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.

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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?

The Nielsen ratings are coming in for Sunday’s Super Bowl match and it appears that the Giants’ victory over New England was the most watched TV show in almost 25 years. Not since the final episode of M*A*S*H in 1983 have so many Americans shared in the experience of a single program.

We know that the Super Bowl is a perennial pleaser for broadcasters; Fox was charging $2.7M per 30 second spot for advertising. Still, I wonder what lessons can be found for those contemplating the role of broadcasting in the future, as viewers find so many other places to plant their eyeballs.

The ratings were bolstered by viewers cheering for or against the possibility of New England finishing the season 19-0; a great last quarter; and the sacrifice of so many New Year’s resolution diets because of the inability to eat chili dogs without friends, beer and chips.

While new media is able to deliver content that targets the needs of the individual – when you want it, where ever you want to receive it – the Super Bowl ratings show that broadcasting is effective at delivering programming to the masses.

Regardless of the popularity of Facebook and other new media social networking sites, the Super Bowl numbers demonstrate the power of broadcast TV, a relatively old medium, to bring us together with family and friends for personal interaction.

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Super Bowl

Your phone numbers are yours, not the phone company’s. All of your phone numbers – even if the numbers are ‘out-of-territory’ or secondary numbers.

On Friday, the CRTC maintained its consumer focus in a decision that reaffirmed that providers of VoIP services

continue to be required to port out telephone numbers, assigned from both inside and outside of their operating territory, to other VoIP service providers or to other telecommunications service providers, including local exchange carriers and wireless service providers.

The issue had been that some service providers thought that local number portability should apply just to primary phone numbers in a customer’s local area.

VoIP has enabled people to get phone numbers from all over the country and indeed, from all over the world, and have all of these numbers ring various devices that the customer directs.

Service providers are required to release phone numbers to customers that are leaving. The Commission does not require service providers to allow customers to bring numbers with them, but those service providers do so at their own peril. As the decision states:

In the Commission’s view, service providers who do not support or minimally support porting-in of telephone numbers will self limit their ability to attract new customers.

In effect, the CRTC’s decision confirms the customer in control, consistent with the intent of recent policy pronouncements.

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CRTC, VoIP, LNP

What does the Microsoft / Yahoo deal mean for Canada’s two largest internet service providers?

Bell’s Sympatico has hitched itself to Microsoft’s MSN and Rogers is aligned with Yahoo.

If and when Microsoft and Yahoo consummate their deal and begin to wring out their $1B in synergies, what happens to the differentiation between rivals in other markets?

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Microsoft, Yahoo, Rogers, Bell, Sympatico