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Introduction

Because of Canada's geography, connectivity has always been a great challenge. The challenge was first addressed with birch bark canoes; followed by steel rails, asphalt roads, and runways and airways. By the middle of the last century, a connectivity other than transportation became important — telecommunications.

Government policies of the 1960s recognized this and called for national broadcast coverage and telephone dial tone (at least one telephone in every community greater than 500!). These challenges and those since have been met with remarkable progress in telecommunications technology and applications.

With the relatively recent dawn of the information society, the telecommunications infrastructure is now sometimes referred to as the foundation that supports a knowledge-based economy. Recognizing this, it is now Canada's goal to become the most connected nation in the world and to offer the possibility of broadband access to every community in Canada by mid-decade. This is a goal for which the crossbar rises steadily, requirements increase, and applications become more demanding. However, geographic challenges remain the same and barriers will continue to reappear as ubiquitous access to a more advanced infrastructure becomes highly beneficial.

Since the CRC's last Strategic Plan in 2001, the telecommunications industry has suffered a severe financial downturn worldwide for a variety of reasons. This and other recent events have resulted in both opportunities and challenges for a research organization such as CRC and therefore, the CRC Advisory Council suggested in June 2003 that an updated plan be developed to reflect these new realities and to set a course for the next several years. In particular, the Board emphasized that clear understandable goals should be articulated so that progress against objectives can be easily tracked. This plan has been written with this focus in mind and roughly has a three-year time horizon.