That is the provocative premise behind Building Canada’s Digital Future in the Carney Era, an upcoming Ivey Business School workshop that brings together leaders from government, industry, academia and civil society to tackle an emerging question: What does digital sovereignty actually look like for Canada?

The timing could not be more important.

Artificial intelligence, quantum computing, cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, robotics and immersive technologies are becoming foundations of economic and geopolitical power. Countries that control critical digital infrastructure, data assets and AI capabilities could set the rules.

For telecom leaders and policy makers, this should raise uncomfortable questions.

Can Canada credibly pursue sovereign AI without sovereign cloud infrastructure? Are telecom networks merely communications platforms, or have they become strategic national assets? Is spectrum policy simply a regulatory exercise, or is it an industrial policy tool?

The workshop will examine how the Carney government’s broader nation-building agenda intersects with digital policy, investment and infrastructure development. Topics include future spectrum policy, trusted cloud services, digital infrastructure financing, network resilience, Indigenous connectivity, and the governance frameworks needed to foster innovation while maintaining public trust.

The workshop agenda asks whether Canada can chart a distinct path as a “digital middle power”, balancing openness to global innovation with greater control over critical technologies and infrastructure.

Will policy makers appreciate what is at stake?

We have reached the point where our conversations shouldn’t be about faster networks or lower prices. The Ivey telecom policy workshops elevate the discussion to examine economic security, competitiveness, productivity and national resilience. The next decade will determine whether Canada becomes a builder of strategic digital capabilities or a customer of technologies developed elsewhere.

For anyone involved in telecom, technology or public policy, this is a discussion worth following closely.

Plan to participate in Building Canada’s Digital Future in the Carney Era, December 2, 2026, at the Donald K. Johnson Conference Centre in downtown Toronto. Register here.

The post Canada’s Digital Future: Nation-Building or Digital Dependency? appeared first on Telecom Trends.

Apparently, the CRTC was unaware that AI capabilities already embedded in web browsers can compare prices today, with a query such as “which mobile carrier has the best offer for US roaming and 100GB of data and free nationwide Canada calling and texts?” No standardized database format required. No regulatory mandate needed.

Indeed, a few weeks ago, the UK regulator (Ofcom) released an update on its research, “Exploring what impact the adoption of AI could have on the experience of telecoms customers”. A note by Dean Bubley (Disruptive Analysis) observed that the report was released in the same week that Meta’s new Muse AI agents started helping people manage or renegotiate their subscriptions in the US.

Let’s look at another issue that is bound to arise: commitments to a typical internet speed. My September post referred readers to Ted Woodhead’s concerns about how the Commission defines “typical” when the service providers commit to delivering internet service. “The typical download and upload speeds are the speeds customers should expect to receive at all times which ISPs have committed to delivering during pre-sale.”

The speeds customers should expect to receive at all times. That is a pretty strong requirement, and may set an unachievable expectation in the minds of many consumers.

Unachievable, not because the service providers aren’t delivering what they promise. Unachievable because consumers may not be able to accurately measure the service quality being delivered.

There are many forms of interference that result in disconnecting expectations from reality. Roger Entner of Recon Analytics recently talked about problems introduced inside the customer’s household: a “label tax – the difference between what you buy and what you get”; and, a “Wifi tax – a mismatch between your router and your laptop”. Writing on X, he summarizes some of them as “Buy 5 Gbps fiber, but your motherboard tops out at 1 Gbps. Then Wi-Fi can take another ~90%, so a gig plan turns into 100 Mbps on the laptop. Who owns that experience, the ISP or the device ecosystem?”

When the subscriber runs Speedtest on their computer, how will they account for the other devices sharing their home network? Or devices that are injecting interference into their home network?

“Who owns that experience, the ISP or the device ecosystem?”

How many complaints to CCTS will be generated by this expectational mismatch? How will CCTS handle such complaints?

As I noted in my newsletter at the end of September, I am concerned that Canadian telecom policy is following a regressive, reactive path, adding regulations despite the presence of intense facilities-based competition. I recognize that the CRTC had to respond to the legislative changes to the Telecom Act enacted by Parliament in 2024. However, the Commission had flexibility under those provisions to be far less prescriptive in its decision, anticipating and even encouraging investment in more advanced AI capabilities by consumers and service providers alike.

