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Conservative Party Passes Policy Resolution on Broadband

The Conservative Party has passed a policy resolution on broadband at its policy convention. The resolution states:

The Conservative Party recognizes the vital importance of internet connectivity to full Canadian participation in global economic, social, and cultural communities. The government should create an environment that encourages private sector investment to increase broadband infrastructure, especially in rural and remote areas of Canada.

11 Comments

  1. ScytheNoire says:

    Politic-speak
    That basically says nothing about a plan, but just the same stuff every politician says. How about an actual plan? How about some real competition? How about foreign investment? How about stopping the overcharging of Canadians? We need people of action, not words.

  2. Jean-Francois Mezei says:

    The Conservative’s plan is quite clear and well defined in the Policy Direction which drives CRTC decisions. It is about letting the market develop solutions and letting competition take care of everything unless regulation is absolutely necessary.

    At the Telecom Summit, the government, through the new minister of Industry, said that be the end of the year, broadband would reach 98% of canadians. Translation: don’t expect much spending/subsidies to expand the reach of broadband.

    Just because one disagrees with such a policy does not mean that it doesn’t exist or that it isn’t clear.

  3. ScytheNoire, I don’t think a Conservative convention is the place for all that; adopting party policies is. If they started to try to actually shape Canadian laws at this convention, the Liberal Party and NDPs would have Harper’s head for completely disregarding parliament.

    This policy resolution is like a mission statement, a goal that the party is supposed to work towards. Businesses with boards do this too.

  4. One eyed man in the land of the blind. says:

    Let’s dissect this.

    “The Conservative Party recognizes the vital importance of internet connectivity to full Canadian participation in global economic, social, and cultural communities.”

    Flagrant statement of the obvious.

    “The government should create an environment that encourages private sector investment to increase broadband infrastructure, especially in rural and remote areas of Canada.”

    Stating they’re in favor of what telecom is already doing……

    So, in essence, it works out to.

    “The internet is cool, and your current telecom companies are expanding.”

  5. Neil Fiertel says:

    It would seem that broadband is ill defined first of all as DSL is equated with real broadband that is often ten times wider than DSL and compared to what is considered broadband internationally, we are a decade behind. Further, there is increased demand at peak hours for wideband data pipes which are most definitely not being addressed. Netflix and similar systems tax the data load on the pipes that are allocatd such that one might as well do something else from 5pm to midnight other than dealing with slowdowns or loss of data downloads/uploads. There needs to be serious financial incentives to expand the system so that data stricture be eliminated. To say that 98% of Canadians are able to access broadband is plain and simple..poppycock. The cost of internet access above the paltry monthly data metering in this country means that we do not have real wideband anywhere for the average person. Canada is lagging in all telecom fields and it will come home to bite us in the backside as we lose competitive advantages over other nations who have wonderful and super fast wideband services such as Korea and now UK and so forth. Even the US, hardly the best in this area leaves us in the dust in many areas. The Conservatives clearly do not understand the reality of this especially for the rural user who does NOT have access to either DSL or cable but only satellite service which is terrible or if they are really lucky there is an independent lowly local ISP provider who tries mightily in spite of insufficient capital investments to fulfill the needs of his subscribers but is held back by the big telecoms who do not provide sufficient bandwidth for rural customer needs for self serviing commercial advantage that the big bandwidth telecoms perceive they have in so doing. It is not as if we can run to the competitor. There are none and cellphones are the other example of exactly the same players doing the same thing.

  6. Naughticl says:

    This from the same group that just developed a “resolution” on protecting the traditional definition of marriage, proving the whole organization is just slightly below the threshold for contempt and have their heads shoved firmly into the dark place.

  7. What does a resolution on protecting the traditional definition of marriage have to do with tech policy? Are the mutually exclusive?

  8. It’s a statement, the plan comes from government
    I agree with most of the comments here. This is a mission statement, a broad goal for bringing high speed to everyone.

    How does this play out? At the UofT the government sponsors next gen wireless science, to the tune of 150Mbit over traditional cell service. This isn’t even 4G, it’s what comes after.

    Minister Clement, for all his not being a tech nerd, forced the CRTC to kaibosh the UBB plan when it fell into an understanding of dollars and cents. This is a position I’m confident he’ll strengthen over time.

    The part we’re missing now is business. There’s big enough markets in rural communities these days to start a larger wifi rollout, and with any luck this policy change will bring the tax and other incentives in to do just that.

  9. The main thing would be to seperate the media companies from offering internet access. Let proper tech companies not involved with media creation and distributuon roll out the network(s).

    We will then have fair pricing and full on competition.

  10. Matt: Why Wifi? Why not real fixed wireline cable service? Or even better, fiber?

  11. MacPlumber says:

    We need to educate the Canadian people very quickly.
    The Conservative Plan for everything. KEEP MOVING THE PUCK UP THE ICE,further and further away from Canada’s collective memory “The News Cycle”.The problem is the same corporate media that controls the news cycle want to control our Internet like TV and Radio. http://www.netneutralitycanada.ca