Report due by February
By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – The federal government’s pledge to have wireless prices drop by 25% is expected to be studied during House of Commons hearings into accessibility and affordability of telecommunications services, starting next week.
The committee on industry will begin the proceedings on Tuesday with witnesses Telesat and Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX). Both satellite companies made news over the past two weeks as they push low earth orbit satellites to colve rural broadband coverage. The former this week formalized a $600-million agreement for the federal government to purchase satellite capacity to serve rural and remote communities with broadband; the latter last week was approved by Innovation Canada to provide fixed satellite services in Canada.
Part of what is anticipated will be discussed, according to a source, is ISED Minister Navdeep Bains’ pledge in March — as a follow-up to a 2019 Liberal campaign promise — to get the flanker brands of the country’s largest wireless service providers to reduce their retail prices by 25% in the next two years, or the department will reach in and pull some levers to make it happen. The targeted mid-range plans were for packages including 2 GB to 6 GB of data.
The committee says it does not prepare background information on its studies for the public.
Broadly, the committee will tackle broadband issues that the Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated but has existed for much longer — especially the rural-urban divide, hence the satellite providers’ appearance.
On November 5, the committee on industry adopted a motion to “recognize access to high-speed Internet and a high-quality cellular network as essential and universal for 100% of Canadians.”
The study could include telecommunications regulation and Canada’s connectivity strategy, according to the motion.
The committee will devote a “minimum of two meetings to this study before Friday, December 11, 2020, and report its findings to the House no later than February 2021,” it said.
The committee held two meetings in May related to the Covid impact that discussed broadband-specific issues. Those meetings featured Rogers, Telus, Cogeco, Xplornet, and Teksavvy, with written submissions provided by Shaw. They included how networks were holding up and some recommendations to maintain them.
The new hearings will begin a week after the federal government pledged an additional $750-million for rural broadband, making the Universal Broadband Fund worth $1.75 billion, with a fast-track stream for projects that will launch by November next year.
A big part of the federal government’s broadband plan involves LEO satellites, which serve large areas of Canada’s north where fibre lines cannot be placed. In the federal budgets 2018 and 2019, the government pledged support and more for such satellites, which orbit far closer to earth to provide better connectivity and latency reduction (the time it takes systems to communicate with each other) than traditional satellite internet.
Those who will appear on behalf of Telesat include its president and CEO Daniel Goldberg, while SpaceX will be represented by Patricia Cooper, vice-President of satellite government affairs for the company.
Goldberg delivered comments to the industry committee studying rural wireless infrastructure, which yielded a report with recommendations including addressing wireless gaps in rural Canada and improving wireless availability and reliability.
Telesat is expecting to begin deploying its constellation of satellites by the end of 2022. A company spokesperson said the company would begin providing services when the first 78 satellites are in the sky.
