Finding a New Telecom Structure

Rotary Phone
Our technology no longer looks the same, so why does our telecommunications structure?

In the wake of the first volley in the Internet usage-based billing wars, isn’t it time we looked at the entire telecommunications structure in this country?

Today, some 23 million Canadians are on the Internet. Millions of us use cell phones, and increasingly, smart devices that combine internet, email and messaging, and telephony in one handheld.

Technology companies are rolling out dozens of portable devices that promise to make the desktop computer mobile. Within two years, the promise of a completely mobile telecommunications and information retrieval device will be a ubiquitous reality.

Anyone with even an iota of understanding of the near future can see that it will involve the ability to access mountains of information that will not only entertain us, but also make us far smarter, innovative, and competitive in an increasingly integrated world.

So why are we clinging to a 1970s model of telecom governance?

I am referring, of course, to how Canada created a regulatory body to oversee the private companies that supplied radio and television services, and now have an absolute stranglehold on the information pipelines.

Last week’s furor over bandwidth control, and subsequent retreat by Shaw Cable from its idea to impose bandwidth limits, merely put in play a much larger issue that desperately needs discussing.

There’s an information revolution happening and no amount of foot dragging, hiding our heads in the sand, or regulatory walls will stop it. Every day I encounter another advance in digital publishing; digital information distribution; learning; experiencing art, music, and film; and even digital warfare.

Just this morning, I was offered a (free) subscription to a new online magazine about a subject in which I have great interest. It looks just like any other magazine, except it’s digital. Contrary to popular opinion, publishing and information distribution isn’t dead – it’s exploded into a hundred new forms.

The genie is clearly out of the bottle and every day there’s a new crack in the traditional structure. This means we have to look hard at what that future structure will be.

Are we to have an information distribution system that is controlled by a few mega-corps, in some kind of William Gibson-like uber-web, where you either have to display your bank balance to gain access, or take the guerrilla cyber-terrorist route?

Or will we be living in a country where life-bettering information is available to all citizens who want access to it?

Our current system was developed for a telecommunications system that dominated the last century.

How about we create a new one for this century?