WE’RE FOLLOWING EUROPE’S BROADBAND PATH EVEN AS EUROPE CONFRONTS ITS CHALLENGES.

cutting back on their broadband investment. Europeans got marginally lower prices, but in exchange for considerably less relative investment in broadband. It’s not a good trade-off, especially since broadband is such a crucial enabling technology for the broader economy.

The figures speak for themselves. U.S. investment in telecommunications infrastructure more than doubled European investment in 2013. Fibre-to-thepremise coverage is now double in the U.S. and over- it starting from a position of weakness. A recent report by Viavi, a firm specialized in network testing, confirmed that North America is home to nearly two-thirds of announced gigabit broadband deployments, while Europe lags behind with less than a quarter.

Which brings us to Canada and the government’s Innovation Agenda.

Canada has historically had “facilities-based competition” whereby different firms have competed based on the quality and scope of