A few weeks ago, BMO hosted its annual Media and Telecom Conference.

The transformation of the delivery of video content was a recurring theme from many of the speakers. As recently as 5 years ago, most of us received our video content from conventional cable companies on our TV sets.

As we have been hearing at The Canadian Telecom Summit, the speakers at the BMO event referred to the evolution of video over three screens – TV, computer and mobile devices. Bell CEO George Cope observed that content has been one of Bell’s fastest growing costs. Bell’s acquisition of CTV was a result of Bell not wanting to be in a position of having to pay broadcasters and telecom competitors Rogers, Shaw or Videotron for the material that has been feeding its fast growing video business.

Videotron is looking to mirror its offerings across its cable, internet and new mobile platforms. It also suggested that owning content allows it to negotiate access to other content from a position of strength.

Will TELUS be able to rely on regulations to ensure that it has sufficient access to content at a cost effective price? Will other non- integrated service providers be able to compete, operating solely in mobile or internet markets?

Quick reference to two items of interest regarding electronic commerce in Canada from Stats Can and yesterday’s debates in Parliament.

Yesterday, Statistics Canada released information about how much internet shopping was done by Canadians in 2009. Last year, Canadians placed $15.1B in orders for goods and services, up 18% from the $12.8B we spent in 2007. This represented 95 million orders last year, up 32% from the 70 million orders in 2007 – meaning that the average value of each purchase declined from $183 in 2007 to $158 in 2009.

In that same period, residential internet users increased by about 8%, according to the CRTC’s Communications Monitoring Report, making the growth in e-commerce even less impressive. an increase of 18% over 2 years should be disappointing.

So, to restore confidence in electronic commerce, we received word that Bill C-28 was introduced: the Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act.

Despite its name, the Bill goes beyond what is needed to fight spam and it remains to be seen whether it will actually fulfill its core purpose:

to promote the efficiency and adaptability of the Canadian economy by regulating commercial conduct that discourages the use of electronic means to carry out commercial activities

My concerns regarding the previous incarnation of this Bill have been set out before [here, here and here]. Here is the rub: I look at the real junk that is clogging my email filters and getting past the automated filters. None of it is from legitimate businesses. All of the spam can be characterized as having some variant of fradulent information: the sender is fake; the subject line is false, there is some form of misrepresentation.

None of the pharmeceutical ads or physical enhancement ads or porn or trojan horse emails with fake links to banks present themselves truthfully. Why does the legislation go beyond a prohibition on such fraud? How can this legislation be portrayed as enhancing electronic commerce when the law prohibits sending out a request for consent to be sent commercial messages.

I have trouble understanding how we can plan to prohibit communication in digital form that is perfectly acceptable on paper; our post office depends on revenues generated by the delivery of unsolicited commercial mail. This legislation, as currently written, will increase the cost of conducting electronic commerce in Canada.

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Unlike other international anti-spam legislation, the prohibition against unsolicited commercial messages in the ECPA is not limited to messages sent with some element of fraud or misleading information, sent with an “intent to deceive or mislead,” sent to addresses that were gathered using “automated means,” or sent in bulk.

I grew up on the grounds of a children’s psychiatric research institute in London, Ontario, the son of a child psychiatrist.

Two of my siblings are in the “family business”.

So, I was really taken with Bell’s announcement last week that it has launched a 5 year, $50 million initiative to support mental health across Canada, with Canada’s Olympic hero, Clara Hughes, acting as spokesperson for a national Let’s Talk campaign.

Last year, I wrote about the longtime association between the telecommunications sector and community service; much good work is being done by the companies and individuals working in our industry. Indeed, this year’s Telecom Hall of Fame ceremony will recognize the work of the Telecom Pioneers of Canada, preparing to celebrate the milestone of a century of community service work.

Bell’s multi-year commitment to support mental health is especially important in many ways. Mental health isn’t something people like to talk about; one of the four pillars of Bell’s Mental Health Initiative deals with Anti-stigma. Public perception is the leading reason that most of those living with a mental illness do not seek help. Bell’s willingness to have its brand associated with helping Canadians deal with mental illness is a brave and bold statement to open the national conversation about mental health.

For me, I took a special interest in this announcement. Maybe I liked seeing such an important player in my business – telecommunications – take an active interest in my family’s main line of work – mental health.

The ITU’s Broadband Commission has rejected the future of Stupid Networks. In its report, A 2010 Leadership Imperative: Towards a Future Built on Broadband, there is an important point made, under the heading of “Action Point 3: Using Transparent, Fair, Competitive, Technology-neutral Models”:

It should be recognized that intelligently-managed state-of-the-art broadband infrastructure is the prerequisite for future new content services and applications. Without such infrastructure, which needs to be financed adequately by the users and end-users (eg, customers and anyone offering services and applications over the Internet), there will be no possibility for sustainable growth in data and Internet usage.

A comment on my Wednesday post referred to “the tsunami of disruption”, also known as “open internet-driven innovation over dumb pipes.”

But the ITU Broadband Commission’s report, delivered last weekend to the United Nations Millenium Development Goals project, has a different perspective. It says that:

Higher capacity access to the Internet provides a platform for a wider range of applications so it is implicit that investments in such capacity can benefit and reward innovative and creative ideas for applications. Those who invest in communications capacity are not necessarily those who may benefit from applications and services, so innovative mechanisms need to be found to ensure that broadband deployment is not stalled through lack of investment.

Different visions of the future. Your comments are welcome.

I picked up a Blackberry Torch earlier this week at the Canadian launch party. I like it. A touchscreen with a slideout keyboard as a safety net for those uncomfortable with the touch-typing.

Which leads me down a general theme – I wonder: Is RIM hedging its Blackberry bets to extinction?

By offering so many different models and user interfaces for the Blackberry, I wonder if RIM has created too fractured a marketplace for itself – is RIM playing it too safe for its own good?

Let’s look at the current product line-up: there is the new Torch with the touch screen interface, but a slide-out full keyboard; the Bold and Curve with full keyboards; the Pearl with its implicit requirement for your friends to grant you creative license to accommodate your spelling; the Tour; the Storm. All of these are current models.

Perhaps RIM’s Canadian-ness makes it want to have something for everyone (we Canadians don’t like to annoy anyone). But, I wonder if this keeps it from placing bigger bets in redefining a unique user interface, the way that Apple has unified its UI across all of its platforms.

On one hand, different people like different interfaces; but on the other hand, trying to have something for everyone may be keeping RIM from returning to the leadership that Wall Street is looking for.

Still, the Blackberry Torch should appeal to youths who want a touch interface but like a real keyboard for their messaging. Also, I am told by my youth advisors that the integrated social networking app is a real winner.

What are you thoughts?

And as Blackberry launches the Torch across Canada this week, we wonder what’s next? Will we see a Blackberry Pad device in time for Christmas, perhaps as early as next week, as written up by WSJ?