Centrex squeeze play

January 25, 2017

Bell Canada has applied for a 10% increase in rates for Centrex III service. Bell has asked for the CRTC to approve the tariff increase by today, to be effective September 1.

Bell’s justification for the increase included:

The rates for these components have remained unchanged since 2002 while network investments have continued. In addition, inflation over this same time period was 10.12% as per the Bank of Canada’s statistics.

Bell’s arguments ignore the productivity improvements that would normally be assigned as offsets against the inflation factors – productivity that represent improved capital and operational efficiency.

Bell may be trying to create better financial incentives for customers to migrate to their IP-based Centrex service, MIPT. There must be confidence that customers won’t look at TELUS IP-One and other carrier and customer premises-based solutions. Even customers under contract will see their rates increase: generally, the contracts refer to the tariff.

Centrex-based resellers of local lines are going to be badly hurt by this action. Their contracts likely don’t point to a tariff and therefore the increases will eat into their margins.

There are three ways for Bell to succeed on this filing: unit revenues for Centrex go up 10%; competitors get hurt; and, customers are incented to migrate to Bell’s portfolio of VoIP solutions, some of which may win forbearance under the CRTC’s pending VoIP reconsideration.

Bell only loses if this manoeuvre angers customers sufficiently to have them take look elsewhere.

Update:
The CRTC gave interim approval to the application today./span>

Freedom fighters

July 20, 2006
Amnesty International seems to think that individual freedom of expression has no limits and that countries have no right to censor any internet content. It has launched a campaign against internet repression and cites a number of technology companies for their complicity in human rights violations. In a press release, the organization says:

“… the internet’s potential for change is being undermined — by governments unwilling to tolerate this free media outlet, and by companies willing to help them repress free speech.”

Sun Microsystems, Nortel Networks, Cisco Systems, Yahoo! and Google are among those companies implicated in helping governments censor the internet or track down individual users.

The campaign, Irrepressible.info, calls on users to take action, including:

Undermine censorship by publishing irrepressible fragments of censored material on your own site. The more people take part, the more we can defeat unwarranted censorship and create an unstoppable network of protest.

That links to a page that invites users to:

Add irrepressible content to your site

If you have a website or blog, help us spread the word and undermine unwarranted censorship by publishing censored material from our database directly onto your site.

The more people take part the more we show that freedom of expression cannot be repressed.

The site provides html code that allows random snippets of censored material to be posted to a supporter’s website, with the thought that this will make it difficult for countries to detect and respond to the volume of sites with inappropriate content.

It is an interesting approach – in effect adopting hackers’ methodology to try to overwhelm the servers doing the censorship analysis.

Here is the problem. There is another global campaign underway to protect the rights of children being exploited. There are service providers in the UK and elsewhere that block sites with illegal images of child abuse. We strongly support such initiatives.

Amnesty International itself advocates that countries ratify the optional protocol on child pornography, that includes:

its conclusion calling for the worldwide criminalization of the production, distribution, exportation, transmission, importation, intentional possession and advertising of child pornography, and stressing the importance of closer cooperation and partnership between Governments and the Internet industry

So, on one hand, Amnesty International believes that there should be ‘closer cooperation and partnership between Governments and the Internet industry’ and on the other hand, today’s press release coincides with the release of a report about Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google as companies ‘particularly willing to cooperate with the Chinese government’.

Customers in charge

July 20, 2006
Mike UrlockerMike Urlocker is one of the few people who writes a blog that this site links to. I think Mike is a pretty clever guy.

These days, he is a consultant looking at disruptive effects on business. Recently, he wrote:

A committee structure designed to boost efficiency and effectiveness of the current operations is focussed on the wrong thing. Its like moving the deck chairs on the Titanic. Or worse, arguing about who is in charge of the deck chairs.

The iceberg was in charge of the Titanic. The customers are in charge of the news business. And the customers by and large have spoken: Newspapers are less relevant today than ever. The most important group that newspapers should pay attention to are not their customers. It is the non-customers.

These are good lessons for more than just the newspaper business.

Scott Feschuk recently wrote in Macleans magazine about various discussions at the Banff Television Festival. Fred Fuchs, newly hired as a senior programming executive at the CBC, says that TV shows are subsets of a bigger content experience.

Fuchs told a panel on the future of Canadian television that the public broadcaster will no longer develop TV series without simultaneously working to produce “content experiences” related to the shows that can be deployed on the Internet and on digital platforms. While certainly deeply trendy in its future-savvy parlance, Fuchs’ remarks prompted a minor outbreak of Head Shakes of Disbelief among producers and writers in the audience. Indeed, a wisenheimer might be tempted to suggest that before CBC gets too obsessed with exploiting new media opportunities, it might first want to focus on producing a new show or two that Canadians might actually want to, you know, watch.

Simply adapting material to be ‘experienced’ on a new platform won’t make the content any better.

Question form?

July 19, 2006
JeopardyThere has been a somewhat entertaining exchange of regulatory correspondence between Bell and the CRTC in respect of the Bell Digital Voice Lite product.

Back in December, among other things, the CRTC ordered Bell to provide local number portability (LNP) for (a) out-of-territory telephone numbers used as primary numbers, and (b) in-territory and out-of-territory telephone numbers used as secondary numbers. Bell was given 6 months to implement such solutions.

On June 2, Bell sent a letter to the CRTC asking for the December decision to be suspended, pending the outcome of the CRTC’s overall VoIP reconsideration proceeding.

But, the CRTC didn’t like the format of the June 2 Bell letter, and on June 22 the Commission asked Bell to resubmit the request in the form of an application for a Stay.

On July 4, Bell complied and submitted a formal Part VII application. But upon further reflection that weekend, Bell withdrew the application.

Hmmm.

Coping in difficult times

January 25, 2017

The folks at Intel in Haifa have leveraged their own technology to keep working through the current wave of incoming missile attacks. The people who brought you the Centrino chip have been keeping productive thanks to in-house wireless networking. This is not something you see in most of the promotional brochures.

Don’t you think everyone should have WiFi equipped bomb shelters?

Intel Israel, is considered to be the largest private employer in Israel today – with 6,600 employees in its development and production facilities.

As we have written before, Israel’s biennial Telecom show takes place this year, November 6-9. We are still planning to attend. Let me know if you want to join us!

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