There was a time that I thought the easiest job in the world must have been the sales position at Nortel responsible for servicing the Bell Canada account.

It wasn’t really sales as much as collecting orders. Nortel was the only supplier of network technology. In those days, of course, Bell owned Nortel. Who else would you call?

Those days are long gone.

Few people were surprised by last week’s announcement that Bell and TELUS would be working together to roll-out a new mobile network based on HSPA technology.

The news story that hasn’t been covered is the appearance of two new brands on Canadian wireless equipment racks: Nokia Siemens and Huawei. While most news accounts have listed the vendors as a one sentence suffix to their main stories, Global Insight noted the

significant shot in the arm for the two vendors at a time when the indications have been that capital expenditure on wireless networks by the large carriers has been repressed as the implications of the credit crunch are digested.

For Huawei, this is an especially significant breakthrough in North America, establishing its first supply relationship with Canada’s largest carriers.

The equipment suppliers with the most dominant Canadian R&D; presence, Ericsson and Nortel, were shut out. What kind of technology jobs could have been created with some of that capital investment being retained in this country.

Nortel’s stock is trading at a discount of almost 99.9% off its high, assets are being spun out and the company is a target for a merger or acquisition. Microsoft has been rumoured to be courting RIM.

While the government looks at the financial and automotive sectors, it should pause to examine and consider where telecommunications technology, a key enabler of greener business, fits in Canada’s industrial policy.

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Nortel, Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia Siemens

Canadians go to the polls today and unless something extraordinary happens, the Conservatives will likely not emerge with the majority they sought when Stephen Harper visited Rideau Hall 6 weeks ago. A lot of questions come to mind.

We’ll be watching results tonight to see the list of MPs that will be sent to Ottawa, from which key cabinet positions (and opposition critics) will be drawn.

Will the government gain sufficient support to enact the changes called for in the report from the Telecom Policy Review Panel, which has largely been languishing for 30 months?

How will the government deal with the last minute promise to provide $500M in rural broadband subsidies – based on $100M per year for 5 years beginning in 2010? This kind of recurring amount, said to be tied to private sector and other levels of government participating, could be effeciently delivered through a direct subsidy or tax credit to users, as we have suggested on this blog.

What will be the impact of the global economic turmoil on how Canada’s new government approaches telecom policy?

While Canadians are celebrating Thanksgiving, the Wireless History Foundation is hosting a dinner in Chicago this evening, marking the 25th anniversary of the first cellular mobile phone call which was made October 13, 1983 down the road at Soldier Field.

We have come a long way since the days of phones mounted in the trunks of our cars, evolving into phones carried in a shoulder bag.

And let’s not forget that major leap forward with the development of the classic Motorola brick-phone – the DynaTAC 8000X – which was approved by the FCC just 3 weeks earlier, on September 21, 1983. That phone, weighing in at 28 ounces, seemed nearly indestructible. I recall magazine ads in the 80’s that celebrated its ability to survive fire and water damage which sure beats the heck out of today’s phones (which frequent readers of mine know just don’t float).

Andrew Seybold made an interesting observation when reflecting on the first 25 years of cellular service:

I often meet new, young companies or talk to executives at one of the larger companies who are telling me about something new that, in reality, was new in the 1980s or early 1990s and did not make it in the marketplace. Some of these ideas can be and are being dusted off and put forward again now that times are different. Network coverage is far better than it was in those days, devices cost less, service costs far less and we have two things we really didn’t have back then: wireless broadband and the Internet.

Which applications from the past are now getting ready for prime time re-release today?

Who would have or could have thought that mobile wireless service would be such a disruptive force – not only on the telecom industry, but on the way business is conducted and society itself?

What will the next 25 years bring?

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Update [October 13, 1:20 pm]
Good story by Alana Semuels in today’s LA Times called An evolution from talk to text.

One of the advantages (and disadvantages) of having multiple phone lines in the house is that I can anticipate telemarketing calls before they arrive on the second line. In this way, I am better equipped to try to find out who is behind those annoying recorded messages.

I recently received a call from a mythical Orlando phone number (407.000.9821) that told me I won a Florida or Bahamas vacation and I just had to press 9 for more information. I did just that and reached a human who must have accidentally hung up on me when I asked to be placed on their do not call list.

A few minutes later, the same caller ID showed up on another line and I reached a different agent. I decided to play along a little longer, so that I could ask the name of the group behind this promotion – Cancun Travel Unlimited. Once armed with a call-back number, I asked this agent to remove my phone number from their list. Again, a hang up.

As it turns out, the phone number I was given didn’t belong to Cancun Travel, a company that has a number of reports on a rip-off website. The folks at Hilton Timeshare were happy to add me to their own do not call list, but they were unaware of a campaign.

When we have a Florida / Mexican company making calls, with no presence in this country, it makes me wonder how enforcement of our Do Not Call legislation is going to provide the kind of relief expected by Canadians.

Is the DNCL going to be another gun registry?

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DNCL

If you Google the terms “end of Vonage”, you get back more than 1.2M entries, looking at patent issues, implementation issues, IPO issues. Vonage has survived all of them, so far.

Vonage has been trying to close on $250M of new debt and its timing couldn’t be worse, considering the turmoil in the global financial markets. A story on Telecom Web suggests that Vonage is quickly running out of runway, burning through cash and having challenges renew some of its loans. But last night, Vonage issued a press release suggesting that it has revised terms for about 90% of its original target.

December 16 is the due date on its old debt. Vonage has been on the brink of disaster a number of times. Will the largest pure-play VoIP provider survive once again?

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I will be taking time off tomorrow in observance of Yom Kippur. I expect to have my next posting on Friday.

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Vonage