Another missed opportunity.

The post Disconnecting expectations from reality appeared first on Telecom Trends.

A number of the initial submissions express concerns that simply combining four Codes into a single document does not make the regulatory framework simpler or contribute to reducing administrative burden. The Commission’s Working Document – a proposed unified Code – runs 33 pages.

The Canadian Telecommunications Association (CTA) cautions that the Working Document isn’t clearer or simpler. “Those objectives require the Commission to assess whether existing requirements remain necessary, proportionate and appropriate considering current market conditions, and whether they can be simplified, modernized or eliminated.”

Among the 24 questions posed to intervenors, only one (Q.12) asks “Are any other updates to the rules for early cancellation fees for wireless services needed to account for other evolving industry trends?”

Shouldn’t that be asked of every clause in the document? Shouldn’t the CRTC be looking for ways to update all of its rules?

CTA wrote:

The Commission should use this proceeding as an opportunity to modernize and rationalize, rather than simply amalgamate, the existing consumer protection framework. Consistency should be pursued where there is a sound policy basis for treating services alike, but differences should be retained where the nature of the service, the consumer issue being addressed or the costs of compliance justify different treatment. Similarly, where market and technological developments have overtaken the circumstances that originally justified a requirement, harmonization should provide an opportunity to simplify or remove that requirement rather than extend it to additional services.

Along those lines, TELUS says that choice and competition in the TV market “have rendered prescriptive protections unnecessary and largely irrelevant to consumers.” TELUS says there is no need for the new unified Code to include TV.

Similarly, certain prescriptive elements of some of the individual codes have not kept up with changes in the marketplace.

In its Working Document, the CRTC proposed to extend a $50 cap on data overage charges (that currently applies to wireless services) to Internet services. In a world of unlimited residential high-speed internet, is that really necessary?

The lowest priced iPhone in 2025 retailed for C$999 as contrasted with the highest price for an iPhone in 2015, C$769. An iPhone 18 Pro Max with 2TB of storage is currently listed at C$3,699. Amortizing such a device over two years at 0% financing costs more than $150 per month. Can’t we treat consumers like adults and let them have the option of spreading increased device costs over a longer period of time than the maximum 24 months set out by the CRTC more than 13 years ago?

In the interest of administrative simplicity, a number of submissions called for the CRTC to clearly assert federal jurisdiction over consumer protections for communications services. Otherwise, service providers will be left having to navigate the Commission’s unified Code, as well as 13 provincial and territorial regimes setting out inconsistent regulations.

I frequently write about regulatory stability and Calvinball. Last week, I wrote that government operates under different pressures than business. I’m not sure that the regulator appreciates the impact of some of its decisions on service providers operating businesses at scales of more than 10 million consumers.

There is a cumulative impact of decisions on the stability of business operations. With hundreds of retail outlets, thousands of customer service representatives, even small changes to retail consumer regulations can lead to changes in business processes, information systems, point of sale terminals, and training for customer service representatives and third party agents.

As the Commission continues down this path, we should ask, “for whom are we reducing administrative burden?”

According to the CRTC’s “Coming Attractions” page, there is a plan to issue a Telecom Notice of Consultation this week, with a “Call for comments – Reducing red tape – Review of telecommunications reporting requirements”. [Updated October 6, 2026 1:15pm with link to Notice of Consultation] The Commission might want to consider whether this should be a continuous process, inherent in every proceeding.

What is the cost of implementing administrative simplicity? Will these changes deliver value for consumers, service providers, both, or none of the above?

The post The cost of reducing administrative burden appeared first on Telecom Trends.

For more than a year, Canada’s broadcasting and telecom sectors have been told that the CRTC is “building a house.” In May, CRTC Chair Vicky Eatrides described the Commission’s agenda as a careful construction project: laying foundations, erecting framing, ensuring the structure will last. Vice chair Adam Scott had used the same metaphor in his remarks to the Scotiabank TMT Conference, emphasizing patience, sequencing, and the importance of getting the architecture right.

