I was reflecting on the changes we have seen around data communications during the past twenty plus years that the leadership team of Fox Group has been in technology.
We have seen network technologies evolve from a blazing 300 bps in the late 1980’s (we considered this great throughput back them) to Mega and giga bits per second being provided at an individual level. We have also seen corporate branch office networks evolve from 9.6 and 19.2kpbs between offices to again mega and gigabits per second being available to link corporate offices.
We have seen the public Internet evolve from linking government, military and education researchers, scientists and educators to providing open, easy to use, reliable transport and information sharing throughout both the developed and under-developed world. This same network is also now used to transport real time messages, voice and video applications, all at relatively low costs.
All of the wired and wireless network technologies continue to evolve providing more speed and throughput at an accelerated basis. In addition, there are various wireless technologies that now offer an alternative for Internet access to geographically dispersed non-urban areas of the world.
Some of the countries have embraced the Internet by allowing the public open and free access, and even invested in provided Internet access as part of their government services. Others have continued to try to control the access and content to their citizens.
Some of the Canadian ISPs have challenged the incumbent carriers for their ‘shaping’ activities, and we wonder what affect these complaints will have on us as Canadian customers and consumers.
We hope that the CRTC and other communications regulators throughout the world recognize and continue to support the public good that can come from Internet technologies ability to educate, inform and provide communications across time and space.
The network shaping issue is a complex one to work through due to the many factors to be considered. We hope that the CRTC considers the customer impact, the need for fair and reasonable practices between suppliers and with a decision that supports and encourages profitable competitive providers for Canadian consumers and businesses.
Suffice to say we will continue to monitor this area and will be writing more articles in the the future.
I hope you have found our thoughts of value, educational, enlightening or at least humorous, and feel free me at Roberta J. Fox at [email protected] or 905.473.3369 x 1001 to discuss further.
