The price for 8Gb iPhones has fallen to £169 in the UK, a drop of £100 making it cheaper than US prices. Purchasers over the past month who paid the full £269 price will be receiving a refund for the difference.
The iPhone may be the only consumer electronics device that is cheaper in the UK than the US.
I find that even good whisky is more expensive in the UK than on this side of the pond.
Cellular News is speculating that this clearance sale, combined with a reported shortage of iPhones in the US, are indications that preparations are being made to launch an upgraded device.
According to the story:
Piper’s Munster reminded his clients in the research note that when Apple products disappear from stores, an update of that same product often follows in a few days. Given that history, Munster sees an 80% chance that Apple will soon introduce an iPhone for 3G networks.
What other stars need to align for iPhone to make sense for a launch in Canada? Will a carrier need access to a national WiFi network?
For some people, success comes from recognizing what you do well and sticking to it.
For some reason, listening to the testimony of Cogeco CEO Louis Audet at the BDU hearings brought to mind a line by John Kruk of the Philadelphia Phillies, when he was being admonished by a woman for his unkempt appearance during the World Series.
She said that as an athlete, he should think about being a better role model.
He responded, “I’m not an athlete. I’m a professional baseball player.”
Audet pointed out during his appearance that, unique among the major cable companies, Cogeco doesn’t have any specialty broadcast stations in its stable. Cogeco sticks to doing what it does best – running a cable company.
Looking through the list of qualified bidders for the AWS spectrum auction, we can see a lot of cable companies: Eastlink, Videotron, Shaw, Rogers – even small Manitoba cable company, Westman – but no Cogeco.
Cogeco isn’t sitting idly watching the world go by. It also has a voice product and offers high speed internet and it has expanded by investing off-shore in Portugal.
The Tyee, an independent on-line magazine based in BC wrote a story about net neutrality more than a year ago, noting that most Canadians are sleeping through the debate.
Despite what is called a “perfect storm of events that may crystallize the issue for consumers, businesses, politicians, and regulators,” there hasn’t been an overwhelming outcry, despite extensive press coverage of the most recent network activities.
There are a number of voices who present a conspiracy theory on traffic shaping in Canada. They promote an Oliver Stone-type narrative trying to have you believe that traffic shaping is intended to help stop the unauthorized distribution of copyright material.
Canadians aren’t buying it.
Why?
I think it is simple. Traffic shaping is consumer friendly.
Network management protects customer service. For the vast majority of consumers, traffic shaping protects the overall quality of their internet experience.
Traffic shaping is designed to make sure that the most latency-demanding applications work properly. Voice over IP and network gaming – these applications just won’t work if the network is congested. If all bits are treated equally, then all applications get equally degraded when the network is jammed.
Traffic management is designed to make sure that there is capacity for the bits that absolutely, positively need to be delivered right away.
As to the conspiracy theory? Traffic shaping doesn’t care if file sharing traffic is legal content; that traffic is made to be a lower priority because it is, well, lower priority. Contrary to the ridiculous assertions to the contrary, there is no loss of utility of the file if it takes longer to download it. Once it is transfered, you have it and you view it locally in full living colour.
Rather than threaten the distribution of video content using streaming media, traffic shaping allows ISPs to protect capacity for such latency-demanding applications.
Some users want to load massive files onto their hard drives; perfectly legitimate, but lower priority traffic. Such traffic isn’t blocked, but during peak periods, it is capacity restricted to prevent it from tying up all of the network capacity. Why is it unreasonable to shift file transfers to off-peak times so that the majority of internet users can continue to play networked Xbox games or place their VoIP calls?
Maybe Canadians are sleeping through the net neutrality rhetoric because network traffic management is designed to benefit the majority of users. It’s democratic.
Freud said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar – there is no hidden motivation. Traffic shaping isn’t a nefarious first step toward blocking content; maybe Canadians understand that network management is simply to manage traffic – there is no hidden intent.
John Roese’s blog is one that I enjoy checking. There is generally an interesting perspective to be found there.
This week was no exception, with a guest posting from Andrew Lippman of the MIT Media Lab. Of particular note was his comment about the pace of societal evolution.
Disruption is not the disruptor, its rapidity is.
How do companies respond? How do you anticipate change? Create disruptive forces? How do service providers and suppliers learn how to shift their product set and adjust the way they do business?
The post talks about one of Nortel’s approaches:
They are not just listening to kids, they are hiring them — close to 500 new engineers in the last 15 months alone. Inside the company, they call them “new-grads,” and they are simultaneously trained and sincerely listened to.
My kids are just finishing their exams; many of their friends are entering the workforce in the next few weeks.
There are lots of changes underway in the telecom sector these days. Some companies are restructuring while others are preparing to launch new wireless businesses. Hopefully all of the service providers and suppliers have been actively recruiting on campus.
When working with these new grads, be prepared for the training to flow both ways. I suspect we’ll find that we have a lot to learn from them.
Yesterday, in his presentation to the BDU hearings, Gary Smith, the president of Bell Video Group mentioned that DTH has added 1.7M net new subscribers to the broadcast distribution system. That is 1.7M subscribers who did not previously subscribe to cable service.
Satellite is an integral part of providing advanced video service to much of Canada – it provides a competitive choice in urban markets and it brings advanced digital video to those Canadians who live beyond the economic reach of terrestrial cable or IPTV facilities.
Satellite appears to be the only economic means to provide broadband internet to a measurable part of the country. As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, armed with government ownership and success in connecting every community over 200 people, Sasktel still can’t reach almost 15% of the population of Saskatchewan, even with fixed wireless as part of its arsenal of solutions.
In the next election, broadband access should find its way onto the party platforms. Satellite-based service will need to be part of the solution.