But metaphors only work when they illuminate reality. Increasingly, this one obscures it. While the CRTC continues to talk about building a house, the industries it oversees are watching the neighbourhood burn.

The frustration has been documented (repeatedly) by the people who appeared before the Commission, expressing both urgency and optimism.

In early January of 2025, the CRTC launched a proceeding, The Path Forward – Working towards a sustainable Canadian broadcasting system. The oral hearing took place in June 2025; the paper filings were completed a year ago.

In a widely shared LinkedIn post, Steve Jones of Stingray Radio recounts appearing at the hearing “to plead for the modernization of content regulations at Canadian radio.” His summary is blunt: “One year later. Absolutely nothing has happened.” No modernization of CanCon definitions. No movement on ownership caps. No recalibration of exposure requirements. Not even minor progress. Eight more stations have gone dark in the meantime.

Rod Schween of Pattison Media echoes the same experience in a separate LinkedIn post. He says he arrived at the hearing with “cautious optimism,” believing the Commission understood the severity of the pressures facing broadcasters. Six months later, he heard the Chair’s house‑building metaphor. He says he is still standing outside the construction site asking the same question: “How long does it take to build a house?”

These are voices representing hundreds of stations, thousands of employees, and communities across the country relying on local media for emergency information, civic coverage, and cultural expression.

The CRTC’s glacial pace is actively harmful.

Steve Jones illustrated the contrast between technological change and regulatory inertia. He observed that in the year since the proceeding closed:

• Smartphones learned to communicate directly with satellites.
• AI learned to create and buy advertising campaigns.
• Car dashboards became global multimedia platforms.

Meanwhile, “Canada’s radio content and ownership rules didn’t move a millimetre.” Stations are still regulated by the number of AM and FM transmitters they own, as though those transmitters compete only with each other and not with a global ecosystem of unregulated digital platforms.

Technology is advancing in months, while the pace of CRTC regulation is measured in years. This mismatch is a structural failure, no different from the failed regulatory hypothesis I described in May, highlighting the investment consequences of regulatory uncertainty. Capital does not wait for proceedings. It does not pause for consultations, reconsiderations, or multi‑year sequencing exercises. It flows to jurisdictions where the rules are clear, predictable, and aligned with market realities.

Canada’s broadcasting and telecom sectors need a regulator that understands that the cost of delay is not theoretical. Regulatory uncertainty and delay can be measured in shuttered stations, reduced newsrooms, deferred and reduced investment, and diminished Canadian ownership.

A commenter on the Jones post said the CRTC “eliminated license renewals to free up staff to focus on more impactful policy changes. So annnnnny year now.” The joke lands because the underlying truth is clear: the Commission’s internal processes are not producing timely outcomes.

The CRTC speeches describe a careful, methodical construction project. But a house that takes too long to build is of no use if the intended occupants don’t survive long enough to move in.

Steve Jones says, “It is as if the house is on fire, and we’ve called 9‑1‑1… and been put on hold. For a year.”

Rod Schween is equally pointed: broadcasters are standing outside in the cold, waiting for the keys to a house that should have been finished long ago.

While the CRTC talks about framing and foundations, the broadcasting industry is talking about survival. These two conversations simply aren’t aligned.

Unfortunately, government operates under different pressures than business. Government studies, consults, reports, and eventually acts. But, eventually just isn’t good enough in today’s business environment. The business world can’t wait for Canada’s regulator to finish getting its house in order.

The fires are spreading while the Commission is still fiddling with blueprints.

The post A glacial pace of regulatory change appeared first on Telecom Trends.

As my friend and colleague Ted Woodhead pointed out in his recent blog post, this policy decision raises several confusing issues for consumers and ISPs alike. Ted took aim at the Commission’s redefinition of “typical” internet speeds. While the CRTC originally flirted with defining “typical” as a speed delivered 95% of the time, they ultimately threw logic out the window and decided “typical” means a speed ISPs must deliver at all times.

As Ted noted, transforming a “typical” expectation into an absolute, 100% guarantee defies basic network physics.

