Verizon Wireless, one of the world’s leading CDMA-based carriers, has thrown its support behind LTE – Long Term Evolution – for its next generation technology upgrade. LTE is part of the GSM evolution path, as contrasted with UMB – Ultra Mobile Broadband – also known as EVDO Rev C, on the CDMA path.

RCR Wireless reported on Vodafone CEO, Arun Sarin, and Verizon chairman and CEO Ivan Seidenberg, speaking about their technology choice at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference last week. Vodafone and Verizon control Verizon Wireless through a joint venture.

Given cross-border roaming relationships, can we begin to anticipate the implications for wireless carriers in Canada?

Once again, a bold capital investment decision from Verizon.

It seems especially fitting that this item came to my attention as privacy commissioners from around the world converge in Montreal this week for the 29th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners, hosted by Canada’s Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddard.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, it appears that Virgin Mobile in Australia is being sued by the parents of an American teen who claim that the phone company used an image taken from Flickr, superimposed its slogans and plastered the photo on billboards and web ads.

The picture was taken by the teen’s youth counsellor, who posted it that day on his Flickr page, according to the teen’s brother. The counsellor chose a Creative Commons sharing licence that allows others to reuse the photo, if appropriate credit is given. A link to the counsellor’s Flickr site appeared at the bottom of the ad.

The case should serve as a reminder of the impact that can occur with the voluntary sharing of valuable, yet private, personal information and photos shared by individuals and their so-called friends within various social networking applications.

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privacy, Virgin Mobile, Flickr

Now that Google has gained general consumer acceptance of context-based ads appearing when viewing email over the web, Pudding Media has announced advertising supported voice over IP (VoIP) phone calls that deliver ads related to the conversation in progress.

The company’s aim is to license its speech-recognition service to other companies that use VoIP.

I suspect that there are some significant privacy concerns.

Are we ready for machines to be eavesdropping on our calls? While one side of the conversation may have made a positive selection of the advertising supported conversation, how will the person on the other end of the call be notified that there is an electronic eavesdropper?

Don’t both parties need to agree that this is an acceptable technology to be applied?

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Puddingmedia, VoIP, privacy

>In July, the CRTC issued a decision to try to speed up the roll-out of broadband in rural regions, rather than wait for the conclusion of the entire proceeding.

In its Deferral Account decision from February 2006, the CRTC determined that incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) should use the majority of the funds in their deferral accounts to expand broadband services to rural and remote communities.

Last September, the ILECs submitted a list of 650 candidate communities and the CRTC matched this list to submissions from competitive broadband service providers to develop a list of presumedly uncontested, potentially unserved areas.

In a July 6 decision, still only part way through the deferral account proceeding, the CRTC figured that it might as well get a jump on things by letting the ILECs get going on the uncontested areas.

Barrett Xplore has called on the CRTC to review and vary this decision as having been based on errors in law and facts.

The CRTC didn’t wait for the proceeding to be complete before issuing its listing. The lists of three-year plans for serving communities are now up to a year old and merit review. The CRTC’s interim decision was never described in the original public notice and parties had not yet had an opportunity to comment on the evidence.

There are other questions that have been raised about whether subsidies should apply to business services in rural communities. Wouldn’t that be an interesting twist? Residential subscribers are being asked to subsidize business services. The CRTC’s interim July decision did not address this point, yet authorized the ILECs to get started.

In their comments filed with the Commission, Bell and TELUS had differing viewpoints. TELUS agreed that the CRTC’s process did not allow Barrett Xplore to update their list of communities, and supported Barrett’s request to remove two areas from the approval list. Of course, are there other areas that would have been updated by other alternate broadband suppliers. The clear message was that the process was flawed despite the CRTC’s altruistic intent.

In the end, the concern is the potential distortion to market forces, contrary to the policy direction that has been paramount for the Commission.

Will the deferral account spending plans create a windfall for ILECs to have a monopoly on rural broadband services, paid for by excess rates charged to urban residential subscribers? Or will the funds enable all competing service providers to have an equal shot at providing service – even in rural markets?

Earlier this week, Bill St. Arnaud circulated a piece that describes the newly released business case study on the fibre network built by the city of Burlington, Vermont.

The piece starts off with a quote by the project leader, Tim Nulty, who is described with powerful CV credentials as: Former Chief Economist, U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, Former Chief Economist, U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, Former World Bank Senior Project Manager, Former Telecommunications Entrepreneur in Eastern Europe, …

I’m very familiar with many government owned telecom operations throughout the world, over many years, and across many different forms of government, and I can tell you that governments generally do not subsidize publicly owned telecommunications. They milk telecommunications – these systems generate a lot of revenue.

My frustration in reading the business case is that the document then proceeds to describe a number of ways that taxpayers provide hidden subsidies to this project.

Of course, they aren’t called subsidies and the business case authors don’t seem to recognize these benefits as costs to tax payers, but let’s look at some examples.

The $2.6 million price tag for the first phase, a 16.5 mile fiber-optic system (144 strand single mode) was relatively low because Burlington owned the 2.5 miles of underground conduit and 33% of the poles needed for aerial cables.

In other words, the project received access to taxpayer owned infrastructure – a form of subsidy.

BT brought in Koch Financial Corp. to finance the network and lease it back to the City via a tax-exempt municipal capital lease

Tax-exempt? Meaning less taxes generated? Does that sound like a taxpayer provided subsidy?

Still – Burlington Telecom is an interesting case study for fibre to the home. Comments?

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Burlington Telecom, FTTH