Lawrence Surtees manages IDC Canada's communications research agenda and is IDC's lead analyst covering the Canadian communications services sector, including the wireline, wireless and Internet segments, new network technologies and policy and regulatory issues (including the CRTC). Lawrence also works on related IDC consulting projects. Widely regarded as one of Canada's foremost telecommunications experts (he was also the global authority on Nortel Networks), he has covered the telecom sector for more than three decades.

Prior to joining IDC Canada in Sept. 2000, Lawrence spent 17 years as a reporter at The Globe and Mail newspaper in Toronto where the bulk of his tenure was spent on the Report on Business where he covered telecommunications and related high-technology companies. (He was also The Globe's medical reporter from 1988 to 1990.) He has written more than 3,000 articles published in newspapers and magazines in Canada and the United States and has won numerous awards for his writing, including a National Newspaper Award in 1993. Lawrence began his journalism career in Ottawa in 1981 where he was editor of a weekly newsletter on communications policy and regulatory issues. Lawrence also served as an advisor on New Media technologies to the telecommunications committee of the Canadian Daily Newspaper Association's Board of Directors from 1994 to 1996. A biographee in the Canadian Who's Who, Lawrence is also the author of two bestselling books on the Canadian telecommunications industry: Pa Bell, his history of BCE, was published in 1992; and Wire Wars, the inside story of the long-distance competition battle, was published in 1994.

He is in frequent demand as an industry speaker, media commentator and university lecturer and holds a B.A. in political science from the University of Toronto and an M.A. in journalism from the University of Western Ontario.