But, as baffling as the “typical speed” semantic gymnastics are, that might not be the strangest part of the decision. For that, we’ll take a journey into that “wondrous land of imagination.” I refer to the new mandate requiring ISPs to publish all retail plan data on their websites in highly structured, machine-readable CSV spreadsheets. You’ve just crossed over into the Twilight Zone.

The Commission decided that a more “dynamic marketplace” would emerge, if only ISPs were to publish all their Internet plan data in a machine-readable format. That way third-party developers could build automated comparison-shopping engines using the ISP provided data. While the CRTC did not explain why ISPs should help third parties make money off ISP labour, it did determine that the data must be provided in a standardized database format. And in doing so, the CRTC looked south for inspiration, explicitly pointing to the FCC’s technical guidelines for broadband machine-readable files as its blueprint.

There is just one glaring problem: The FCC already killed those exact rules.

A month earlier (August 13), the FCC took a hard look at its own broadband label experiment and realized that backend spreadsheet files were a costly compliance headache that nobody was using:

We also conclude that the substantial compliance burdens imposed by this requirement are not justified by the minimal, if any, likely benefits for consumers. The current record offers a fuller description of the relevant compliance burdens than was available to the Commission in 2022. We also find insufficient evidence that the requirement is needed to facilitate transparency and consumer decision-making, as some commenters argue. …And there is no record evidence that any third parties have used machine-readable label content to develop pro-consumer tools.

Real-world consumers don’t shop via raw CSV data, and the expected wave of tech developers building comparison apps never materialized. So, the FCC sensibly chopped the requirement to reduce regulatory burden and costs.

Yet, the CRTC eagerly copy and pasted the homework of a neighbor who had already thrown it in the trash.

Adding another layer of unnecessary administrative nonsense, the CRTC acknowledged that US and Canadian plan metrics don’t align, so while the format for the data requirement that the FCC just eliminated will serve as a starting point, the Commission punted the final file layout to the CRTC Interconnection Steering Committee (CISC), giving them until September 2027 to “Canadianize” the already dead American technical specification. That’s right – a year from now.

By the time Canadian carriers spend millions configuring their databases to output these complex backend files, the rules will be built on the skeleton of an obsolete framework that the US abandoned for being useless. You have entered another dimension.

It is a classic case of regulatory FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) — except Canada is missing out on the actual lessons learned, preferring instead to import the administrative burdens our neighbors were smart enough to get rid of.

Investors from around the world recently met in Canada and implored Canadian governments and regulators to make Canada an easier place to invest. I have written before about those calling for “Ottawa to remove the obstacles that currently deter companies from investing in this country.”

The CRTC continues to do the opposite, adding regulations that do little to help consumers and only increase the cost of doing business.

The post The CRTC’s regulatory twilight zone appeared first on Telecom Trends.

Every few years, Canadian telecom finds a new frontier onto which old regulatory debates are projected. A recent Cartt.ca op‑ed arguing that carriers must “answer the AI wholesale question” is the latest example. It’s thoughtful on commercial dynamics, but it misfires on the role of the CRTC. AI infrastructure is not telecom infrastructure, and trying to drag it into the regulatory orbit of wholesale fibre or aggregated access misunderstands both the law and the economics.

The op‑ed’s premise is that Bell and Telus are building large AI compute clusters—true—and that smaller firms may want resale access—also true. But the leap comes when it implies that the CRTC should eventually adjudicate questions about GPU allocation, bundling, or resale eligibility. That is where the argument breaks down.

AI compute is not a telecommunications service under the Telecommunications Act. It is not carriage, transmission, or routing of information. It is a cloud‑adjacent, data‑centre‑based computing service. The fact that Bell and TELUS happen to own networks does not magically convert their AI businesses into regulated telecom offerings. If Rogers builds a movie studio, the CRTC does not regulate wholesale access to the cameras. If TELUS builds a health‑tech platform, the CRTC does not regulate wholesale access to the diagnostic algorithms. Vertical adjacency is not jurisdiction.

