You've got to hand it to Nortel CEO Bill Owens who said today he is
“embarassed” by the company's failure to get out its restated financial
results. It's healthy to see a CEO admit to being anything other than
confident and/or arrogant. The again, Owens set himself up to be embarassed
when he vowed a couple weeks ago Nortel would have its results out by
mid-November. He obviously forgot the old adage of “under-promise and over
deliver”.
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Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

You have to wonder what Nortel CEO Bill Owens will say today when he speaks at Scotia Capital's Institutional Lunch in Toronto. One would hope for his sake that Owens doesn't say “our restated results will be out next week, I guarantee it” because that's what he said last month at an investment conference, and we all know what happened. Owens may be well intentioned but anything he says about the “business” will ring hollow until Nortel puts out its restated results from 2000 to the first half of 2003. How can you take anything Owens says seriously if you've got no idea of whether Nortel's results are legit? There have been some suggestions Nortel's restated results will only see minor adjustments, relatively speaking, but regardless of whether that is accurate or not, something was terribly wrong with Nortel's financial system that made things look much better than they really were. If Nortel's senior executives – Roth, Dunn, Chandran, etc. – didn't take walk away with so much cash during the go-go days of the telecom boom, then you could have said everyone felt the pain. But when John Roth pulls in $135-million from exercising stock options in 2000, you know something's wrong in the state of Nortel.

With all the talk about VOIP and telecom TV these days, it has got me thinking about how big of a “pipe” the carriers need to deliver the growing vareity of IP-based services into the homes of consumers. At the present time, the general thinking is they will need 20 to 25Mbps to deliver data, voice and basic television service. The issue/challenge is down the road this requirement to easily climb as HDTV and other services come into play. If this materializes, a bigger pipe will be needed.
Verizon and SBC are already ahead of the curve with plans to spend US$8-billion to extend fiber to 21 million homes within the next three years. Verizon, for example, figures it will be able to provide as 30Mbps to deliver multiple-HDTV channels, according to research done by Kona Shio of Conscius Capital.
In Canada, meanwhile, Bell Canada insists it will be able to deliver HDTV by using fiber to the node as opposed to fiber to the curb. This approach seems to be a challenge unless last-mile technology improves down the road. I think one of the reasons Bell is loathe to talk about fiber to the curb is it would mean a significant capital investment, which goes against the grain of Sabia's cost-control mandate. Before Bell can commit itself to such an expensive program, it will likely need to prune its costs even more as it scrambles to adjust to the realities of the IP world.

The CRTC issued its annual report for 2003 on Canada's telecom industry. Once again, the focus was on the need for more competition, particularly in local telephony where the ILECs still dominate the market. Of course, the ILECs argue their market share is far less when you take into account wireless usage and wireless substitution. With wireless penetration expected to reach 50% by year-end, it's hard to totally dispute the ILECs' claim.
As for the need for more competition, the CRTC will discover that 2005 will provide everything they want and more. With Internet telephony finally breaking into the mainstream, the number of residential customers jumping on VOIP will take off. This will be buoyed by the entry into the market by Bell Canada and cablecos such as Rogers and Shaw. At the same time, Bell and perhaps Telus Corp. will get into the TV business.
On the wireless front, Virgin Canada will apparently launch in the first quarter, although I do not expect Virgin to be much of a price rebel given it is a joint venture with Bell. If the CRTC really wanted to buoy competition, they should approve local number portability across the board. Now, that would be interesting.

If you've ever had trouble reaching someone at city hall (what's with those confusing Blue Pages, anyway?), help is on the way. The CRTC has approved a joint application from the cities of Calgary, Toronto, Halifax and Halton to use 3-1-1 for non-emergency municipal government services.
For those of us in Toronto, this is a far cry from the days of former mayor Mel Lastman who refused to let civial servants use voice mail in the bizarre belief it would hurt customer service. 3-1-1, which is already being used in several U.S. cities, makes it easier to deliver programs, reduce costs and boost awareness among people of local sevices.

A friend who's interested in getting Internet telephony service stumbled across a pretty good story outlining what's available in Canada and the pros and cons of each service provider. The companies in the story include Vonage, Primus, Call-Net, TeleHop and Yak.
Here's the link: http://www.broadbandmarket.ca/news1027.html
On another note, I received a comment about an assertion I made that VOIP would gain little momentum in Canada because local prices are so low. This fellow rightly pointed out the monthly bill adds up if you have basic service for $22, voice mail for $8, call display for $7 and you make a lot of LD calls. For people who want multi-feature service and use a lot of LD, Internet telephony service can make sense. It will be interesting to see if these people actually jump ship.
If price is going to be a/the key factor in Internet telephony adoption, check out Comwave Telecom, which has two packages priced at $9.95 and $14.95 a month respectively. Not sure about the quality of the service but the price seems hard to beat.