We have overhauled our backoffice workflow that ingests ISED's monthly Spectrum Management System (SMS) releases. The result is a stronger, cleaner, and more defensible national RF dataset powering our reports and Canada Cellular Services platform.
The backstory is straightforward.
Each month, ISED publishes what appears to be a national snapshot of Canadian spectrum deployments. In practice, it does not function as a true point-in-time representation. ISED has formally acknowledged the need to substantially improve data quality, reliability and uniformity within the Spectrum Management System (SMS). The challenge is structural.
Operationally, SMS behaves more like an inconsistently pruned append log than a transactional replacement system. Records can persist long after they are obsolete. Updates may appear late, in bulk, or not at all. Months with no visible change do not indicate a stable network—they indicate no processed submissions. Publication dates do not define state transitions. Treating each monthly file as an authoritative snapshot produces unreliable conclusions.
Our overhauled workflow is built around that reality. We reconcile cumulative submissions into coherent state transitions, filter stale and superseded records, remove structural duplicates, resolve site relocations, and normalize record recency based on upload chronology. The output is an as complete as possible operational representation of Canada's wireless infrastructure—not a raw administrative extract.
The SMS files are free. Extracting reliable network intelligence from them is not.
For RF technicians, wireless operators, and site acquisition and investment firms, the risk is not downloading the data. The risk is trusting it at face value.