The op‑ed also treats AI compute as if it were analogous to wholesale broadband. It isn’t. Wholesale telecom regulation exists because networks exhibited certain characteristics associated with duplicating last‑mile access. GPU clusters do not. AI data centres are capital‑intensive, but they are not monopoly bottlenecks. CoreWeave, Hut 8, AWS, Google, and a dozen Canadian data‑centre operators are all building capacity. The market is competitive, global, and expanding. The CRTC intervenes when competition cannot emerge; AI compute is the opposite case.

Even the bundling concern is misplaced. The op‑ed warns that carriers might combine network services with compute in ways that raise competitive questions. But bundling only becomes a regulatory issue when the underlying telecom component is itself subject to tariff or mandated wholesale access. If Bell sells fibre plus GPUs, the fibre portion remains regulated exactly as it is today; the compute portion remains a commercial cloud service. The CRTC does not — and should not — set rules for how private companies package unregulated products.

The op‑ed’s commercial questions are legitimate: Will there be resale? What are the minimum commitments? How will allocation work during peak demand? But these are questions for the marketplace to answer, not the regulator. The CRTC’s involvement would not create clarity; it would create uncertainty, slow investment, and entangle an emerging sector in legacy frameworks.

Canada needs more investment in AI infrastructure, more competition, and more innovation. The fastest way to get there is to let the market work — not to conscript the CRTC into regulating something that is not, by any stretch, a telecom service.

The post Answering the AI wholesale question appeared first on Telecom Trends.

This year, Rosh Hashana, the two-day holiday marking the Jewish New Year 5787, begins Friday evening, September 11 – unfortunately coinciding with the 25th anniversary of the world’s most deadly terrorist attacks.

Over the past few years, I have talked about how Rosh Hashana (literally “head of the year”) is very different from celebrations marking the arrival of January 1 each year. Rosh Hashana is a time of reflection and introspection. We review the previous year, and look ahead to the next.

Much of what I have to say this year is unchanged from last year and I say that with regret – the situation has gotten worse, not better.

The past three years have been unlike any other in my lifetime. For Jews around the world, these are extremely troubling times. Jews in Europe and North America are actively questioning whether it is safe to wear signs that visibly identify ourselves. Canadian Jews have experienced higher levels of antisemitism than just about everywhere on the planet, and it just doesn’t seem to be getting better.

As I noted a few years ago, the first month in the Jewish calendar (Tishrei) is filled with holidays – indeed, they are religious Holy Days. Combined with Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, there are 7 holy days this month: 2 days for Rosh Hashana, 1 days for Yom Kippur and the first 2 and last 2 days of Sukkot. This year, all of those days other than Yom Kippur fall on weekends, meaning that observant Jews will not need to take a lot of time away from the office, other than possibly leaving early on the Friday afternoons. Yom Kippur begins on Sunday evening, September 20 and continues through Monday September 21. Please try to help your employees, your colleagues, your students, by making reasonable accommodations for observance of the holidays. My office will be closed for those holidays.

In 2023, the last day of Sukkot fell on October 7, a day that forever changed the world for Jews in Israel and in the Diaspora. A few weeks in advance of that day, in my 2023 post, I asked if the world was more tolerant than I experienced in my early working years. That was before we witnessed the waves of antisemitism that have continued to rise over the past three years.

Two and a half years ago, I wrote “Defending my identity”, trying to capture some of my feelings on what was then the 5 month anniversary of the horrific attacks by Hamas. October 7, 2023 marked the start of a global campaign attacking Jewish indigeneity in Israel, a global campaign that began even before Israel’s military entered Gaza to respond to the attacks. I encourage you to re-read that piece to get an appreciation of what Jews like me are feeling as we approach the third anniversary of October 7. Warren Kinsella’s book, The Hidden Hand, is “An explosive inside look into the highly-planned and well-funded global propaganda campaign to delegitimize Israel and sow the seeds of antisemitism in the aftermath of October 7th.”

Unchanged from that time is my disappointment in the failures of those in positions of authority to take meaningful steps to address issues within their purview. As I have written before:

I am tired of politicians thinking that the way to respond to antisemitic acts is to write on Twitter that “This is not who we are” or claim that “Hatred and violence against Jewish communities have no place in Canada.”. Condemnations on social media are no match for intimidation by throngs calling “Death to the Jews”. Tweets are ineffective against fire bombings and shots fired at synagogues and Jewish community centres.

