Category: North America

Download Full Study A study for the Bureau of Competition Policy’s Inquiry into Competition in Broadband Services MARCH 1, 2019 | INTERNET SOCIETY CANADA CHAPTER | TIMOTHY DENTON, CHAIRMAN Introduction This paper addresses the following questions asked as part of the Competition Bureau’s Market Study on Competition in Broadband Service[1]: How do other countries manage and regulate broadband competition? Do Canadian regulations diverge in any meaningful way from those employed by other countries? Are there significant differences between Canada and other jurisdictions that explain any divergence? Are there lessons to be learned from how other jurisdictions regulate broadband?” Examples of regulatory approaches to managing and/or encouraging competition in broadband services for this paper include Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, and the European Union. All of the example countries are advanced economies and indicate that there is much to be learned in Canada from their experience and examples. At a high level, the answer to the above questions is a “yes”, as Canadian regulations and its regulatory approach diverge significantly from those employed by several other significant OECD countries. This paper explores those differences. It should be noted that differences of size or population density between Canada and other jurisdictions fail to explain these policy differences. Countries as different in population density and physical expanse as Australia, France, Korea, Japan, Finland, and Germany have embraced similar ideas as to how to get more competition and better service, and these ideas differ significantly from Canada. [1]http://www.competitionbureau.gc.ca/eic/site/cb-bc.nsf/eng/04360.html Australia Australia shares many of the features of Canada: a relatively small population (24.7 million in 2018) in a continent-sized country, heavily urbanized (89 per cent), with a very sparse population dispersed in the outback.[1] There is a wealth of information on the history of Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) in the public domain[2]. It will not be reproduced here. In the briefest of terms, Australia set out in 2006 to build a fiber-based network delivering fiber to the home from a starting point of DSL (digital subscriber line). Optical fiber was to be supplemented by satellite-delivered services in more remote areas. In contrast to Europe’s competitive 5G wireless and backhaul environment, Australia has embraced a full nation-wide monopoly in wholesale services, with competition at the retail level. In the course of time, the ambitions for the NBN have had to be pared back from fiber to the premises (FTTP) to fiber to the node (FTTN), the result of ballooning costs and intense political turmoil. It has also undergone significant criticism when compared to New Zealand’s comparable efforts to spread broadband capacity to that country. The NBN is a national monopoly governed by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) by a “special access undertaking” that deals with design, service and charging until the year 2040[3]. Any organization seeking to lay new fiber must offer services at the same price as the NBN in order to prevent cherry-picking areas. They must also provide open access to retailers. Pricing is uniform to retail service providers within each technology regardless of where the service is delivered. Extensive cross-subsidies are used to keep the price of rural services […]