WCA November 2013

Statue of Liberty Image from BigStockPhoto.com Photographer: Marty

- Why would your loyal customers whom you treat with respect and never overcharge leave you for Verizon? - You have just raised your plan rates by 40 per cent for basically nothing, so why would we nag the government to help you hurt consumers even more? - If you run your companies so efficiently and are really ready for competition, then why is it you only operate in Canada? - Money doesn’t grow in some magical orchard that you own. It comes out of our pockets. But you learned that in business school...[we] hope. Quieter-running wind turbines might deliver an incidental energy benefit “Noise created by giant wind turbines is high on the list of barriers to renewable energy deployment, with NIMBY (‘Not in my backyard!’) and health complaints threatening or at least delaying a number of projects around the world.” Writing in IEEE Spectrum , a journal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Dave Levitan went on to note that noise is also related to energy efficiency. In a development he deems a ‘win all around, apparently,’ the research division for turbine manufacturing giant GE says it has devised a method of reducing noise and boosting output from the wind turbines. Working with Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on noise abatement, GE Wind Energy (Fairfield, Connecticut) utilised the Red Mesa supercomputer which, when it began operations in 2010, reached speeds of 500 teraflops that made it the tenth-fastest computer in the world. [Editor’s note: “Teraflops” is not a typo. A teraflop is a measure of computing speed equal to one trillion floating-point operations per second.] At Sandia, GE said, the Red Mesa was set to run a program (high-fidelity large eddy simulation), created by Stanford University (California), for projecting detailed fluid dynamic phenomena and resulting wind blade noise. (‘Supercomputing a Quieter Wind Turbine,’ 19 th August). After three months of monitoring these runs, the researchers believed they had gained “valuable insights that were used to assess current engineering design models, the assumptions they make that most impact noise predictions, and the accuracy and reliability of model choices.” While pronouncing this “a bit vague,” Mr Levitan was able to report a promising result from the experiment. According to GE, a turbine rotor design that is quieter by one decibel equates to a two per cent increase in annual energy yield. With 240 gigaWatts (gW) of wind power forecast to be installed around the world over the next five years, that two per cent increase could in fact be worth five gigaWatts. Energy

Telecom Fears that American giant Verizon could snap up spectrum off-limits to Canadian incumbents heats up a debate on foreign ownership Reports that the US carrier Verizon may want to buy Wind Mobile, and possibly also the struggling Mobilicity, as a way into Canada’s telecommunications market have agitated the big three Canadian providers – Bell, Telus and Rogers – prior to an auction of wireless spectrum in January. As explained by Canadian Press political journalist Jennifer Ditchburn in the Toronto Star , under the present system the federal government limits how much spectrum the big domestic (‘incumbent’) companies can buy up. Intended to encourage smaller players to come to the table, this policy would, at least in theory, stimulate competition and put downward pressure on prices across Canada. But those smaller players could be bought up by a firm like Verizon, which might then snap up the spectrum that is off-limits to the incumbents. Ms Ditchburn wrote: “Because those big Canadian firms aren’t allowed to bid on all the spectrum available, that could drive down the size of auction bids and give Verizon a potentially good deal.” On 26 th August the Fraser Institute, a Canadian public policy think tank, argued in favour of another expedient for healthy competition in the wireless market: Ottawa should do away with limits on foreign ownership and other constraints on domestic telecoms. A report cited by the Star is the work of a senior fellow at the politically conservative Fraser, who flatly rejects the assumption that handicapping the incumbents does anything to promote effective competition in the telecom sector. Wrote Steven Globerman: “Preventing large incumbent carriers from restricting competition can and should be addressed through the federal Competition Act rather than by such means as spectrum auction caps.” In Mr Globerman’s view, getting rid of the remaining barriers to foreign entrants into the Canadian marketplace would induce a more beneficial fear: that of hostile takeovers, with their powerful incentive to the Canadian incumbents to remake themselves for greater efficiency. ❖ As of Ms Ditchburn’s writing, it appeared that the incumbents had no intention of retooling either their fears or their perceived major adversary. The big three telecoms launched a “Fair for Canada” campaign and have taken out full-page ads asserting that Verizon would be getting preferential treatment under the current auction rules. ❖ A strongly contrarian “Real Fair for Canada” campaign promptly sprang up, and issued the following challenge to ‘Robellus’ — the Canadian incumbents Rogers, Bell and Telus. (‘Dear Robellus: Let’s get real,’ 30 th August): - You have over 90 per cent of the wireless spectrum already. How can you justify wanting more? How can you even pretend that that is fair to ANY new player?

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Wire & Cable ASIA – November/December 2013