Innovation

More Broadband Competition, Mr. Clement?

By Mark Evans in ILEC News, Analysis 1 Comment Tags: , , , ,

Amid the uproar about the CRTC’s flawed and misguided decision to allow metered-billing for broadband usage in Canada, the spotlight is finally started to shine on the fact one of the big problems in Canada is the lack of broadband competition. At best, most markets have a cozy oligopoly – great for the ISPs, bad for consumers.

It was surprising to see this quote in the Toronto Star for Ministry of Industry Minister Tony Clement amid speculation the federal government could overturn the CRTC’s decision.

“We feel very strongly that we need more competition, we need more consumer choice, we need more choices for small business owners and operators and our entrepreneurs and our creators.”

So, Mr. Clement, how are you going to get more broadband competition in Canada? How are you going to change a regulatory and competitive environment that hasn’t worked over the past decade?

Are you going to force the ISPs to play nice with companies that would like to use their networks – something that hasn’t worked despite rulings by the CRTC?

Are you going to allow foreign competition into Canada to really shake up the marketplace – something that would shake up the Telus, Bell, Shaw, Rogers cartel?

While more broadband competition is a great idea, making it happen is another thing altogether. It makes for a great sound bite and great political/election fodder when you talk about “more broadband competition” but talk is talk unless you’re prepared to walk as well.

So the $64,000 question is: Mr. Clement, what’s your plan to attract more competition?

Why Bandwidth Caps Kill Innovation

By Mark Evans in ILEC News, Analysis 8 Comments Tags: , , ,

Content may be king but when it comes to people being able to access content, the value lies in the pipes from cable and telephone companies. The broadband market is an oligopoly with a handful of players offering service. As a result, they can charge pretty much whatever they want. If you don’t like it, there are few, if any, alternatives.

In Canada, most consumers are lucky if they have two options – cable or telephone. Not only do Canadians pay high prices but the new golden goose being embraced by broadband companies is data. With video, cloud computing, social media, gaming and telephony becoming more popular, consumers are gobbling up lots of data

For broadband companies, it offers a great opportunity to charge consumers for the privilege to using lots of data. This explains why data caps have quietly been put into place. They are not something broadband companies are actively marketing – speed is still the sizzle they want to highlight – but data caps are becoming a fact of life.

Aside from being an easy cash grab by broadband companies, bandwidth caps pose a major threat to innovation and how Canadians can use and take advantage of the Internet.

It wasn’t that long ago Canada was among the world leaders in broadband access but our status as a global tour de force is disappearing. The lack of competition is a sad state of affairs, and the fact broadband companies can pretty much do what they want is troubling.

It is a marked contrast to the wireless market in which the federal government has bent over backward to make sure there was more competition, led by the apparent need for more innovation and lower prices.

What’s puzzling is the potential of Inukshuk building a nation-wide wireless network to compete against the cable and telephone companies was snuffed when the federal government allowed it to be purchased by Rogers and Bell.

This has left Canada with an uncompetitive broadband market in which one player simply has to keep up with the other player to keep customers from jumping ship. And while the cable and telephone companies have invested a lot of money to build out their broadband networks, innovation isn’t a word that is used a lot. For Bell’s marketing push about the speed of its Fibe network, broadband speeds in Canada pale to other parts of the world.

If the federal government was serious about broadband competition and innovation in Canada, it would create real incentives for more players to enter the market, while keeping the existing players at bay – much like it is doing in the wireless market. Maybe this will happen when the foreign ownership rules are relaxed, which could encourage U.S. companies to move begging for more choices.

In the meantime, Canada will continue to suffer from a broadband infrastructure that is, at best, good enough as opposed to world-class. As a result, it stifles the development of innovative new services that could leverage real high-speed networks to meet the needs of data and cloud hungry consumers.

Is Canada Falling Behind Online?

By Mark Evans in Google, Social Media No Comments Tags: , ,

http://www.techvibes.com/blog/head-of-google-canada-urges-countrys-businesses-to-up-the-ante-on-being-web-savvy

Despite having some of the highest digital literacy rates and highest internet usage rates in the world, Canadian consumers don’t have much to take advantage of: Country director of Google Canada, Chris O’Neill, says Canadian companies aren’t putting enough of their businesses online for consumers to utilize.
And it’s true—there are monster stores, like the centuries-old Hudson Bay, who not only lack an e-commerce shop-online platform, but consumers can barely view images of the majority of the products.
“Canada is one of the most wired countries in the world … there’s a great opportunity for businesses to think differently about digital and the web in general,” Chris said recently in a news piece with CBC. “The internet is where things are going to be if they’re not there already, and Canadian businesses need to anticipate that and get there. It does take a while to really embrace the internet and really figure out how you can use it to transform your business.”
He and others believe Canadian consumers are just itching for more opportunities to spend their money online, and that it’s a necessary adaption for today’s businesses to create a full-fledged presence online.
“To be a relevant company today, you really need to have digital capabilities and really understand what the internet means, because that’s where your customers are,” Chris says. “You could take the word ‘Google’ away but that message still stands up.”

Wise Words from Yossi Vardi

By Mark Evans in Venture Capital No Comments Tags: , , , ,

DemoCamp 22, which happened last night in Toronto, was really the “Yossi Vardi Show”. Vardi, a successful Israeli high-tech serial entrepreneur, regaled the crowd with insight, advice and a series of entertaining stories. His first answer during an on-stage interview lasted 37 minutes.

Perhaps the best insight Vardi gave last night was how innovation and entrepreneurship is not a result of education or tech savviness or government policies but a culture driven by the need to excel.

“Without this culture, it is hard to have innovation and entrepreneurship,” he said, adding that a healthy entrepreneurial ecosystem starts with thousands of “small buds” that eventually lead to the creation of strong, viable companies.

Vardi, who is probably best known for selling Mirablis (the creator of ICQ) to AOL for $400-million, said his enthusiasm for investing in start-ups has much to do with how much he likes working with smart, young people.

As for what how he decides to invest, Vardi said his approach includes not reading business plans, which he sees them as a “sub-genre of science fiction”; talking to entrepreneurs rather than letting them open their laptops to do demos, and investing in people with good character.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from last night is how Canada could really, really use a Yossi Vardi – someone with a passion for start-ups and the financial ability to fund and support them.

The Canadian high-tech landscape is chock-a-block with smart entrepreneurs who could do a lot with a minimal amount of investment. Unfortunately, the financial ecosystem doesn’t exist to do it, at least not yet.


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