Keep broadband funding status quo: Quebecor

GATINEAU, Que. — When it comes to funding broadband improvements, don’t “reinvent the wheel,” representatives from Quebecor Inc. told CRTC commissioners Thursday. “In our opinion, nothing would be more effective than a recommendation from the commission to the federal government to use additional funds for an immediate relaunch of Connecting Canadians,” Videotron president and CEO Manon Brouillette said, referring to the $500 million rural broadband spending announced in last month’s federal budget. The expiring $305-million program “is one of the best practices to deploy targeted subsidies for broadband,” Brouillette said during a primarily French presentation on the final day of a three-week basic services hearing. Details for the new five-year funding envelope have yet to be announced, but the existing program is a good model that only needs a few tweaks, Brouillette said. “This model is based on technological and competitive neutrality. It is performance oriented and it avoids repeated subsidies,” she said. “It is also flexible enough and can be adapted to potential contributions from other levels of government as well as to the needs of a specific communities that are remote and dependent on satellite. Among the changes Quebecor identified as necessary would be adjusting the assessment grid to take into account both “actual experience in broadband deployment and the possibility of connecting to nearby networks” as well as ensuring selected technologies have evolution potential. With the $500 million from the federal government and matching industry funds, 100-per-cent broadband coverage with 5 Mbps download speeds and 1 Mbps upload speeds could be achieved in Canada within five to six years, Dennis Béland, Quebecor Media’s vice-president of regulatory affairs, telecommunications, said. But without any details surrounding the new funding, there is no guarantee that matching funds are even part of the plan, noted Canadian Network Operators Consortium (CNOC) president William Sandiford. “We saw the original program for Connecting Canadians was highly contested with a lot of projects that did not get funded that could have funded other parts of the country simply because there just wasn’t enough funds available,” he said, adding that the amount of money required to close the existing service gaps is “in the billions and billions of dollars.” CNOC recommended the CRTC create a group similar to that of the Canadian Telecommunications Contribution Consortium — which oversees the subsidy collected for the provision of universal voice service — to “implement at arm’s length an evidence-based funding model for large-scale and regional projects,” Lynne Hamilton, CNOC’s government relations consultant, told the panel. “By using the model that we’re putting forward, you can assume that you’re going to get the best bang for your buck and you’re going to get it where you need it as opposed to where folks want to give it.” A distribution mechanism shouldn’t resemble how funds from the National Contribution Fund are handled, argued OpenMedia during its appearance Thursday. “I think the thing that we worry about is that that decision-making power would be too centralized if it were NCF 2.0,” OpenMedia campaigns director Josh Tabish said. “We think there’s a role for intermediary organizations in communities to play in the allocation of those funds… I think an approach that supports the public interest is one that uses the knowledge of folks on the ground.” OpenMedia said it supported building on subsidy models put forward by groups such as Affordable Access Coalition. They also recommended introducing low-cost Internet packages in the same style as the CRTC’s skinny basic TV requirement. “As we’ve heard for three weeks, the status quo is not affordable,” Tabish said. “The present range of offerings in the market skews quite high for what Canadian feel they should be paying and there’s a number of indicators of this.” In his final remarks at the close of the proceeding, CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais reminded everyone of his words at the start of the hearing’s second week: that the five-person panel has already acknowledged that broadband is vital to “economic, social, democratic and cultural success of individuals and communities,” and of the commission’s desire to create a national broadband strategy. “But I remind everyone, even though I use the word ‘strategy,’ a strategy comes with action. We are looking for concrete actions to move forward,” Blais said. Participants have until May 25 for final written submissions and until June 13 to file final reply comments. — With reporting by Charelle Evelyn at cevelyn@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Keep broadband funding status quo: Quebecor

News | April 28, 2016

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Keep broadband funding status quo: Quebecor

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