Many in the Canadian new media industry are excited by the volley of new product announcements made earlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show, held in Las Vegas. While a new generation of convergent devices – most of them taking advantage of fast-plummeting processor prices, dirt cheap Chinese manufacturing and increasingly easy-to-use wireless networking – present an opportunity for new media content and applications developers to sell their wares and products, not everyone is convinced that the market will materialize in Canada as it is shaping up in the United States. Lagging government regulatory models that restrict content distribution over telecommunications and broadcasting pipes are being seen as an increasing threat to Canadian communications companies, and some are now calling on Ottawa to take a more holistic view of policy-making as technology revolutionizes existing models.

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