The Centre for Law, Technology and Society is delighted to announce that CLTS Faculty member Marina Pavlović has contributed to Waiting to Connect, a report released by the Canadian Council of Academies to examine the legal, ethical, social, and policy issues associated with deploying and adopting reliable high-speed Internet in rural and remote communities.
The Council of Canadian Academies (CCA) assembled a multidisciplinary expert panel, including Prof. Marina Pavlović, to examine the legal, ethical, social, and policy issues associated with deploying and adopting reliable high-speed Internet in rural and remote communities and interpret the evidence and provide insight that can inform policy and practice in Canada.
High-throughput networks could provide a range of benefits to rural and remote communities, including improved access to education, healthcare, employment, and government and emergency services. However, there are also potential challenges associated with the use of reliable high speed broadband technologies, such as high cost of devices, social disruption, unreliable electricity supply, and a lack of capacity to support and maintain beneficial applications.
The Waiting to Connect report examines the systemic issues that have led to a connectivity gap for millions of people living in rural and remote regions in Canada, as well as promising practices and proposed guiding principles that can help address them. It considers the essential nature of high-speed broadband connectivity, the challenges in achieving these benefits, and the barriers that have limited the rollout of broadband in rural and remote regions across Canada.
The report is also available in French.
Prof. Marina Pavlović is one of Canada’s foremost experts in consumer rights in the digital society and on technology and telecommunication policy and regulation. In 2018, she was appointed by the Ministers of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada and Canadian Heritage to the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review Panel, an expert panel tasked with reviewing Canada’s communication legislative framework.