In the "Please Remove Your Head From Your Posterior" department, New Democrat MP’s Charlie Angus and Brian Masse have raised the spectre of job losses, higher phone bills and increased foreign ownership if Canada liberalizes telecommunications laws. According to today’s Globe and Mail, the NDP says it is alarmed by the willingness of Canadian trade negotiators to ease foreign ownership restrictions on telephone companies.
News flash, boys… this quarter Bell Canada announced 4,000 layoffs. Insiders tell me the number is likely to be higher. North American phone companies are losing land lines at a rate of 10,000 per day right now. Canadian industry folks have told me that 1,000 per day is about right for Canada too.
Unless Canada brings telecom regulations in step with market and technology realities, there simply won’t be an industry to regulate.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry maker Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
