Momentum is building around the idea that Canada needs more homes equipped with computers.

The Wire Report had an article last week entitled: Computer ownership an obstacle to broadband uptake, data shows. The article quoted my blog post from two weeks ago:

One Laptop Per Child set out to provide the world’s poorest children with a connected laptop computer. Shouldn’t all Canadian children be comparably (if not better) equipped?

That post said that we need a million computers to bring Canada’s lowest income households to parity. I want to start with homes with school-aged children.

The story is told about a guy who went fishing on a remote lake with dynamite. He was doing pretty well until someone stopped him and said “You know you can’t fish with dynamite. I have to report you to the authorities.” The guy lit another stick and handed it to the intervenor and said “Are we gonna talk or we gonna fish?”

I got together with some colleagues last night to discuss how we might move forward. We want to pull together a broad coalition of people. Who wants to fish?

Saturday’s Globe had a feature about telephone companies “frontal attack on cable.”

In the article, Bell CEO George Cope refers to Shaw, Rogers and Videotron’s 6.4 million cable TV customers as “the last monopoly.”

There are innovative capabilities enabled by IPTV and Microsoft has been powering the solutions being deployed by both Bell and TELUS. Shaw’s Peter Bisonnette observed that most of the differentiation to date has been based on price.

As the telephone companies continue to invest in their urban infrastructure, pushing fibre deeper toward their customers, the opportunities for delivering IPTV increase. Cable companies are continuing to upgrade their capabilities as well, investing in innovation, leveraging their existing outside plant.

It won’t be long until most Canadians can choose between 2 wired service providers on top of the wireless and satellite choices. Most of the carriers in Canada now have phone, TV, internet and mobile operations, leading to interesting service delivery capabilities.

The 2011 Canadian Telecom Summit will examine these exciting developments in a number of sessions, including the closing panel on Thursday, June 2 that examines the explosion of the multi-screen universe: Tablets, TVs and Smartphones, oh my! The conference opens on May 31 with a keynote address by Rogers Communications President Rob Bruce.

Early bird rates are available for the next 5 weeks. Have you registered yet?

ISPs restructuring their pricing plans may be missing opportunities to learn from the past.

Long time Canadian telecom industry watchers will remember Integrated Network Services, Inc. (Insinc), a data services company that was acquired by Sprint Canada in the mid 1990’s. Insinc owned no transmission facilities of its own, yet it won the RFP for the original CA*net in 1989-90, partnering with IBM. Insinc leased facilities from CNCP and Stentor.

As a competitive differentiator, Insinc offered a mean time to repair (MTTR) of only 2 hours and backed it up with credits if a repair took longer. The underlying carriers offered a 4 hour MTTR. How could Insinc offer a better repair time than the carriers? Insinc looked at the data for repair times and they structured their customer agreements leveraging that deep understanding of the business.

At the time, repair times were actually bi-modal: a lot of repairs were effected by quick resets; most of the rest took much, much longer, requiring field dispatch and possible splicing. In other words, a significant share of the troubles were dealt with in a matter of minutes, while the rest took much longer than 4 hours. So Insinc would miss roughly the same percentage of repairs whether the commitment was 2 hours or 4 hours. By commiting to an MTTR of half the time of their suppliers / competitors, Insinc was able to build up an attractive portfolio of business.

What brought this to mind was a reading of a column last week in the Toronto Star. A customer who apparently uses less than 2GB per month was complaining that she is going to receive less from her service provider when they change her unlimited internet plan to one with a 25 GB download cap. How is she getting less service?

At the same time, her service provider could have saved itself the publicity had it looked at the usage data in advance. Was there really a need to impose a 25 GB cap on a customer using less than 2 GB?

Dissident subgroups are appearing within two industry lobbying associations.

Over the past few days, we have seen Mobilicity and Wind Mobile take contrary positions to that of the CWTA in response to Manitoba’s examination of increased consumer protection rules for mobile contracts.

It is difficult to build a consensus opinion for any association consisting of market competitors. However, there is a marked difference in the expression of the dissenting viewpoints. Wind Mobile took aim at its competitors, as might be expected, talking about “The Big Three.” On the other hand, Mobilicity’s press release targets the association itself, mentioing “CWTA” 6 times  in the first 4 paragraphs.

Last fall, we saw the emergence of the Canadian Network Operators Consortium (CNOC), which appears to have a membership with considerable overlap with the Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP). The challenge for these organizations is to find sufficient common ground to justify a united front, recognizing the varying business interests of the membership.

In such groups, is unanimous agreement required or can a majority vote determine whether the association attaches its seal to a position? Where unanimity is not possible, should the association stand down and have members respond on their own?

CWTA President Bernard Lord will be a keynote speaker at The 2011 Canadian Telecom Summit, opening May 31 in Toronto. Early Bird rates are in effect through February 28. Have you registered yet?

I hummed Joni Mitchell all day yesterday. It was filled with a mixture of life cycle events.

I dropped my daughter off at the airport, seeing her start on the next chapter of her own life in a new home overseas; I joined the celebrations for a new corporate office; I attended a funeral for the father of a colleague. The comments in the eulogies seemed to tie the day together for me, serving as an inspiration to make an impact with our brief time on planet Earth.

A move to a new land, a corporate beginning, a funeral. And the seasons, they go round and round…

What do you plan to do that makes a positive impact on those around you?

Already, 5% of the new year is gone. Are you on pace?

 This year, I plan to dedicate time to working on solutions to get more computers into Canada’s most economically challenged households. As I have written before, we need one million computers to provide an opportunity to participate in the digital economy in the households with the greatest needs. I’d like to hear your ideas on how to move forward.

I am getting together with some colleagues early on Monday evening to discuss the issue. In the meantime, your thoughts would be appreciated.