Visionary leadership required to support Canada's digital development
Connecting remote and rural First Nations with the proper broadband infrastructure would quickly move Canada to the top of the world leaders in digital connectivity because then all communities along the route would also be properly served. But as this author notes ... this will not happen "without a more visionary mindset in government and industry."
We're quickly losing our edge in the digital world
David Crane - Oct 08, 2007
The speed at which the Internet has already transformed the world is truly amazing. The World Wide Web, which made the Internet a mass participation network, wasn't even developed until the early 1990s and only began to take off in the mid-1990s.
But the Internet today is an essential part of our economy, our social networks and even our politics and media.
Now, we are in the next phase of the Internet revolution, which will bring a truly Internet economy that could be even more transformative than what we have seen so far. It will be a world of convergence of voice, data and video into a single Internet-based system.
It will mean video on demand, Internet protocol television (IPTV), and a vast new world of sensors, meters and other devices based on radio frequency tags and readers to radically change how we deliver and monitor health services, food safety, the environment and energy.
Social networks such as MySpace, Facebook and SecondLife will proliferate.
But from an economic point of view, it should mean much greater opportunities for creativity and innovation, enabling businesses, universities and public institutions to collaborate in the commercialization of new knowledge, drawing on the best ideas from all over the world and advancing them faster in a world of open innovation.
But Canada is in danger of missing out. In the mid-1990s Canada had high ambitions for the Internet economy. Industry minister John Manley wanted to make Canada the most connected country in the world. There was a buzz that Canada was getting out in front.
But in a recent discussion paper for Industry Canada, Donald MacLean argues, "Today, our position has slipped. Canada is now in the middle of the pack – or even lower – on many general measures of digital opportunity and achievement." The leadership in both government and industry that enthusiastically drove policy and investment a decade ago has largely vanished.
Yet without more dynamic policy Canada could fall further behind, and many businesses could lose out on their ability to create new products and services, and jobs, in the Internet economy.
For example, despite highly ambitious plans in the 2001 National Broadband Task Force report for universal access to high-speed broadband across Canada, that has not been achieved and there appears to be little effort underway today to realize that goal.
While about 95 per cent of South Korean households have access to high-speed broadband, and other countries are achieving high levels of broadband penetration, Canada ranks 10th in the industrial world, with only about 50 per cent of households having broadband access.
The downloading speeds for broadband in Canada are also much slower than in the leading nations. The fastest download speed offered by the largest cable operator in Canada last year was 10 megabits per second. This compares with 30 mb/s in Japan, 26 in Norway and 25 in Sweden. The fastest download speed offered by a telecommunications company was 18 mb/s in Canada, compared to 100 mb/s in Japan and Korea.
Building a universal high-speed broadband network to accommodate the new opportunities of the next generation Internet must be a top priority. This will cost billions of dollars and so there is an urgent need to determine how it will be financed.
There is also an urgent need to develop much more Canadian content on the new Internet and to develop new applications in education, health and the environment.
We must regain our position at the front of the Internet economy race. But we won't get back to a front-running position without a more visionary mindset in government and industry.
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David Crane's column appears Mondays. Email him at crane@interlog.com