Three months ago, Prime Minister Mark Carney addressed a Toronto synagogue saying, “A country in which Jewish day schools require guards, in which synagogues require barriers, in which Jewish children attend school behind perimeters of protection – is a country that is protecting its citizens but is failing its civic compact.”

The Prime Minister said,”The crisis of antisemitism in Canada today is specific, severe, and demands a targeted response.” And what was that response? He struck a committee, a new Ministerial Advisory Council on Rights, Equality, and Inclusion to be chaired by Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, Marc Miller. Although Minister Miller’s department, also know as Canadian Heritage, is certainly the right home for such a committee, Heritage has the distinction of having the highest percentage of Jewish employees experiencing discrimination (34%). Three months later, the Ministerial Advisory Council has not indicated that any actions have been taken to date.

Schools are opening with no actions taken. Canadian Jews attending services for the Holy Days will pass through security check points, under police guard with synagogues absorbing much of the cost of protecting their members. What was accomplished over the summer?

Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) has provided a shameful case study in how leaders have failed to lead. A report on two campus antisemitic events was commissioned by TMU. The report was released a few weeks ago detailing 8 actionable items recommended by the author, retired Justice Mary Lou Benotto. Rather than acting on the report and implementing any of the actions in time for the start of school, TMU followed the Prime Minister’s approach and appointed a committee to develop “an implementation blueprint”, kicking the can down the road for 7 months. As the Globe and Mail wrote in a banner editorial entitled “The betrayal of Jewish students needs to end”, “No blueprint is needed, just a spine.”

Which brings me to how you fit in to help in defending my identity.

In resigning from British Columbia’s provincial NDP caucus, Selina Robinson wrote, “I don’t need your hugs and your emojis. What my community needs however, is for you to stand up to antisemitism.”

Call out hate when you see it online. Tell your elected officials that antisemitism isn’t just a problem for Canada’s Jews. Demand action. Grow a spine.

And as I have indicated, every once in a while, I’d be OK with a hug.

I’ve observed that the journey we travel over the course of a year often takes some detours, presenting challenges along the way. “It is rarely a smooth, incident-free trip. Sometimes, it feels more like we are riding a roller coaster. Still, we press ahead, continuing to approach each day with a positive outlook, moving forward one step at a time.”

May the year ahead be marked by good health, by personal and professional growth, and may it be a year of peace for all. Shana tova.

The post Shana Tova – 5787 – שנה טובה appeared first on Telecom Trends.

I quoted Monday’s report from National Bank Financial that warned “regulators have been over-zealous in their adversarial approach to pressuring carriers on pricing strategies, wholesale access, and administration fees. This has triggered a reaction by carriers which have accelerated headcount reduction, rethought capital allocation priorities, and reduced spending on their networks.”

The CRTC has updated its Communications Market Report data to include information collected through the first quarter of 2026, confirming what carriers have warned as I discussed in “CRTC’s regulatory hypothesis is failing” (May 12, 2026) and “Promoting investment” (April 14, 2026).

Wireless Capex in 1Q26 was $510.85M, down more than 35% from the $800.80M two years earlier and less than half the Capex level in 2Q24 ($1,114.60M). Wireline Capex was $1.78B in 1Q26, down 25% from 1Q24. For months, we have heard calls for regulatory reform in order to encourage private sector capital investment. Four months ago, a Globe and Mail editorial called for “Ottawa to remove the obstacles that currently deter companies from investing in this country.”

Six months ago, CRTC Telecom Vice-chair Adam Scott spoke at an event hosted by Scotiabank. CRTC data was already showing a decline in telecom capital investment as I wrote at that time. Vice-chair Scott said “A good regulator, like a good builder, will adjust to conditions on the ground. We will need to, and are in fact required to, actively gather the evidence that will inform us as we go.”

The conditions on the ground are showing that the regulatory framework is failing to support investment. Canadians are looking for Ottawa to incentivize investment across all sectors in the economy. Telecom capital investment is foundational for AI and the digital evolution of every other business.

