Over the past couple weeks, I have had a couple occasions to dust off my old college statistics books because of sampling methodologies that lead to questionable results being published.

In the first instance, there was the result from a Harris/Decima survey published in a May 20 press release from Rogers. At the bottom of the release, there was language that may have been missed by many because it reads like boilerplate:

The data was gathered between May 6th through May 9th, 2010 through Harris/Decima’s weekly teleVox, the company’s national omnibus survey. A representative sample of 1,000 Canadians were surveyed, of which 653 own a mobile phone and 283 send at least one text message a month on average. The corresponding margin of error for mobile phone owners is +/-3.8%

Rogers was trying to look at how text messaging enthusiasts use the service and whether these types of customers want to do more with SMS messaging. Harris / Decima thought that they could get a representative sample from their weekly Televox poll. Problem is that their pool of candidates for sampling only includes listed phone numbers and the company has acknowledged that this would exclude the pool of Canadians that have gone wireless only. I would think that wireless only households are different than the average – in use of features, volume of minutes, demographics. All sorts of ways that make it clear that the Harris / Decima study was not a representative sample when it was wireless phone behaviour being studied. 

The other study that caught my eye was a recent release of a Net Index from Ookla.  The usual folks are again bemoaning Canada’s ranking in the study – 32^nd. The statistician in me said to look at the numbers.

When you click on the country name, you get additional details. Canada shows up with an average download speed of 7.92 Mbps. The tests were drawn from a pretty sizable pool: 

Tests from 4,801,628 unique IPs have been taken in this country and of 25,424,152 total tests, 959,172 are being used for the current Index.

That is an impressive result. Nearly 5 million unique IP addresses have used Speedtest to create a pretty good dataset to examine. That is in the order of half of all internet connections in this country.

For the United States (ranked 28), nearly 31M unique IPs are in the pool, a smaller proportion of all of their connections, but still pretty good size – in fact, a pretty awesome pool. But look at number 1 ranked South Korea. Only 201,000 unique IP addresses in the sample – one 25^th of the number for Canada, despite having 50% more total broadband subscribers. Just 33,000 were used for the index.

Number 4 Japan has only 336,000 unique IPs in the sample pool, one 20^th of the representation for Canada despite Japan having 3 times the number of broadband subscribers. Only 67,000 were used.

Why?

Why is the pool of tests so much broader in Canada? Does the breadth of the sample skew the data? 

Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be enough people who bother to look behind the numbers.

The Digital Economy consultation recognized the limitations of many of the international studies when it said “international comparisons should be treated with caution.” But that appropriate caveat was unfairly ridiculed in a recent opinion piece in Telemanagement.

It’s already a tough job to figure out which way you want to go when we develop our digital strategy; it is especially hard if we’re being given questionable data as to a starting point.

Len Waverman, Dean of University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business and author of the Nokia Siemens Networks Connectivity Scorecard will be speaking at The 2010 Canadian Telecom Summit next week.

For the past 6 months, Rogers has been beta trialing Rogers on-demand online (RODO) video platform.

Earlier this week, the beta tag came off and the service was fully productized with a few innovations. First off, Rogers will now make some of the videos open to the general public, while restricting other content, such as live streaming capabilities – sporting events and concerts – exclusively to Rogers customers.

I noticed a media advisory yesterday that hints at what this could mean for World Cup fans. Last week, Blue Coat issued an advisory, asking if companies were ready for the impact on network performance from next month’s football championships. How will internet service providers manage the loads on their networks? Will corporations be able to preserve network integrity while employees keep video streaming windows open in the corner of their desktop?

As I observed last fall when RODO launched its beta:

RODO brings quality video (contrasted with user generated) to Canadians, with full licensing of the content. It is a different business model from the many of the popular US services – such as Hulu – but it recognizes the need to provide value to all the players in the food chain, while giving customers access to the content they want.
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By authenticating the user and using ad support, there is tremendous knowledge about the viewer available for improved targeting of consumers – increasing the potential for higher rate ads.

On June 7, David Purdy, Rogers VP Video Product Management will be speaking on a panel at The 2010 Canadian Telecom Summit, examining next generation business models for the communications industry. Other sessions will explore managing customer experience in a broadband connected world.

