The CRTC, Canada's telecom regulator, announced today that Vice-Chair Len Katz will serve as their acting chairman until the government appoints a new chair. This is not a surprising choice, as Katz has been the CRTC vice-chair since 2007.

Outgoing chair Konrad von Finckenstein had his ups and his downs, but since last year has changed in a way that is really quite notable. The CRTC has a history of caving to industry pressure and forgetting to fully consider the impact their decisions have on the Canadian public. But in an interview with the Canadian Press last week, von Finckenstein acknowledged that the telecommunications industry "has a huge social impact and that affects us all."

On the eve of a critical new wireless spectrum auction, we have reports that the Big Three cell phone giants (who already control almost 94 per cent of the market) are trying to trick the government into shutting independent competitors out of the market. They're trying to block competitors from being able to use essential wireless spectrum. These giant phone companies are going so far as to use high-priced lobbyists and one is even using a fake grassroots campaign.

If the Big Three succeed, they will:

-  Squeeze independent providers out of the cell phone market.

-  Squeeze Canadians into binding longer-term contracts with disrespectful customer service.

Where do ex-politicians go when they retire? It would appear that they take up sinecure amongst the boards of directors at Canada's leading telecom-media-Internet (TMI) companies.

Canadians have been in an uproar about the CRTC’s latest catastrophic move, the decision to allow Bell Canada to implement usage-based billing. Usage-based billing (UBB), which has also been described as Internet metering, means that users are charged a penalty on top of their regular monthly bill for exceeding a predetermined threshold of bandwidth use. Many suspect that this is also the first step toward ISPs charging us per byte, the way they do with data plans for smart phones. 

The fight is on for Canadian identity in communications and culture, even if it does seem that only one side has shown up.

The Conservative government's calculated, but decisive, plan to remove foreign ownership rules from Canada's telecom and broadcast sectors will begin with satellite telecommunications -- in short, Telesat Canada.

When Harper overturned the CRTC to allow the Egyptian owned Globalive into the mobile phone market, he did it by changing the definition of being foreign owned, without changing the law as such. The sleight of hand in the Globalive decision may be tested in the courts -- but now the government is proposing to go further and address ownership outright.