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Archive for November, 2004

Mea Culpa

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 [...]

What will Bill Say?

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 [...]

Last Mile Strategy

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, [...]

CRTC Wants More Competition

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. [...]

Hello, 311?

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 [...]

Comparing VOIP in Canada

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 [...]

Where's My Local # Portability

Today marks the first anniversary of wireless number portability in the U.S. - an option used by about 8.5 million people to switch carriers. Of that total, 732,000 apparently gave up their home service to go completely wireless. Given there are about 170 million wireless users in the U.S., LNP has been far from the [...]

Nortel: lots and lots of numbers

There's been plenty o' Nortel coverage but this story is the absolute best -
and most entertaining - I've seen in ages. Read and enjoy:
Nov. 23 (Bloomberg) - Nortel Networks Corp. board member John Manley said he's “very optimistic” that the telephone- equipment maker will file arestatement of its financial reports within the 30 to 60 [...]

Ericsson's New Math

Ericsson Canada did a survey recently that suggests 63% of Canadians between
the ages of 15 and 69 have a wireless phone. The company got this number by
interviewing 2,000 people.
What's troubling about it is Ericsson's decision to ignore widely-accepted
industry standards when it comes to wireless penetration. If it had gone
that route, the real penetration rate [...]

VOIP Gets Going in Canada

There has been so much written about Internet telephony in Canada, it's hard to believe there are only about 25,000 consumers actually using the service. The market, however, could get a jump-start now that Vonage has launched an aggressive marketing campaign to mark its “official” entry into the market. If Vonage spends a small part [...]

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