ABSTRACT
Inviting communities of experts to participate in a technology project requires some means of establishing their legitimacy as qualified participants. Like the intervention strategies themselves, such loci in actuality are usually a combination of types, performing various roles ranging from participatory action, to market cultivation, to an intermediary function. Against this backdrop of possibilities, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) Interconnection Steering Committee can be regarded as an institutionalized locus for reflexivity based on a public-participatory and consensus-driven mandate. In May 1999 Microcell Connexions filed a general tariff notice with the CRTC and declared its intention to become a Competitive Local Exchange Carrier in a number of Canadian regions. The CRTC’s directive stunned both wireless carriers and incumbent wireline operators alike. In sum, Microcell had asked the CRTC to maintain the status quo in the interim but added a pledge to adopt Wireless E9-1-1 service as it gradually became available on a commercial basis across the country.
