WCA November 2013

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Wire & Cable ASIA – November/December 2013
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 26th 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,’ 30th 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?
- 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.
Energy
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,’ 19th 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.
Statue of Liberty Image from BigStockPhoto.com
Photographer: Marty