Last Thursday, the Prime Minister, accompanied by Industry Minister Maxime Bernier, the Finance Minister and the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, announced Canada’s new national science and technology (S&T;) strategy, Mobilizing Science and Technology to Canada’s Advantage.

The strategy is designed to boost private sector investment in research and development and enrolment in university science and engineering programs

Our new strategy will create high quality jobs in the science and technology sector, improve our standard of living and quality of life, and build a stronger economy and a stronger Canada for future generations

We may hear more details when Industry Minister Maxime Bernier will be the closing speaker at The 2007 Canadian Telecom Summit on June 13.

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Science, Technology, Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, Industry Minister, Maxime Bernier, telecom summit

European Union member states have reached a preliminary deal to control roaming rates for mobile carriers operating within the EU.

Under the deal, carriers can charge a maximum of 49 euro cents (about C$0.75) for people to call home from another EU state, and charge up to 24 euro cents to receive a call. Under the European calling party pays scheme, incoming calls are usually free. Today, roaming charges can be as high as one euro, which doesn’t seem too outrageous, compared to cross border roaming in North America.

We see a couple implications, not the least of which is the demonstrated willingness of the EU to intervene in previously unregulated territory. Also, the question is whether new lower roaming rates may help remove the incentive for travellers to carry multiple SIM cards, in order to have local phone numbers in each country. This phenomenon has been cited as one of the explanations for European mobile penetration rates to commonly exceed 100%.

Will North American carriers take note and create more reasonable cross-border rates for occasional travellers?

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European Union, EU, roaming, mobile

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States has released information on wireless substitution, based on early data from its most recent National Health Interview Survey.

What is interesting?

Let’s start with the source of the study – a national health study that generates the data from in-person interviews. From June through December 2006, household telephone status information was obtained for 13,056 households in the United States.

Why is CDC concerned about wireless substitution? Because most major survey research organizations, including the National Center for Health Statistics, do not include wireless telephone numbers when conducting telephone surveys.

Let’s look at some of the numbers.

• more than one in eight American homes (12.8%) only had wireless telephones during the second half of 2006;
• 11.6% of all children—8.5 million children—lived in wireless-only households;
• approximately 2.2% of households had neither wireless nor landline service.

It gets especially interesting when you look at demographics within the wireless-only households:

• more than half of all adults (54.0%) living with unrelated roommates, lived in households with only wireless telephones;
• half of all wireless-only adults were less than 30 years of age; a quarter of adults aged 18-24 years were in wireless-only households; nearly 30% of adults aged 25-29 years lived in households with only wireless telephones.
• adults living in poverty were nearly twice as likely (22.4%) as the national average to be living in households with only wireless telephones; non-Hispanic white adults (10.8%) were less likely than Hispanic adults (15.3%) to be wireless-only; adults living in the South (14.0%) were more likely than those in the Northeast (8.6%) to be part of wireless-only households.

The inability to reach households with only wireless telephones may have implications for results from health surveys, political polls, and other research. How will public opinion monitors avoid introducing bias if there are differences between people with and without landline telephones?

Are there comparable statistics for Canada?

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CDC, mobile, substitution

Following the season opener, I commented on the complete convergence found in NBC’s 30Rock, an insider view of TV. I observed how the GE / NBC / Universal empire is monetizing their assets in an emerging video-on-demand and download era. The opening episode was product placement to the extreme with the advertiser (GE) that owns the network (NBC) and a show about a fictional network show, while having the script prominently feature a real appliance made by GE.

Last week, we received confirmation that Jessica Schell, VP Digital Media for NBC Universal will be joining our Business Models in a Converged Environment panel at The 2007 Canadian Telecom Summit next month. The panel will also feature Doug Scott, Executive Director of Branded Content and Entertainment for Ogilvy North America and Evan Shapiro, EVP & GM for The Independent Film Channel.

It should be an interesting expansion for telecommunications professionals to look into the world of convergence through the eyes of media executives.

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Canadian Telecom Summit, Ogilvy, IFC, NBC, GE, 30Rock