N-GEN Communications Web-based Seminars ©NGCS

Seminar - An Overview of Communications Technologies

Module 1 - An Overview of the Communications Industry                                                                Slide 3 of 26 _________________                                                                                  __________

                                                   Industry Landscape

                                            Regulatory Environment

                                            Competition

                                            Over Expansion in 1990s

                                            Scandals

_________________                                                                                  __________

The industry landscape has been shaped by the federal government regulations to bring in competition while maintaining Canadian ownership. The companies and equipment manufacturers, with growing revenues in late 90s, started moving to new markets. The event of 9/11 and falsifying company accounting practices scandals have rocked the whole industry.  

The federal government regulations do not allow more than 47% foreign ownership of a Canadian telecom. This has resulted in limited capital flow into Canada. The lack of funding has impacted smaller and newly establishing telcoms to compete against the well established ones.

The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has fostered competition in long distance telephone rates. The rates have come down tremendously. 

The carriers (Bell Canada, Telus, AT&T Canada) and equipment manufactures (Nortel, Lucent Technologies) started looking for new revenues in markets other than their core business. The companies paid high prices to acquire new skills and products to add their portfolio. The potential new revenues did not materialized and the companies were forced to reduce operating costs.

After major scandals (WorldCom, Enron) the investors lost faith in investing in the telecom technology sector.