Telecoms call for 20-year term for AWS-1, no R&D minimum

Canada’s largest wireless providers told Innovation Canada that they support its suggested 20-year term for AWS-1 and G Block Spectrum, but asked the department to eliminate a research and development requirement tied to the licences. Last month, ISED began a consultation on the renewal process for AWS-1 and other spectrum licences it auctioned off in 2008, in which it noted that those who currently hold licences have a “high expectation of renewal unless a breach of licence condition has occurred.” In comments posted on the ISED website Friday, the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA) said that since 2008, “the industry as a whole has spent $23.1 Billion in developing enhanced wireless networks.” Extending “the license terms will provide holders of such licenses greater certainty, predictability and, ultimately, incentive to further invest to the benefit of users and consumers of the services deployed in this band,” it said. The CWTA also said that it opposed the ongoing requirement that licensees invest at least two per cent of the adjusted gross revenues from the use of the licence into research and development. “In 1983, when this condition of license was first established to stimulate R&D in the infant cellular industry, it may have made sense,” the CWTA said, calling it “effectively an artifact from a previous era.” The call to remove the licence condition was backed by the big three wireless providers and Shaw Communications Inc. in individual interventions. BCE Inc. argued that a “technology-based industry in an early stage of development, as wireless was in 1991, would be expected to spend a significantly higher portion of its revenues on R&D than a large, well established industry, as wireless is today. Therefore, if was appropriate 26 years ago, it no longer remains so.” It asked ISED to eliminate the requirement from all three spectrum bands. Bell also said ISED should extend the current licences for the I Block by five years instead of the 10 proposed by ISED, noting its “complete lack of an equipment ecosystem.” Rogers Communications Inc. also said the outlook for the block is “bleak,” noting that “the industry has not been able to find a way to develop this band into a commercially successful band for many years.”

Telecoms call for 20-year term for AWS-1, no R&D minimum

Brief | July 31, 2017

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Telecoms call for 20-year term for AWS-1, no R&D minimum

Brief | July 31, 2017

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