WCA January 2015

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Wire & Cable ASIA – January/February 2015
From the Americas
resulted from compromises between the two sides, as
well as higher taxes on wealthy individuals and temporary
stimulus measures.”
Even so, many economists believe that the spending
cuts dictated by the compromises exerted a fiscal drag
that slowed the economic recovery and kept pressure on
the central bank – the Federal Reserve – to maintain its
expansive monetary policies to offset the austerity moves.
 In a joint statement on 15th October, Treasury Secretary
Jacob J Lew and Shaun Donovan, the budget director,
reiterated the president’s call for additional government
spending. The opposition Republican party has resisted
that call, given its contention that Mr Obama’s 2009-10
stimulus package failed.
Clearly, it did not.
Telecom
Canadian regional carriers protest
wholesale roaming rate caps that
were intended to help them
MTS Inc, Saskatchewan Telecommunications Holding Corp
and Tbaytel are asking the Canadian Radio-Television and
Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) for an adjustment
of wholesale roaming rates.
The three regional carriers say that fee limits imposed by the
regulator allow dominant wireless service providers to take
advantage of the networks of their smaller competitors.
The Canadian government capped the wholesale roaming
rates at no higher than a given carrier’s charge to its retail
customers. The CRTC has been looking into whether
those rates (charged by mobile carriers to other wireless
companies when their customers roam outside the home
network) ensure adequate competition in the market.
The caps on roaming charges were meant to assist new
entrants to broaden their coverage and negotiate lower
roaming rates for use of the networks of larger players. But
according to reports in the Globe and Mail (Toronto), at a
CRTC hearing on 2nd October the regional carriers argued
that the caps are in fact hurting their business.
The dominant players – BCE Inc, Telus Corp and Rogers
Communications Inc – have already built their own networks
in territories where regional carriers operate.
Dan Topatigh, CEO of the Northern Ontario smaller carrier
Tbaytel, pointed out that the Big Three are also now
permitted to roam on the networks of the regional carriers at
discount rates. For example, when a Telus customer roams
on the MTS network, Telus pays a capped fee to MTS.
As reported by Nestor E Arellano of IT World Canada (3 rd
October), the regional carriers are asking CRTC to consider
exempting operators with less than ten per cent of the
national market share from having to offer BCE, Telus and
Rogers the use of their networks at the capped rates.
For its part, BCE urged the CRTC to give up setting
wholesale rates altogether.
Broadband providers in Seattle, city of
dark fibre, gain new freedom to challenge
dominant operator Comcast
Seattle, Washington, will no longer put heavy restrictions on
companies that want to implement fibre broadband access
in that city in the Pacific Northwest.
The so-called “SDOT Director’s Rule,” now rescinded,
had required utility companies to get permission from
some 60 per cent of near neighbours before installing a
telecommunications cabinet to support the fibre.
“That high bar made the city an unattractive destination
for companies that wanted to offer services in Seattle,”
wrote Rachel Lerman in the Puget Sound Business Journal .
“Some even suggest it’s one of the reasons Google
Fiber passed on setting up a service in Seattle.” (“Fibre Is
Coming,” 30th September)
The high-speed Internet offerings in Seattle have been a
disappointment to its residents, especially its multitude
of high-tech start-ups. But the Seattle City Council
is optimistic that removal of the restrictions will bring
competition to the Internet scene there, which is largely
dominated by Comcast.
According to Ms Lerman, who covers technology and
retail for the Business Journal, the main beneficiary will
be CenturyLink, whose plans to bring fibre broadband
service to unserved and underserved neighbourhoods have
been stalled by the rule on telecom cabinet placement.
CenturyLink cited it in the cancellation of 60 projects
between 2009 and 2011.
Elsewhere in telecom . . .
 Google has announced its participation in an undersea
cable project for linking the United States and Brazil by
the end of 2016.
The American search engine giant will partner with
Brazilian ISP Algar Telecom, Uruguayan telecom ANTEL,
and the Angola Cables consortium. The cable will be
capable of carrying a total of 64Tbps of capacity over six
fibre pairs.
The announcement, reported on 17th October in
TeleGeography, marks the second time last year that
Google confirmed its involvement in building a major
submarine cable system. In August 2014 Google and
five Asian carriers announced plans for the FASTER
cable, slated to connect the West Coast of the US to
Japan by the second quarter of 2016.
Previously, Google had said it was serving as primary
investor in two other submarine cable system
undertakings: one trans-Pacific, the other intended to
link countries in Southeast Asia.
Dorothy Fabian – Features Editor