The increased personalization of communications is a recurring theme for many of the industry changes that will be explored at The 2009 Canadian Telecom Summit, which opens a week from Monday.

In a briefing last Friday, Rogers CEO Nadir Mohamed touched on this trend that can be observed in how we are using many of our communications services.

As we migrate from wired home phones to wireless mobile, the device and phone number become attached to a person rather than an address. Trends in on-demand video or video downloading gives individuals control over scheduling that was formerly the domain of the network.

What do these trends mean for capacity planning? How do service providers accommodate the individual within a household from a customer service perspective, in offering bundles, in providing access to account information?

Nadir Mohamed is the opening keynote speaker at The 2009 Canadian Telecom Summit. Sessions throughout the conference will explore these trends and much, much more.

Have you registered yet?

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Canadian Telecom Summit, Rogers

MTS has introduced a new mobile call plan for Manitobans that lays out a challenge to Shaw to respond with a mobile service.

The MTS All Access Plan offers MTS mobility customers unlimited local and long distance calling to all MTS residential, business, and MTS Mobility phone numbers within Manitoba, representing unlimited local and long distance calling to more than one million phone numbers.

The calling plan is bundled with 300 weekday minutes and unlimited evening and weekend calling (after 6:00 p.m) for $40. High speed or MTS TV customers save an additional $5.

The plan seems designed to help reduce migration to cable-based telephony while leveraging the strong market position that MTS enjoys for wireless service in its home market.

MTS Allstream Consumer Markets president Kelvin Shepherd will be speaking on our panel about The Broadband Connected Home on Wednesday June 17 at The 2009 Canadian Telecom Summit. Have you registered yet?

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MTS Allstream, Canadian Telecom Summit

The whining about Canada’s supposedly pathetic broadband industry has begun. Once again, pundits are saying that Canada’s broadband service ranks with Poland and Mexico.

The OECD couldn’t be wrong, could it?

Surely the critics who make this statement are aware that Videotron has been a leader in introducing the world’s fastest cable broadband and had launched a commercial service with 50 Mbps speeds in February 2008. So why wouldn’t we start off by asking how the OECD’s report [ excel, 26KB] that is supposed to represent September 2008 could list Canada’s fastest advertised speed at 25Mbps. Had the OECD gotten the facts right, we would be tied with a number of countries that have fibre-to-the-home operators, and belies the mistaken view that Canadians enjoy a different internet experience.

One of the biggest challenges when crafting a request for proposals is to define the problem in terms of requirements instead of solutions. An RFP should give vendors the opportunity to propose creative solutions to your problem. It is much tougher to evaluate responses, because each bidder may approach the solution space differently, but this approach, giving bidders the greatest number of degrees of freedom, will result in more opportunities.

Most people define problems in terms of solutions. Many people say that they need nails when what they really need is to hold two pieces of wood together. The difference between defining problems in terms of requirements versus preordaining a solution.

I was concerned when I read that Susan Crawford, President Obama’s special assistant for science, technology and innovation policy said:

Simply put, a digital economy requires fiber, and Australia is making the determination that for that to work it will require a utility approach.

A digital economy doesn’t need fibre any more than I need a new car. I need a method of on-demand urban transportation. I’d like a new car, but there are other solutions that could fit the real statement of requirements.

We may end up with a lot of fibre in the solution for broadband, but the kind of statement from a presidential advisor that defines a specific solution is dangerous. It makes people think that solutions other than fibre are not quite up to the presidential standard. It ignores the reality that Australia recognized when it estimated that at least 10% of their population cannot be reached economically without wireless and satellite.

The statement diminishes the value of technology and innovation to deliver ultra-high speed options that leverage the vast capital assets that are already in the ground. People don’t require fibre service; they want the applications that are delivered over high speed internet. An important subtlety.

I’d really like a new car, though.

Building Broadband is the theme of one of the sessions at The 2009 Canadian Telecom Summit, which begins two weeks from today. Have you registered yet?

The CRTC issued 3 news releases yesterday, all dealing with the potential for exhaust of phone numbers in area codes 905 (the area encircling Toronto), 204 (Manitoba) and 819 (Western Quebec).

How can we be running out of numbers?

An area code potentially has 10,000,000 numbers, but since we don’t use a leading 1 or zero, that brings us down to 8,000,000 per area code. Canada already has 30 area codes – many areas having had geographic splits and then overlays. so Canada has 240 million numbers available for our 35 million people.