8×8 – a.k.a. the other VOIP service provider – posted a loss of $5.7-million on revenue of $3-million in the third quarter, while the number of Packet8 customers rose to 40K from 26K in Q2. The company has a market cap of $132-million. It means each subscriber is worth $3,300. If the same valuation is applied to Vonage, it works out to $1.3-billion. Is 8×8 over-valued, or is Vonage really worth this much, or is the market's true value?

I guess my meanderings about whether Bill Owens will be supplanted as Nortel's CEO have struck a chord. I got an e-mail from the company with following comment: “Bill Owens has said many times that he is proud to be the CEO of Nortel and is excited about our future prospects and growth opportunities.” I still think Peter Currie has come back to the fold to become CEO one day, which doesn't entirely conflict with Nortel's comment.

Will SBC spend US$15-billion to buy AT&T? Now, that would be a mega-telecom deal. If the deal is consummated, it would combine AT&T's 30 million long-distance customers with SBC's 50 million local customers, and mark the end of AT&T's 120-year history.
SBC would not be buying AT&T for its LD business, which has been under competitive pressure for years. The real prize would be AT&T's extensive data network, which has been the focal point of CEO Dan Dorfman's plan to re-invent the company. The data network's potential let Dorfman justify AT&T's decision to leave the local [circuit-switch] telephony business. Instead, AT&T is jumping on the IP bandwagon by offering VOIP service to consumers and a variety of value-add services to corporate customers.
An SBC-AT&T marriage would be a blockbuster and a real test for the FCC's new chair, who will replace Michael Powell.

Peter Currie, who was Royal Bank of Canada's CFO until last September, has re-emerged as Nortel's new chief financial officer. It appears to be positive move because Currie was the company's CFO from 1994 to 1997. Currie has a good reputation within Canada's corporate ranks, and his appointment can only give Nortel some much-needed credibility. The big question is whether the CFO job is just a warm-up zone for the CEO job.

Aliant sure has a nice way with the numbers. The company plans to save $40-million a year through a voluntary early reitrement program, and spend $40-million over the next three years to launch an IP-TV service over its high-speed Internet network.
The move into TV is a strategic necessity if the Atlantic Canada carrier wants to stay competitive with Eastlink, the country's seventh-largest cableco, which offers a bundle of TV, high-speed Internet, VOIP and wireless telephony.
Before Aliant became engulfed in the BCE Inc. empire, it was known as NB Tel, and had a reputation for being among the most innovative carriers in North America. NB Tel was playing around with interactive TV service long before IP-TV became the next hot thing for carriers. BCE shelved the project because it owned its ExpressVu satellite service. It's too bad Aliant wasn't left alone to operate as a test lab for BCE and Bell Canada

You knew it was only a matter of time before Rogers started to hack away at CityFido, which it picked up in the $1.4-billion acquisition of Microcell last year. Calling it a redesign – my colleague Tyler Hamilton rightly calls it the “euthanizing” – Rogers took two swipes to CityFido: first, it scrapped the eat-all-you-can plan for $45 a month plan. This has been replaced by a 750-minute plan for $45 and a 1,500-minute plan for $60. second, it shrank the calling zones so that many calls that used to be local will now be considered long-distance. Rogers will happily charge a whopping 50 cents a minute for LD.
CityFido was a huge thorn in the side of Canada's big three wireless carriers – Telus, Bell and Rogers – because it went against the grain of the higher ARPU mantra chanted these days throughout the industry. It was only a matter of time before someone took Microcell down. The sad thing is Microcell was the most innovative player in the bunch. Who knows, maybe Virgin Canada will breath some excitement back into the industry obsessed with meeting Bay St. expectations.