Toronto will become Canada’s first city to have 3 area codes beginning in March 2013 with the introduction of 437, joining 416 and 647. The CRTC is already planning for the next number exhaust – it has set aside area code 387 as the next block of numbers, once Toronto runs short of the nearly 24 million numbers that can be assigned from the first 3 area codes.

Assigning an area code is an interesting art. In the olden days of rotary dial, the “best” area codes were the ones with the smallest number of pulses. In those days, area codes had a one or zero as the middle of the 3 digits, and the other two digits were anything but a one or zero. So, the most desirable area code was 212 and New York, the most populous region was given that assignment. The next best were 213 and 312, assigned to Los Angeles and Chicago.

It wasn’t about favouritism as much as the assignments considered the amount of time involved in dialing and transmitting the digits at a rate of 10 pulses per second. A zero took a full second for the 10 clicks; the digit 2 was sent in one fifth the time.

You can tell a lot about regional population densities in the mid twentieth century based on which area codes were assigned. Northern Ontario’s 807 and Newfoundland’s 709 were among the longest codes assigned.

Digital processors have enabled fully interchangeable area codes and central office codes, dramatically increasing the available pool of numbers. Still, there are some important considerations in choosing an area code. For example, the CRTC notes:

The Commission considers that it is a good assignment practice to use an area code that has not been used as a central office (CO) code within the area to be served, or in areas adjacent to it, because this reduces the potential for customer confusion when dialing. Since area codes 437 and 387 both meet this criterion, the Commission determines that area code 437 is to be used for current area code relief and that area code 387, for planning purposes, is to be set aside as the most suitable area code for future area code relief in Toronto, Ontario.

Toronto, a city of just over 3 million people, will have 24 million phone numbers available for assignment, plus another 24 million numbers serving the suburbs and Niagara region with area codes 905, 289 and the soon to be assigned 365 code. A major driver for consumption of numbers has been the introduction of competition. Generally, each competitive service provider in each exchange is assigned numbers on blocks of 10,000.

The North American Numbering Plan is one of the key areas of telecommunications administrivia that is important, but frequently goes without celebration. A hat tip to those numbering planners and those working on next generation routing schemes for more efficient assignment practices.

There is too much complacency in Waterloo.

Employees don’t seem to get it – RIM needs to crank it up a notch, in every position, at every level. I watched an ad featuring Apple’s Facetime and had to ask myself why Blackberry Messenger – RIM’s key differentiator – has had so little enhancement in the past couple years. Blackberry’s Desktop Software offers very few options for synchronizing (Yahoo and ASCII), but the Yahoo sync has been broken for months since Yahoo updated its calendar. RIM hasn’t bothered to update its code.

Despite having regular employment reviews that provide comfort, RIM should be looking at every position to see if it is really needed or if it can be outsourced. Some of this kind of shakeup needs to happen right away, if only to get everyone in Waterloo, the Board included, to realize that they need to develop a heightened level of urgency.

Last week, an article in the Toronto Star suggested that the CRTC was biased in discouraging the participation of public interest groups in its over-the-top fact-finding exercise (B&TNC 2011-344). The author based this charge on the CRTC’s refusal to consider this consultation to be a proceeding for the purposes of applications for reimbursement of costs.

Konrad von Finckenstein, the chair of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, was asked at an industry conference about the role of consumer groups in telecom regulation. He responded that consumer groups generally do not have a problem ensuring their views are heard, but that their effectiveness depended upon getting organized and developing the necessary knowledge and expertise to fully participate in regulatory proceedings.

Yet just as von Finckenstein was providing assurances to the consumer community, the CRTC was erecting barriers to their participation in a consultation on online video services such as Netflix and AppleTV. In fact, the consultation (labeled a “fact-finding exercise”) has been marred by charges of CRTC bias that has led at least one consumer group to pull out altogether.

Of course, the author should have recalled that there was a $3M fund established in March for precisely this kind of purpose, when the CRTC approved the CTV change in control (Decision 2011-163).

Canadian Broadcasting Participation Fund ($3 million)

• Independently administered fund that will focus its activities on the representation of the interests of non-commercial consumers of broadcasting services regulated by the Commission across Canada and in both official languages
• The fund will provide assistance with the representation, research and advocacy of those interests.

As described in that decision, the fund was PIAC’s idea!

47. PIAC submitted a proposal for an independent fund to represent non-commercial consumer interests before the Commission in its broadcasting proceedings.

Why wouldn’t PIAC draw from this fund in order to fully participate in proceedings such as this?

Before the Canada Day holiday, the Canadian technology community gazed into an executive tennis match with alternating lobs between executives – from the anonymous “Open Letter”on Boy Genius Report and the return volley from Inside Blackberry.

There is a real problem when so-called senior executives feel compelled to appeal to our voyeuristic interest through a gutless public kvetch, rather than actually exercise their executive duties to fix the company. But what is the right long term solution for Canada’s technology leader?

A round of golf is generally a good way to lubricate the mind and stimulate non-linear thinking, perhaps since we generally follow a non-linear route to navigate each hole. This morning’s perfect weather was especially well suited to developing ideas for merger candidates for RIM. One thought was that RIM missed opportunities a few years ago when it could have merged with Motorola’s handset division; perhaps a Blackberry / Microsoft marriage would have made sense then as well?

My brother, who is not in telecommunications, but plays in the software world, chimed in with the best idea. He admonished the rest of us for thinking as telecommunications professionals – I observed that this is an occupational hazard for us telecommunications professionals. In any case, he observed that Apple’s real success is less in the technology and more in the content and how it is delivered to its users.

Who, he asked, would be the best match to bring content to Blackberry?

Amazon. They have had trouble working with Apple and they have gone so far as to develop their own device, the Kindle. Put Amazon’s content and distribution networks to work for Blackberry; get Blackberry technology to deliver Amazon content. There is a match.

Hmmm. With that, he drove his next shot to just short of the green.

Something to ponder over your steaks and beer this holiday weekend. Talk among yourselves.

The CRTC is holding a hearing this week to examine the increased level of vertical integration in Canada’s communications industry.

In my interview with CRTC Chair Konrad von Finckenstein at this year’s Canadian Telecom Summit, I asked about whether Canada is really so much more integrated than the US. The chairman observed that the US carriers, such as Comcast, don’t have mobile networks integrated with their broadcast companies.

However, it is worth a re-examination of Comcast as a comparable of what is happening in other markets.

I first wrote about NBC Universal nearly 5 years ago, in the context of 30 Rock’s series opener – long before Comcast purchased a majority interest in the broadcast and production company from General Electric. Comcast is a $50B cable powerhouse, with more than 22M subscribing to their video distribution (nearly double Canada’s total households), 16M high-speed internet customers and 8M voice customers. With NBC Universal, the company is a major broadcaster (including Telemundo), a major producer of content and it has theme parks. Comcast also owns the Philadelphia professional basketball and hockey franchises.

The world of entertainment is changing, not just in Canada. Follow the hearings. What level of flexibility with Canada’s broadcasters and carriers have to respond to their vision of the evolving marketplace?