[Advisors] inventory (you didn't get the email)

[Garth Graham]

On Feb 20, 2015, at 10:51 AM, Michael Gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for this Garth. I've taken the liberty of making a few friendly edits and additions.

>> On Feb 15, 2015, at 5:22 PM, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Garth, I didn't get the email referred to below.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Garth Graham [mailto:garth.graham at telus.net] 
> Sent: February 15, 2015 7:36 PM
> To: Michael Gurstein
> Subject: Re: inventory (you didn't get the email)

> GG - No problem …. it went as below
> 
> On Feb 13, 2015, at 10:55 PM, James Van Leeuwen <jvl at ventus.ca> wrote:
>> The key question relating to all broadband communities is WHY they are investing and taking responsibility. What are the *benefits* of community ownership and responsibility?  This is the story we just aren't telling well enough in Canada. ……… As for defining the mandate of CFCB, this might be where I can get TC involved in the ongoing discussion.  What mandate would be most effective for supporting the advancement of community broadband in Canada?
> 
> GG - Attached, here’s my thoughts so far on that last question …..

Michael, in this post to the advisers list, you are referring to a document I’d shared in a sidebar discussion among those of us in TC who’d expressed an interest in following up on the topic of community ownership of broadband.  That’s okay, because your friendly edits and additions raise some question that I suspect deserve some broader thinking and attention.

As background to those questions, below is my original document, plus another copy of it highlighting your edits and additions.

In essence, in addition to making my lengthy and somewhat abstract sentences even longer, you’ve added in phrases about social equity and inclusion. Yes, you found me out.  I deliberately left out those concepts. I also deliberately left out my own particular obsession that’s everyone else’s bete noir.  That's the difference and consequences of absolutist, closed systems of governance that control through external imposition of rules versus relational, open, self-organizing systems of governance that learn or adapt as a result of internalized rule sets.  I no longer believe that the old ways of framing public policy have any validity in terms of living inside digital culture.  But I left out both perspectives, because I was beginning to draft a benefits statement that Canadians stood a chance of hearing.  

I have always believed that the best reason to own and therefore govern your own local loop is because then you will also learn what relational  governance through self-organization actually means.  But I do know with absolute certainty that there’s no way I can explain the importance of that changing sense of governance to an elected municipal council and get them to spend tax money on it.  But I was also conscious that phrases like social equity evoke the partizan politics of the left, right and centre to a degree that cause many municipal councils to raise a skeptical eyebrow.  It wasn’t only that I was appropriating an american checklist of the benefits of community ownership and adapting them to a Canadian context.  However, it could be in TC’s nature that most people would prefer that social equity was specifically addressed.

But all of this is just preamble to the real question we face (the question that I, for one, do not have an effective answer).

In Canada, the prime carriers and others have invested billions in the infrastructure of advanced networks.  Telus for example has said, "Rational investors in telecommunication technology must be assured that the regulations that will govern the new, "next generation" networks will not undermine their investment before they will commit to funding them.”  Sure, that’s a kind of blackmail or protection racket.  But, 81% of Canadian live in urban areas.  And those urban areas do have an incredible amount of installed telecommunications infrastructure.  For most Canadians, the American duopoly argument just does not apply.  There’s lots of competition (and since we still get ridiculous service, does that render the American competition argument spurious?).  For example, here in Victoria, there’s nearly 2 dozen ISPs still on the local list, depending on how you define an ISP.  So, we’re going to tell a local politician they should expend millions of tax dollars on fibre optics in parallel to all that installed infrastructure?

I believe that there are concrete benefits, if you can begin to fame your assumptions in terms of a digital economy and society.  But I personally lack the math to structure a socio-economic model that would illustrate the case.  And, even if I did gain access to useful economic modelling methods, I already know my friendly local political decision makers  would not necessarily agree with the assumptions that were built into it. I also know that the prime carriers employ hundreds of highly paid experts in order to portray those assumption as the opposite of rational.  Given the level of competition that “market-based” regulation of the telecommunications sector has produced, who is my friendly local decision-maker going to believe?

And that’s just the “known unknowns,” for generating a benefits of community ownership list in  Canadian context.
GG

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