As National Bank Financial warned earlier this week, “Without a course correction from Ottawa and its regulators, declining network investment precludes a strong foundation on which to build.”

The post CRTC data shows telecom capital investment collapse appeared first on Telecom Trends.

For years, I have repeated the line “Canada’s future depends on connectivity.” There may be an increasing demand for investment in connectivity, but how does it get funded? What policies can create the right environment for such investments?

Over the past four decades, the wireless industry has evolved from voice to text to mobile broadband to 5G-enabled infrastructure. But the next decade will be defined an even more consequential evolution as it fuses (and infuses) wireless networks with artificial intelligence. CTIA’s report argues that AI and wireless are more than parallel innovation tracks; they are becoming a single, interdependent system, and policy must treat them as such.

Meanwhile, Canadian data shows that even as networks become more essential, the investment environment underpinning network investment is becoming more fragile.

Taken together, the reports demonstrate that North America’s digital future hinges on more than innovation. What policy frameworks will enable and encourage long-term capital investment?

CTIA warns that AI traffic will strain existing wireless networks before the decade ends, potentially creating a drag on the economy if spectrum and infrastructure gaps aren’t addressed.

The bottleneck emerges from AI’s migration out of the data centre and into devices, sensors, vehicles, and industrial systems. What began in research labs moved into hyperscale data centres. The next wave will be found in autonomous agents embedded in smartphones, robots, drones, and industrial equipment – systems relying on wireless networks for real-time sensing, coordination, and decision-making. CTIA projects AI-related wireless traffic to grow three times faster than overall wireless traffic, reaching nearly one-third of all broadband usage by 2034.

Not only is this more traffic, it’s structurally different traffic. For the past few decades, data networks were built for downstream consumption. AI flips that model. Devices will upload massive volumes of sensor data, telemetry, and video to the network, edge, or cloud. Machine-to-machine communication is expected to increase eightfold. Traffic may be bursty, event-driven, and unpredictable. Wireless networks will need to accommodate two-way, low-latency, high-reliability traffic, evolving from a consumer broadband platform into an intelligent, bidirectional, AI-native infrastructure.

The evolution of wireless networks – 6G – will be AI-native. 6G is more than a faster version of 5G. It will be built with intelligence embedded directly into the radio layer. Networks will dynamically allocate spectrum, anticipate congestion, authenticate devices autonomously, and coordinate edge-compute workloads at machine speed. Human operators cannot manage this complexity manually. A recent article in RCRTech looked at how TELUS is using its brownfield Open RAN transformation as a foundation for such a more intelligent network.

Every wireless generation has needed more spectrum, but the AI-era demands unprecedented amounts of wide, contiguous mid-band spectrum.

Beyond spectrum, an AI–wireless future requires towers, small cells, fiber backhaul, data centers, and edge compute — billions of dollars in new investment. Wireless carriers and AI companies are already among the largest investors in infrastructure, but government policy is failing to keep pace.

As the Canadian Telecommunications Association’s PwC report highlights, Canada’s wireless price index fell more than 45% between 2020 and 2026, even as prices for shelter, food, and transportation rose sharply. Canadians are enjoying the most affordable connectivity in the country’s history, while consuming more data and relying on digital services more than ever before.

Affordability has come with a cost. TD Cowen and RBC Capital Markets have both warned that Canada may have reached a point where regulatory pressure on prices is now disincentivizing investment. Public market investors are becoming less interested in Canadian telecom stocks, raising the cost of capital and increasing hurdle rates for infrastructure deployment. RBC goes further, arguing that telecom policy can no longer be viewed solely through a consumer pricing lens — not when connectivity has become one of the most important value propositions across all household spending categories.

Yesterday, National Bank issued a report entitled “Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? Without Ottawa Resetting Regulatory Policy, Is Canada Investment A House of Cards.” Indeed, who will guard the guards themselves.

