Yesterday was budget day in Canada and there were some items included in there that are technology related. That spawned this question:
Hello IT Nerd. I listened to the Canadian budget presentation and I noted that they mentioned that the CRTC was going to enforce the wireless code and there was money for broadband access in rural areas. I was wondering what you thought of that?
Thanks for the question. There were actually three tech related items in the budget. I’ll get to the third one in a second, but let’s look at the two that you mentioned:
- One of the things that was announced was that there are plans to amend the Telecommunications Act to cap wholesale domestic wireless roaming rates for voice, data and text messages. Not only that. but the budget wants to change the rules give more power to the Industry Minister and the CRTC so that they can better enforce the wireless code and other areas related to wireless.I suspect that this is a result of not being able to bring a fourth national player to the table to lower prices and improve service. So if the Canadian Government wants to lower prices for wireless service in Canada, they have no choice but to go the heavy handed route. Is it a good thing? It’s not if you’re Bell, Rogers, or Telus. Plus I’m not sure if consumers will see a difference, but we will have to see how this plays out over the longer term.
- Money is being allocated for developing rural broadband service. This is a good thing as the lack of real broadband access in rural areas creates a “have” and “have not” situation for Canadians. The problem I have with this is that this basically a re-branding of the Broadband Canada Program which was announced a few years ago. It was a three-year, $225-million investment to bring faster internet to underserved areas that ended in 2012. That never really went anywhere as far as I know. So the Canadian Government seems to have re-branded and re-announced it and they’ve increased the dollars to $305 million over five years. I think that rather than promise broadband to rural areas, I’d like to see a plan with timetables as to how it actually gets rolled out. Then I’d like to see it actually happen.
The third item in the budget is an announcement that the Government will look at ways to make sure that virtual currencies such as Bitcoin cannot be used for money laundering. This is significant as clearly governments are trying to wrap their heads around a currency that nobody controls. You can fully expect other governments to follow suit.
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This entry was posted on February 12, 2014 at 10:35 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Canada. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Hey IT Nerd! What Do You Think Of The Tech Items In The Canadian Budget?
Yesterday was budget day in Canada and there were some items included in there that are technology related. That spawned this question:
Hello IT Nerd. I listened to the Canadian budget presentation and I noted that they mentioned that the CRTC was going to enforce the wireless code and there was money for broadband access in rural areas. I was wondering what you thought of that?
Thanks for the question. There were actually three tech related items in the budget. I’ll get to the third one in a second, but let’s look at the two that you mentioned:
The third item in the budget is an announcement that the Government will look at ways to make sure that virtual currencies such as Bitcoin cannot be used for money laundering. This is significant as clearly governments are trying to wrap their heads around a currency that nobody controls. You can fully expect other governments to follow suit.
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This entry was posted on February 12, 2014 at 10:35 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Canada. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.