Roam Mobility is about to make cross border roaming easier and cheaper for Canadians.

Launching January 16, travelers will see Roam Mobility SIM cards, phones and mobile hot spots at duty free shops in major airports and land crossings. The service is live when customers turn it on in the US. Your phone is active and able to make calls from the get go – waiting for the flight attendants to authorize you to use your electronic devices.

Simple activation and unlimited US/Canada talk and text make this an attractive option for short term and even longer stay visitors, with thirty day plans for $60 per month. Add 2 GB of mobile data for $40 more.

The predictability of flat rate, unlimited calling should prove to be popular; among the keys to success for Roam Mobility will be development of brand awareness, distribution channels and customer service excellence. As a frequent cross border traveler, it is good to see more options.

Intel sent an interesting infographic: What Happens in an Internet Minute.

Looking at the traffic data, Intel asks if there is sufficient attention being paid to investment in infrastructure.

Imagine the state of the network in three years, when the number of connected devices is projected to be double the world’s population. Can our networks scale to handle predicted traffic and meet consumer expectations for immediate access from multiple devices?

What about security?

Among highlights from the infographic:

• Nearly 640 Terabytes of traffic are being transferred each minute by global IP networks;
• 6 million Facebook views; 2 million Google search queries;
• 30 hours of video are being uploaded to YouTube; and
• 1.3 million videos are being viewed.

The email I received put it this way:

Governments invest in infrastructure every day – roads, bridges and airports – but what about network infrastructure?

Hopefully, network operators will not follow the practice of governments in infrastructure investment. The state of our roads, bridges and airports seem to be case studies on why network investment is best handled by the private sector. My experience is that governments tend to use “just too late” provisioning.

The 2012 Canadian Telecom Summit will feature a number of sessions relevant to this theme. The event opens 5 months from today. Have you registered yet?

In early January, I wrote a piece calling for a million computers for low income Canadian households.

It didn’t happen. Yet.

But I have been feeling momentum building, aided in part by a program launched in early November by US cable companies. Greg O’Brien at Cartt.ca has joined in the effort and Open Media recently carried a commentary in support.

This needs to be a priority for us in Canada. Nearly one in 5 Canadian households has no computer, skewed heavily by income. I want to see every household with a school aged child have a home computer. If we want to build a competitive knowledge-based economy, this is table stakes.

As we approach the new year, I’d like to make this an objective for 2012. Next year, I’d like to be able to reflect on success for this new year’s resolution.

It has a better chance than my resolution to drop 20 pounds.

Happy New Year to all – best wishes for a year of health and peace.

Amid the releases of year-end prognostication, the release of the Rogers Innovation Report caught my eye. The Report is said to be the first of what will be a regular survey exploring Canadians’ habits and views on technological innovations.

Highlights of the predictions for 2012 are said to be:

• Smaller and lighter laptops
• Faster network speeds
• Bulging back pocket begone
• Turn on the lights with your smartphone
• Smartphone love
• Living in the cloud
• Books are here to stay

There is data in the release to back up each of these statements. I’m not sure I agree with the interpretation of “79 per cent of those surveyed expect that more people will use their smartphones to make purchases over the next few years” that has been translated into a reduction in the number of credit cards in our wallets. There are competing views of how “Mobile Commerce” will evolve – a subject that we will explore at The 2012 Canadian Telecom Summit.

Nearly 2 in 5 Canadians say they take their smartphones to bed or have them on the nightstand and a quarter of us use our smart phones in the bathroom. Remember that information when you are tempted to borrow someone’s phone. Is there a disinfectant for electronics?

Canada’s policy makers should take a look at AT&T’s comments following the decision to abandon the proposed acquisition of T-Mobile. The title of the press release says it all: “AT&T Ends Bid to Add Network Capacity Through T-Mobile USA Purchase”.

To meet the needs of our customers, we will continue to invest. However, adding capacity to meet these needs will require policymakers to do two things. First, in the near term, they should allow the free markets to work so that additional spectrum is available to meet the immediate needs of the U.S. wireless industry, including expeditiously approving our acquisition of unused Qualcomm spectrum currently pending before the FCC. Second, policymakers should enact legislation to meet our nation’s longer-term spectrum needs.

AT&T was prepared to spend almost $40B in the T-Mobile purchase, but the resultant concentration of the US mobile marketplace was more than regulators could accept.

But there are lessons for those that tightly control the availability of spectrum in the US and Canada as well. Carriers on both sides of the border have been challenged by massive shifts in network demand from smartphones and mobile computing. In the US, the prime 700 MHz block was auctioned off nearly 4 years ago – Canada still hasn’t firmed up plans for the auction, putting us 5 years behind assuming the rules get released early in the new year.

The mobile Internet is a dynamic industry that can be a critical driver in restoring American economic growth and job creation, but only if companies are allowed to react quickly to customer needs and market forces.

The Canadian government has an ever growing list of issues to address: foreign investment in telecom, spectrum, digital literacy and more. Will the new year bring a more proactive approach to the transition of Canada’s digital economy?