Source : National Post

If the CRTC thought it faced difficult manoeuvring in its controversial
decisions this past year, just wait until 2005.

Last year it was the RAI International and Al-Jazeera decisions that
wrong-footed CRTC chairman Charles Dalfen and his merry band of regulators. In a decision that only a bureaucrat such as Mr. Dalfen could straight-facedly defend, the CRTC told Canadians they could not watch Italian-language television from soccer-mad RAI, but Canadians would be served by watching the sneering Al-Jazeera.

Why the different decision? In the case of Al-Jazeera, the official response
was that it represented a new point of view to Canadians. Apparently, given that no one else was broadcasting Arab-centric terrorist-friendly news, the people at Al-Jazeera would be able to secure a place for themselves on Canadian cable systems.

RAI had the opposite problem. While it might be the largest Italian-language
station in the world, that didn't matter to Mr. Dalfen and his regulator
cronies. RAI overlapped with Toronto-based Telelatino, so that meant RAI was
"partially or totally competitive with [existing] Canadian specialty or pay
services."

So, to summarize, last year we learned that anti-American propaganda was
fine, as long as it was located offshore; but offshore broadcasting of something harmless, such as soccer, was bad. Unsurprisingly, the CRTC was ultimately forced to back down under political pressure. It tightened somewhat on Al-Jazeera, and reversed course and allowed in RAI by making it easier for all "third-language" services.

Only in Canada would a language other than English or French be officially
anointed a third language. In most other places, said language would simply be another tongue, not the second, third, fourth, or fiftieth one for that matter. Canada has created, via outdated official bilingualism, a caste system for languages (and therefore nationalities), one that has English and French as co-equal, and everything else as less worthy.

But the CRTC plainly thinks that having made this classically Canadian
cut-the-baby-in-half compromise, this will be the end of things for a while.
After all, it now allows, say, Urdu-language services, so long as you also
subscribe to the Canadian Urdu channel. That is cheerfully nutty, along the
lines of saying that you're now welcome to buy a foreign car, so long as you buy a Canadian car at the same time.

So, given this recent history, what madness do we have to look forward to
from the CRTC in 2005? It has two difficult (well, for it) decisions on its
plate -- involving voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and satellite radio --
and both are likely to end badly.

There are, after all, almost as many VoIP proposals as there are market
participants, but it comes down to whether voice traveling over the Internet
should be handled the same way as voice traveling over traditional phone lines.  Superficially the answer is "of course" -- after all, voice is voice is voice.

But appearances aside, that would not be the right decision. The correct
ruling would be one that gives Canadians more competition and deep-sixes the
current outdated rules that have voice being treated wrong-headedly in the first place. Will the CRTC do that? I doubt it.

More likely is that it will concoct some RAI-style compromise, one that splits Canadians' voice communications in half somehow.

In the interim, what will the CRTC do on its other pressing decision, that of
satellite radio? Well, the decision at hand is who gets dished satellite
licences. Will it be Sirius and its partners, or will it be XM Satellite Radio? Or will it be someone else?

The correct decision would be to let pretty much anyone who wants a licence
to have one. If licensees are able to obtain spectrum, then they should be free to find the capital to get out there and compete for audience. Let them, 'cause in a scant few years all of this will become moot, as the continent is blanketed in high-speed wireless Internet service and the whole notion of a satellite-only radio service seems outdated and grotesquely expensive.

But the CRTC will follow its own nose on both issues in 2005. Perhaps for
every hour you listen to satellite radio you will have to listen to an hour of Anne Murray. Perhaps for every voice packet you send over VoIP you will have to route another packet via Penetanguishene over traditional regulated lines. The only thing for sure from the compromise-seeking is that it will involve more non-decision decisions, bizarre compromises that serve nothing -- other than its own self-preserving ends, of course.

© The National Post