Have you registered yet?

The CRTC is holding an oral hearing next week, “Proceeding to consider the appropriateness of mandating certain wholesale high-speed access services.”

In other words, which facilities will the CRTC require phone companies and cable companies to unbundle and offer to competitors on a wholesale basis. Some competitors have suggested that the competitive industry is at stake in these hearings. I don’t think so. There are at least two options available to smaller ISPs should the CRTC rule against their proposals – and I would be happy to discuss these with my clients.

Is mandated access to wholesale high speed service in the public interest? I was the facilitator for an executive development session at University of Toronto yesterday. One of the presenters referenced a quote from Professor Emeritus Theodore Levitt of Harvard Business School:

People do not want quarter-inch drills. They want quarter-inch holes.

Having hundreds of competitors is not (or at least should not be) the objective of government policy. Rather, it is the competitive marketplace that delivers benefits for consumers.

To paraphrase Professor Levitt, consumers don’t want lots of competitors; they want advanced, innovative services at a price they consider to be fair value. The policy and the regulatory framework needs to examine what is the right framework that encourages innovation and investment by various market participants.

Next week’s hearings will explore these issues and there needs to be focus on the what the proposals mean to consumers: residential and business. 

These issues are among many to be hotly debated and discussed at The 2010 Canadian Telecom Summit, opening in just 10 days, June 7-9 at the Toronto Congress Centre.

Your colleagues, clients and competitors will be there. Have you registered yet?

Just 10 more sleeps until the Toronto Congress Centre becomes my home again as we welcome The 2010 Canadian Telecom Summit, running from June 7-9.

This year’s event features an innovation showcase from Microsoft and our delegates won’t want to miss the Monday evening Cocktail Reception sponsored this year by Fujitsu.

It is getting busy around here. Registrations are continuing to come in at a strong pace.

Yesterday’s introduction in the House of Commons of new acts to protect privacy and electronic commerce add to the list of issues that will be on the table for discussion.

Have you registered yet?

Videotron filed a strong set of comments in response to Bell’s proposal to spend a remarkable $463M in deferral account funds to provide mobile-based broadband service to about 60,000 households.

Simply put, we consider Bell’s HSPA+ broadband expansion proposal a cynical abuse of the Commission’s process and an egregious anti-competitive assault on the wireless marketplace.

Videotron compares the per household cost of Bell’s proposal costs associated with other broadband subsidy projects. Videotron calculates that Bell’s proposal amounts to $7,590 per household; our quick math in a March 2 tweet was $7,276 per home, which we described as ‘staggering’. In contrast, Industry Canada’s recent rural broadband announcement used only $76.7M to extend broadband internet access to 169,000 households – just $454 per household – less than 1/16th the per household cost of Bell’s proposal.

It is important to realize that seventeen different providers, including Videotron, were awarded a portion of the Broadband Canada funds following an open, competitive process, adjudicated by a competent, independent governmental authority.

In contrast, no other service provider was given the opportunity to propose alternative, more cost-effective means to use Bell’s deferral account funds. Bell faced no competition and had no incentive to prepare a cost-effective approach. Rather, Bell’s sole goal appears to have been to find a way to claim the largest subsidy possible.

Videotron noted that Bell’s proposal was virtually identical to the total funds available in the deferral account, leaving nothing for refunds to the urban subscribers who funded the account.

To be blunt, the alleged cost of Bell’s broadband expansion proposal is preposterous. It does not pass even the most elementary “sanity” test. It should be rejected on this basis alone.

The Videotron filing sets the stage for fireworks to erupt on Tuesday June 8 at The Canadian Telecom Summit. Videotron’s President and CEO, Robert Depatie returns that morning to deliver a keynote address, followed by CRTC Chair Konrad von Finckenstein and the annual Regulatory Blockbuster. In the afternoon, we will look at digital strategies – an opportunity to explore the question of how much of a subsidy is reasonable for Canadians to provide to those living in higher cost serving areas. The 2010 Canadian Telecom Summit is less than 2 weeks away.

Have you registered yet? Register today.

Download the complete conference brochure.