I am noticing an increase in the number of calls from “Private Name / Private Number” that disconnect within a couple seconds of me answering the phone. As I write this posting, I was just hung up on again – all three of our lines have received similar calls in a span of 10 minutes.

Yes I have hang-ups. Anyone else experiencing this phenomenon?

I suspect that these calls are coming from a company that wants to leave a message on my voice mail – like Yanish the Mover, or some vacation promoter. I guess live humans aren’t as good a target for these folks as my voice mail box.

What is my point?

Well – it seems to me that these annoyance calls fall through the cracks in the CRTC’s rules for telemarketing. They aren’t “voice mail broadcasting” because that term is defined by the CRTC as:

a telecommunication whereby a recorded message is delivered directly into a person’s voice mailbox without interrupting that person’s activities in real time.

No recording was delivered and even if one was delivered, it did interrupt my activities in real time – so these calls don’t meet the definition of voice mail broadcasts.

It is possible the call should fall under the automatic dialer (ADAD) rules, but how would we find out who is offending? No message is left when a human answers the call.

Even if the call gets traced, there was no solicitation and therefore no telemarketing.

This appears to be yet another way the bad guys will work around the rules, while the good guys get stuck paying.

Technorati Tags:
CRTC, DNCL, telemarketing

Dov Moran is an Israeli inventor who created the USB memory key and sold his company, msystems, to Sandisk for $1.6B a little over a year ago.

The Jerusalem Post reports that his new company (with a management team composed of msystems alumni), Modu Mobile, is in the process of launching a small modular mobile handset that pops into interchangeable “jackets” to create a smarter phone. Alternatively the device can be plugged into other gadgets to provide those items with network connectivity.

The Modu is slightly smaller than an iPod Nano, weighing in at 1.5 ounces. It has its own small color screen and a limited keypad, sufficient to allow the Modu to work on its own with basic functionality.

The jackets transform the Modu into a variety of form factors, adding numeric keypads, GPS, cameras, MP3 players – perhaps you will be able to plug the Modu into a computer directly, or your car, security system or devices that have not yet been conceived. The Modu supplies the antenna and wireless network communications.

This strikes me as an iPod approach that could open up a huge after-market accessory industry. Consumers could then upgrade their accessories or their basic Modu without having to replace the other. For example. initially, the Modu is GPRS enabled; when the company releases the HSPA version, the jackets will still work.

Modu could facilitate a wave of third party mobile innovation. Think of the Amazon Kindle, without the applications developers needing to worry about the network side.

The phone will be launched in October with Telecom Italia, VimpelCom in Russia and Cellcom in Israel. The company claims that it hasn’t had time to speak with US carriers.

Will Canada have a chance to beat our neighbours to the south?

A CRTC decision issued yesterday seems to simultaneously be right and wrong in the wake of a week long service outage last October.

Under the CRTC’s competitor rate rebate plan, carriers have to compensate their wholesale customers when service levels are below certain standards. Among other instances, at issue in this case were a couple cable cuts caused by third parties – big ones: an 1800 pair/26 gauge cable and a 1200 pair/24 gauge cable cut by a sewer contractor in London.

No question that Bell Canada did not have control over the causes of the service outage to Primus. That confirms the correctness of the decision from the CRTC. But neither Primus nor its customers had control over the outage. Something is wrong if they aren’t compensated.

I hope the construction contractors are being held accountable for the damages.

Technorati Tags:
CRTC, Bell, Primus

Videotron is expected to be launching the commercial availability its 100 Mbps wideband internet service at a press conference later this morning, following up on last year’s industry-leading technology trial.

I was struck by reading through some of the statistics that I generally tend to gloss over, found in the boilerplate language at the bottom of the invitation to the press conference.

As of December 31, 2007, Videotron was serving 1,638,000 cable television customers in Québec, including 768,000 illico subscribers. Videotron is the Québec leader in high-speed Internet access, with 933,000 subscribers to its cable modem service. As of December 31, 2007, Videotron had activated 45,700 phones on its wireless telephone service and was providing cable telephone service to nearly 636,000 Québec households and organizations.

Videotron is now providing phone service to nearly 40% of its cable subscriber base and about two thirds of its internet base.

MTS Allstream reported last night that it is continuing to experience strong success with its IPTV solutions – now enjoying about a third of the market. It is working with Alcatel Lucent to deliver video across wireline and wireless platforms.