Regulation by ideology is inherently sub-optimal given a myopic perspective that is out of balance for all stakeholders and for the net good of Canada. Government policy toward telecom, which once offered a dual objective of promoting facilities-based investment and competition, has of late skewed disproportionately to the latter. Beyond Ottawa advocating for this swing of the pendulum, regulators have been over-zealous in their adversarial approach to pressuring carriers on pricing strategies, wholesale access, and administration fees. This has triggered a reaction by carriers which have accelerated headcount reduction, rethought capital allocation priorities, and reduced spending on their networks. This report isn’t about outlining Canada’s next steps. It’s about missed opportunities in broadcasting regulation, unnecessary actions by the Competition Bureau, and over-reach in telecom regulation. Without a course correction from Ottawa and its regulators, declining network investment precludes a strong foundation on which to build.

Canadian policymakers need to recalibrate the balance between quality, coverage and price: affordability gains are meaningful, but long-term consumer outcomes depend on sustained investment, not just lower prices. As National Bank writes, “Pressuring telecom pricing down further won’t turn Canada’s networks into diamonds. To the contrary, the foundational layer of Canada’s economy is naturally destined to suffer in the absence of more balanced regulation.”

The next decade of digital innovation — AI, automation, robotics, smart cities, smart farming, advanced manufacturing — will be constrained or accelerated by the health of wireless investment. Spectrum availability, regulatory certainty, infrastructure deployment, and capital investment are issues impacting national competitiveness.

Sustaining world-class connectivity requires sustaining an investment environment for the network infrastructure that makes it possible.

The policy decisions made in the next few years will determine whether investment in Canada’s telecommunications networks accelerates AI innovation — or becomes the bottleneck that holds it back.

The post To drive investment in connectivity appeared first on Telecom Trends.

The research, conducted over two years with a Dene community dependent on satellite communications connectivity, documents dramatic improvements in connectivity. With the arrival of Starlink, device ownership increased significantly, Internet speeds and reliability improved, and restrictive data caps effectively disappeared. By 2024/2025, nearly three‑quarters of surveyed households subscribed to home Internet, compared to just 30% in the survey a year earlier. In measurable terms, the first‑level digital divide (access, affordability, reliability) was substantially reduced.

The research also reveals a divergence between anticipated and actual uses of improved connectivity. Before Starlink arrived, residents said they expected to use the improved Internet access for education, healthcare, and work. A year later, usage patterns shifted toward entertainment, social media, and political engagement. Online education and telehealth use actually declined. The study authors suggested concerns about losing access to in-person healthcare and education services may explain this finding.

Another piece of the study showed that residents’ economic expectations recalibrated. Interest in social media influencer entrepreneurship dropped sharply between the initial survey in 2023 and the follow-up in 2024/2025. More traditional online activities grew, such as banking, buying and selling goods, and promoting tourism. The authors describe this as “a divergence between how respondents anticipated to use newly available online applications (such as for education, healthcare and work) and how they actually use them following 1 year of improved Internet access.”

Most striking is the rise in concerns among users about online harms. Across nearly every category – cyberbullying, scams, misinformation, gambling, explicit content, youth mental health — concern increased significantly. Interview participants described Starlink dishes being brought to cultural gatherings and youth camps, raising fears that online activities may displace land‑based practices. Parents expressed anxiety about screen time, safety, and cultural erosion. The study’s findings echo global research on “adverse digital incorporation,” where improved access can expose marginalized communities to new forms of risk, exploitation, or dependency.

These insights arrive at a critical moment for Canadian telecom policy. The CRTC is actively considering consumer subsidies for northern Internet services, and governments continue to frame LEO deployment as a connectivity solution for rural and remote regions.

The study underscores that infrastructure alone is insufficient. For years, I have been writing about the need to invest in digital literacy. Without community‑led digital literacy programs, culturally relevant content, cyber‑safety training, and governance models that reflect local community priorities, improved access may not provide relief to familiar patterns of inequity. It is reminiscent of concepts I discussed in January in my post about “Digital wellbeing”.

How do we create more sophisticated content consumers?

The lesson for policymakers is clear: bridging the digital divide is no longer just about connecting households. It is about ensuring that connectivity strengthens — not undermines — community well‑being, cultural continuity, and digital sovereignty.

LEO systems like Starlink have solved the technical problem associated with affordable access. Now we need to begin work on tackling the social problems.

The post What we can learn from broadband in the remote north appeared first on Telecom Trends.