We recently presented at the Canadian Telecom Summit at the Toronto Congress Centre. This conference is a national annual gathering of the telecommunications industry where the senior level movers and shakers from around the continent and globe meet to educate, inform and network.
This year there were the regular manufacturers, service providers, integration firms and consultants that we expected.
What we didn’t expect, and found quite interesting was the number of new entrants from emerging service providers and telecom software development firms. Many of the new attendees and presenters were from outside of Canada or the US.
From our analysis, there seemed to be three major themes across most of the speakers:
1) The industry is continuing to have to change and evolve (but at an ever increasing pace).
2) There is competition from expected traditional players such as cablecos now competing with telcos, and vice versa, but there are new competitors such as Google and MSN to the traditional telcos.
3)The current Canadian regulatory framework seemed to be either strongly disliked or strongly supported, depending on who you talked to. It seemed to be the most common topic to complain or debate about at the various networking discussions we participated in.
Many of us, as analysts, discussed the rationale and reasons for the three major themes. We even had some free-flowing brain-storming discussions about what the Canadian telecom marketplace could truly be like without the regulatory framework. It sort of went like this:
If the telcos didn’t have the “regulatory burdens” associated with running their businesses, could they truly “act” in a fast, competitive way?
Would they then be able to adapt and evolve their organizations to the pace of change that the consumer electronics and computer industry has always dealt with?Let’s think of an example. Consumer and computing products are now brought to market in months, and sometimes in weeks with a lifespan of months, and most are generally available for less than one year “on the shelf” for retail distribution and sale.
Traditionally, telecom products take many months and sometimes years to develop from concept to customer availability, but generally are expected to be available for years for the consumer or business market. (Take Bell’s Primeline, as an example of a product that continues to be offered past when the supplier would like to, due to customer pressure).
This also brings up another example of differences between computing and telecom. We can’t imagine the CRTC or Industry Canada going to Dell, HP or Lenovo and saying that they must continue to sell and support a certain product “for the common good” and for fair and equal access when it is past it’s product lifecycle. So, we certainly don’t understand why this is still the case in the telecom industry.
Okay, so some of you are saying, what are they thinking?
Having come from the IT/computing side of the technology industry and “converging” over to telecom in 1993, I certainly have never totally understood, let alone accepted, why the telecom industry has their hands tied with the regulatory and government control and influence that they operate.
This seems to be particularly irrelevant in the future when you look at the world of the Internet and IP.
We enjoyed hearing The Hon. Maxime Bernier, Minister of Industry, speak on his view of the future of ICT and the telecom industry, and look forward to seeing the results of his participation and leadership in this important ministry as he moves forward.
As a Canadian telecom customer who heavily relies on sophisticated next generation solutions, we sincerely hope that the regulatory framework can be modified in a timely manner to support Canadian business and the telecom industry to help Canadian’s ICT and productivity improve.
As always, your thoughts, opinions and feedback on this topic are welcomed. Contact [email protected]
