Canada To Deregulate VoIP

The Canadian government is going over the top of the CRTC (Candian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission), the equivalent of the US FCC, and ordering them to start deregulating Internet telephony services. The telecom industry in Canada was deregulated in the early 1990s. The repeat performance for IP telephony will mean lots of competition, probably lots of provider failures, lower prices and, ultimately, a shake up that’ll leave only a few bigger players standing. At least that’s my take on it. (The CRTC regulated VoIP last year.)

While I applaud this move on the grounds of potentially lower costs, this is also the very same Conservative government that only a few weeks past decimated the Canadian stock market to the tune of Cdn$20-25 Bln. This happened when they announced that they were changing the way that income trusts were to be taxed, after BCE (Bell Canada Enterprises) and Telus Mobility, the country’s two largest telecoms, announced that they were converting to income trusts.

What am I saying? That deregulation of VoIP is a good thing, but not if everyone is not on equal footing. Don’t do what’s happening in some countries, including the USA, by giving some types of VoIP providers an unfair advantage over others. You’d think that this wouldn’t happen if VoIP is being deregulated, but I’m not so sure what Prime Minister Steven Harper is up to. (Rumors are that there may be an election earlier than expected, and that his minority government may not be re-elected.)