Toronto Hydro's Wireless Plans
Toronto Hydro plans to roll out a Wi-Fi network throughout downtown Toronto this year. The question is what markets it has targeted. Is it going after the high-speed Internet access market or the wireless market, or both? Toronton Hydro Telecom CEO Dave Dobbin provided a glimpse of his strategy during a presentation at the Canadian Telecom Summit when his mobile phone started to ring halfway through. The staged “stunt” was made to demonstrate how Toronto Hydro could provide free wireless phone service using Wi-Fi and SIP. The way Dobbin sees it, there would be no need to use any of your expensive cellular minutes while in Toronto. People who use the service would also be use their home or office telephone numbers while away from home. This strategy sounds like good news for Skype or Vonage but troubling news for Rogers, Telus and Bell. If anything, Dobbin is doing a good job of being a sh#$-disturber.
June 13th, 2006 at 5:35 pm
The Telco Industry is a great place to witness dissruptive innovation at it's finest.
June 14th, 2006 at 2:26 am
I love sh#$-disturbers.
Entwhistle at Telus says their hedge against falling wireline revenues is wireless. Maybe by selling clips of Telus idol?
Projects like this can cut into many of the ILEC's different revenue streams at the same time. What fun.
June 14th, 2006 at 8:06 am
A sh** disturber, as in he is full of sh**? Difficult (and expensive) to run voice over WLAN in a corporate envitonment, never mind in a public MESH. This is the problem when you get a snake poil salesman running the show…
June 14th, 2006 at 9:47 am
I'm sorry Mark that you provided a platform for TH to demonstrate its cavalier approach. And if their downtown mesh network works as slowly as the one at the telecom summit, the telcos/cableco won't have anything to worry about.
June 14th, 2006 at 7:32 pm
I'm sorry but if you think the CEO of THT is a snake-oil salesman, than you haven't met enough snake-oil salesmen!
June 19th, 2006 at 11:12 am
Hold onto your seats, I was there, uploading to the internet at 8.9 Mbps! Enough for voip and a little bit more i'm sure.
September 6th, 2006 at 12:48 pm
It is funny today, Silicon Valley announced free Wireless in the Valley.
Toronto Hydro is going to sell it to TO… sigh…one day TO will be a leading city…
http://www.thtelecom.ca/zone-qa.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/06/technology/06wireless.html?ex=1315195200&en=bf47cde2dc953b89&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss