Legal news and trends for Canadian in-house counsel and c-suite executives
Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/50875
INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT BEYOND THE Telecom companies try to balance business needs with providing services across a huge territory. By Jeremy Hainsworth WIRE With recent Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission decisions that Internet service providers must meet the increasing needs of broadband users as well as provide accessible services for declining landline phone users, telecommunications sector companies are looking for ways to find a happy medium. Indeed, the situation has left telecom companies facing chal- lenges as they work to balance the demands of business with the needs of consumers across a huge landmass. And for businesses that serve huge sections of Northern and Western Canada, those needs are at times significantly different than those facing companies serving the rest of Canada. It's a complex situation, but the goal is clear, according to the new federal minister of industry, Christian Paradis: the government needs to do its part to focus on strengthening and growing Canada's telecommunication industry. "Our govern- ment considers a digital economy strategy to be one of its most important objectives," Paradis told the Canadian Telecom Summit in Toronto on May 31. The CRTC has set targets that all Canadians must have access to broadband speeds of at least 5 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload by the end of 2015. "A well-developed broadband infrastructure will serve as a gateway for Canadians to par- ticipate in the digital economy," CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein said in a May 3 statement. "The target we have established is the minimum speed we believe consumers in rural and remote areas should be able to receive. The industry is actively responding to market demands, and we have every confidence in its ability to meet the target." Von Finckenstein noted that 95 per cent of Canadian house- holds today have access to download speeds of at least 1.5 Mbps through telephone, cable, or fixed wireless networks. Over 80 per cent of households already have access to download speeds of 5 Mbps or higher. The CRTC chairman anticipates that this target will be reached through private investments, targeted govern- ment funding and public-private partnerships. That said, the CRTC sparked outrage with a decision that essentially imposed usage-based Internet billing on small service providers. INHOUSE AUGUST 2011 • 29