much.
We're going to move to Mr. Albas.
You have five minutes.