Tobin casts wide net in choosing members for new broadband task force

Industry minister Brian Tobin has agreed to extend the deadline of the newly appointed National Broadband Task Force until the end of May, but the unwieldy number of members on the new committee could make it difficult to reach consensus on all issues. Insiders told Network Letter late last year that faced with such a tight time frame, the task force should include no more than 12 or 15 members. Any more would be "unmanageable", according to one highly placed source. But Tobin, in one of his first acts as successor to Industry minister John Manley, decided in the end to appoint 36 members to the task force representing a broad base of sectors, including telcos, fibre companies, cablecos, equipment manufacturers, banks, universities, libraries, public interest groups, school boards and even a film production/distribution company. The task force, which Tobin introduced at a press conference in Ottawa last Thursday, will meet monthly and be divided into four working groups: infrastructure, barriers, economic benefits and social benefits. University of Waterloo president David Johnston is the chair. In an interview last October with Network Letter, Andrew Reddick with the Public Interest Advocacy Centre said he hoped the new task force would be different from its predecessor, the Information Highway Advisory Councils, which had 30 members, many of whom were direct competitors who did not always see eye-to-eye on issues. Both IHAC 1 and 2 were also headed by Johnston. "Are we dealing with an IHAC 3 here?," asked PIAC’s director of research "Hopefully not… If these guys can get their act together and sit down and figure out who’s got what infrastructure, where and at what cost they should be able to say where they’ve got broadband and dark fibre. And based on that, you should have a fairly good sense of which communities need assistance and which ones don’t." Despite the competing interests on the task force, at least one panel member is optimistic that consensus can be reached. "They’re experts at this. They’ve done it many times before," says William Linton, president/CEO of Call-Net Enterprises Inc. "Their objective is to find a way to expand the network that’s in place now, taking into account new technologies to cover the last, whatever it is, five per cent of Canadian households that are probably uneconomic." General versus detailed study Industry Canada first announced the National Broadband Task Force last October, giving it a March 31 deadline in which to present its recommendations to government (NL, Oct. 23/00). But the cabinet shuffle and election call put that on hold. The group’s new deadline is May 31. Its mandate remains the same: to identify the type of communities that likely won’t have broadband access by 2004, and what role the government should play in ensuring all communities are connected by this date. Even the chair of the task force isn’t sure how deeply his committee can explore the issue. "With these advisory groups you always have a question in the basic terms of reference and then in the early carving up of the task as to how detailed, or how general and policy-based one should be based. Obviously we’ll be somewhere in between," Johnston told Network Letter. He expects the task force will produce "a series of general objectives as opposed to a tight, specific detailed planning document." If that’s the case, "I think the pressure of time would be less than would be the case than if we were given a mandate with a high degree of specificity to it." The task force will look at what telecom infrastructure is already in place in communities across Canada, and identify the gaps. The panel will then recommend what role the government should play in ensuring rural and remote communities in particular have high-speed Internet access, in light of the CRTC’s decision on access to basic telephony and low speed access (NL, Dec. 4/00). The group is also looking at what’s preventing the private sector from serving these areas, and what can be done to create a business case for delivering broadband to smaller communities. As well, the task force will look at the rate of uptake on current high-speed use that would result in capacity constraints and how to resolve and upgrade any problems. Aliant Inc president/CEO Stephen Wetmore, who is among the task force members, says his company is making major strides in extending high-speed access throughout Atlantic Canada, but that it can’t reach everywhere. "We’ve got a lot of geography and we’ve announced in our telecommunications companies that by the end of this month we’ll have high-speed Internet to 70 per cent of our households in Atlantic Canada," he explains to Network Letter. "But there’s still 30 per cent to go and the economics of going another one per cent or eight per cent and ultimately 30 per cent is a very difficult thing to do." Wetmore is serving on the task force’s social benefits working group, which will look at community needs in terms of broadband access and applications. "How is (broadband) applicable to the needs they have in their particular community and their particular province? And what do you need to ride telehealth, e-learning, services that will allow businesses to conduct world wide commerce?," he asks. Linton says he hopes the infrastructure group – on which he sits – will consider possibilities and not just realities. And while he concedes there may be room for financial involvement from the government, his preference is to keep the expansion of broadband access in the private realm. "My purpose is to lend my expertise to make sure that we’re talking about not just present technologies but future technologies and finding the most economical way for the private sector to provide these services," he notes. "I think that’s probably the most efficient way to do it. There may have to be some incentive for us to do it but the best way is to have this just an extension of existing private networks." It’s doubtful the task force will limit its recommendations to incentives that encourage incumbent carriers to serve high-cost areas. The rapid deployment of dark fibre networks owned by municipalities and school boards, and the adoption of condominium fibre networks, is emerging as a new economic model for delivering local broadband. CANARIE Inc and its provincial equivalents have been the main proponents of those models, and they are well represented on the new task force. More information on the task force can be found on its new web site at: www.broadband.gc.ca.

Tobin casts wide net in choosing members for new broadband task force

News | 01/15/2001 5:00 am EST

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