Guest Post by Emily Tufts of LIBR 561 Information Policy class.

Leslie Shade’s presentation on Telecommunications Policy in Canada echoed many of the insights offered by an article she co-authored in 2008, From the Right to Communicate to Consumer Right of Access.  Shade emphasizes a shift from perceiving individuals as citizens to viewing us as consumers.  This shift accompanies a general trend towards neo-liberalism and its attendant ideology of free markets and deregulation.  However, the rhetoric of competition and increased consumer choice serves only to obscure the reality – that the Canadian telecommunications industry is actually an oligopoly.  Free from competition and the constraints of government policy protecting the public good, Canadian telecom giants like Bell, Telus and Rogers can busy themselves developing profitable technological infrastructure at the expense of the more intangible, social infrastructure.

The concept of “Skimming the Crème” in Telecommunications is of particular concern in Canada, a vast country with a small and geographically dispersed population.  Shade’s presentation highlighted the telecom practice of delivering “Fiber to the Rich” in the form of broadband internet service to profitable zones, such as affluent neighbourhoods.  I see this idea extending to include not only a rich/poor digital divide, but also an important urban/rural divide.

According to Statistics Canada, in 2001 more than 6 million Canadians, 20% of our nation’s population, lived outside of urban centres. (Stats Canada, 2001)  This 20% of the population often live without access to high-speed internet connectivity.  Indeed, my own experience growing up in rural Ontario highlights this problem.  On a farm only 2 hours from Toronto, my family continues to rely on dial-up connectivity for their web access.  This discrepancy in service can be explained by the low profit margins in rural areas for Telecom providers.  With a sparse population of potential subscribers, and the high cost of installing cable infrastructure in remote and often rugged terrain, there is little impetus for providers to serve the Canadian hinterland.

The consequences for rural and northern citizens are numerous.  Firstly, citizens are limited professionally.  Telecommuting, virtual conferencing, and simply emailing attached files are constrained by limited broadband connectivity.  Secondly, our children, the future citizens and leaders of our nation, are limited educationally.  Northern and rural schools without high-speed connectivity cannot provide their students with access to the wealth of learning materials available on the web.  While the internet theoretically provides access to a world of information, without high-speed internet connections, students are still limited to what is available within the walls of their classrooms.  Finally, citizens are limited democratically.  Without the ability to access and share information, citizens cannot be informed and public debate around issues of importance is silenced.

The tendency to frame telecommunications policy in terms of industry and consumerism rather than in terms of democracy and citizenship is problematic.  The public interest, without the protection of government regulation and policy, is eroded by the profit motives of the telecom giants.  Without a strong and vocal lobby for universal broadband access across Canada, the telecommunications industry will continue to put profits before people.  In response to the problem of limited broadband connectivity, the Harper Conservatives have pledged to spend $500 million to bring high speed internet access to rural Canadians.  (CBC News Story) (Conservative Party Website) One wonders, though, whether the promise of universal high speed access by 2016 will be too late for Canadians.