Toronto-based venture capitalist Rick Segal – a.k.a. The Post Money Value – has some gripes this morning about accessing “free” Wi-Fi at Cora's, a local breakfast spot. He criticizes the access provider – Sesame Networks – for its user-unfriendly process to log on to the free service. Among his woes is some fine print the user may be charged for a SMS message that Sesame sends out to verify people trying to access its network. In the end, Rick talks about getting a Sierra Wireless card, and signing up for a wireless data plan. His comments are a nice complement to a column in the National Post last week and blog posting about why the business model for Wi-Fi is disappearing. If 3G and Wi-Max technology live up to the hype, Wi-Fi may soon become marginalized into just an inter-household networking technology.

According to ClickZ, Vonage spent $21.8 million in April on advertising. As Om Malik succinctly puts it: now you can see why they needed to raise $200-million in private equity recently. Clearly, Vonage believes it's in an “Amazing Race” to establish itself as one of the VOIP service providers in North America before the cablecos and carriers take over the market. Vonage CEO Jeffrey Citron knows the art of making the deal (see previous entrepreneurial success stories: Datak and Isand ECN), and Vonage is just following the formula of creating a large business and then selling out at the right price. If spending $21.8 million a month on advertising is how the game needs to be played, Vonage will follow the rules. The big question is when someone will step up to the plate and spend the $1-billion to $2-billion to take out Vonage? Frankly, I do not believe this company will ever do an IPO unless it's backed into a financial corner. Unless Vonage's balance sheet (i.e bottom line) suddenly becomes a lot healthier, it will try to avoid the scrutinization of the investment community. For the time being, you have to wonder how long Vonage will/can keep up the advertising spend. I'm thinking it will be for as long as it takes to lure of suitor and/or several hundred more thousand subscribers.
By the way, if you're at all curious about the top online advertising spender in April, it was a Tickle by Emode, which is an IQ test, that spent $23.7-million. The company Tickle is called Progressive Boink, which emerged from the ashes of Whatever-Dude.com.

One of the events of the telecom industry – at least in Canada – is the Canadian Telecom Summit, which goes from Monday to Wednesday in Toronto. The keynote speakers include Nortel CEO Bill Owens, Vonage CEO Jeff Citron, MCI CEO Michael Capellas, BCE CEO Michael Sabia and Avaya CEO Don Peterson. While a jam-packed agenda, the conference will provide an in-depth look at many of the key industry issues, developments and trends from a Canadian and global basis. Watch this space next week for regular postings during the conference. We'll also be providing extensive coverage in the National Post.

Skype resolved a major sales hurdle for customers living outside Europe when it officially launched PayPal today as a payment option. This means people who buy premium based services such as SkypeIn and SkypeOut at skype.com can use PayPal to pay using a credit card, bank account or stored balance. While I was once a Skype skeptic, this company continues to impress me with their ability to convince a large user base nurtured on free service to buy fee-based services. Of course, the one thing I would like to see Skype spell out is the buying patterns of its 1.4 million premium service users. It's one thing if these people make one purchase a year, it's quite another if 250K are buying a weekly or monthly basis. Much like Vonage, Skype likes to throw big numbers around – 39 million registered users, for example – but it is impossible to really get a handle on how well either company is doing without seeing some basic balance sheet figures – revenue, cash flow, EBITDA, profits, etc.

In another attempt to force VOIP into the mainstream conciousness, Cisco will arm Indy 500 drivers Eddie Cheever and Patrick Carpentier with technology to communicate with their engineers and pit crews during the upcoming race. The technology, which includes Cisco service access points, routers and wireless IP phones, will provide pit crews and both drivers with real-time information and statistics during the race. “Cisco is changing the way our team communicates and analyzes data,” said Cheever gushes in a press release. Given Cisco credit for trying to generate some excitement around VOIP. Speaking of buzz, Cisco's back in the news again with the $70 million acquisition of FineGround Networks, which makes technology that accelerate Web-based application performance over IP networks. I wonder when my friends at Nortel are going to get on the technology acquisition bandwagon?

After two years heading up Nortel's P.R. department, Marion Mackenzie is moving on to greener and, hopefully, calmer pastures. It has to be one of the most demanding and thankless corporate P.R. jobs given Nortel's accounting woes, senior management changes and business challenges. If anything, doing “time” at Nortel is a great way to pick up tremendous crisis P.R. skills, which can only be a good thing for the next assignment. Let's hope Ms. Mackenzie has given her successor, Bill Durling (who surprise, surprise is not a Canadian) some going away pointers on proper media relations – i.e. do not issue press releases at 8 p.m. on Fridays. Anyway, good luck Marion. Enjoy your much-deserved time off!