At The 2008 Canadian Telecom Summit, Alcatel Lucent will be participating in a panel looking at Consumers in a Multi-screen World. Videotron’s Robert Depatie and Pierre Blouin of MTS Allstream will be delivering keynote addresses.

---

Update [February 6, 10:30 am]
Videotron has commercially launched two new consumer services based on its new Cisco-powered wideband internet service. Ultimate Speed 30 (30 Mbps for $64.95) and Ultimate Speed 50 (50 Mbps for $79.95) with both delivering 1 Mbps uploads. Both services hold back on the technical ability to deliver better than 100 Mbps. A business version of Ultimate Speed 50 is priced at $120 per month, with double the download cap (50 GB for consumer / 100 GB for business). Videotron already has accessible tools for users to monitor their usage.

Videotron indicated that the trials over the past year demonstrated that consumer demand is not yet ready for the higher speed, so it has chosen to hold back on its release until it can monetize the additional value. Its experience in trials adds material to the discussion raised yesterday about the academic call for national programs to build greater than 100 Mbps infrastructure.

In any case, Videotron is able to lay claim to the title of internet leader in Quebec, if not all of North America.

Bill St. Arnaud recently pointed to an Educause whitepaper: A Blueprint for Big Broadband in the US.

The paper strikes me as alarmist right from the opening lines.

The United States is facing a crisis in broadband connectivity. The demand for bandwidth is accelerating well beyond the capacity of our current broadband networks, especially as video traffic and home‐based businesses become more prevalent. In the very near future, a single family will be watching HDTV video at the same that they engage in remote health monitoring, videoconferencing, gaming, distance education class lectures, and social networking.

The authors seem to feel no compulsion to be factually accurate, completely ignoring Verizon’s fibre to the home initiative and the cable industry’s investments in advancing higher speed internet access services, such as those first announced by Videotron, but coming to all major cable systems:

While other nations are preparing for the future, the United States is not. Most developed nations are deploying “big broadband” networks (100 Mbps) that provide faster connections at cheaper prices than those available in the United States.

Like New York Governor Spitzer, this January 2008 report points to Canada as a shining light:

The paper recommends the public‐private partnership approach followed in Canada, where one‐third of the funding would be provided by the federal government, one‐third by the states, and the remaining one-third by the private and / or public sector.

Bill St. Arnaud correctly points out that public private partnerships are hardly a guarantee of success.

Several municipal and government funded broadband initiatives are in already in trouble such as Utopia, Philadelphia WiFi and South Dundas (which is paradoxically is cited as good example in this paper).

Allow me to digress a moment.

I was at a meeting last week for a volunteer organization that was looking to get more involved in advocacy for social action causes. Among the issues that we plan to address is child poverty and the working poor in families led by single women. Almost immediately, there was a call for minimum wages to be raised. I objected to advocating such a subject. Raising the minimum wage isn’t a goal; it is one of the means to achieve a goal. After a lively discussion, we looked at goals such as enabling immigrant professionals to achieve Canadian accreditation; ensuring all children have access to meals at school and a roof over their heads to sleep.

I have written before about defining requirements rather than solutions. This report advocates for Canadian style solutions, yet it shows that Canada is behind the US on many measures – such as broadband connections per 100 inhabitants, average advertised speed, average cost, etc.

Bill’s comments on the study asks about increasing facilities based competition.

The challenge with broadband in North America is lack of facilities based competition. What we need to find out is why the big telcos and cablecos are not deploying infrastructure in their competitor’s territory? They seem to have no problem deploying nation wide wireless networks, but nobody wants to make the make investment in nation wide broadband in direct competition with existing incumbents. What are the hurdles? Is broadband a natural monopoly?

There is clearly no monopoly in broadband. There are two facilities based players and opportunities for others to build. Competition between cable and telcos has driven technology deployment that matches consumers’ willingness to pay.

Government involvement in dark fibre will result in a monopoly on facilities that removes incentives for innovation. We have government bodies that have determined these markets to be competitive. Why would we want to establish a state-owned monopoly?

Let me suggest that the role of Government is to set goals, not intervene in solutions.

If necessary, perhaps Government could administer and provide needs-based subsidies or tax credits directly to consumers. As difficult as it may be to resist, there seems to be a temptation to distort the marketplace by building infrastructure.

Michael Geist suggests that Barack Obama has led other candidates in placing technology policy as a campaign issue. What broadband policies will emerge in this year’s elections south of the border and posturing in Canada?