A clean slate for the internet

January 25, 2017

A couple months ago, I wrote about Stanford’s Clean Slate initiative to look at how the internet should be redesigned, if we started all over again.

Saturday’s Globe and Mail had a story by Christopher Dreher that followed up on the initiative. Untangling the World Wide Web dares to put forward what it acknowledges is a heretical question:

Should we throw out the Web and start over?

Why do we need to revisit the current architecture of the internet? Among other reasons, the public internet has too many variables, including security issues and blips in connectivity. According to Nick McKeown, the project leader of Clean Slate:

If air-traffic control were run over the public Internet, then I wouldn’t fly.

Repeating my question from last March: Who will lead Canada’s participation in examining a clean slate for the internet?

With the federal government’s new science and technology initiative announced last week, perhaps Canada can focus some attention on this kind of important fundamental research.

Visualizing trends

May 20, 2007
U of TToday’s posting veers a little off the telecom path, and returns me to my statistics roots. I hope you will grant me a little indulgence. After all, it is a holiday weekend – and a beautiful one at that.

Spending so much time last week on campus at University of Toronto made me reminisce about my youthful enchantment with mathematical statistics.

Last week, I had a chance to chat with Professor Joe D’Cruz of the Rotman School of Business while we were both dong some work with the Executive Development Program in the Masters of Engineering in Telecom at U of T.

He directed my attention to an interesting statistical tool newly available through Google: Gapminder’s Trendalyzer. Gapminder is a non-profit venture that has been developing free software to help visualize various factors in human development.

Gapminder and Google share an enthusiasm for technology that makes data easily accessible and understandable to the world. Gapminder’s Trendalyzer software unveils the beauty of statistics by converting boring numbers into enjoyable interactive animations. We believe that Google’s acquisition of Trendalyzer will speed up the achievement of this noble goal.

It is a powerful presentation tool that enables animated graphic representations of global population development data.

Play around with it. I found it especially interesting to look at pairings of countries and play the yearly trend views over time. Check out plots of personal income with China and India isolated to get a perspective on their growing impact.

Comments?

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The PM push

May 19, 2007
HarperLast 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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Update on the Consumer Agency

January 25, 2017

A little over a week ago, I mentioned that PIAC had written to the CRTC to ask the Commission to start a public consultation process for establishing what I have called C-5: Canadian Communications Consumer Complaints Commission.

On Wednesday, Bell Aliant, Bell Canada, Sasktel and Telus sent a joint letter to the CRTC politely suggesting that the CRTC’s involvement is not needed to provide any help in jumpstarting the development.

The Companies are currently working intensely to respond to the requirement in the Order that the industry establish an independent agency with a mandate to resolve complaints from individual and small business retail customers (the Consumer Agency). The Companies will shortly commence meetings with telecommunications service providers and groups representing consumers regarding the Companies’ proposal for the Consumer Agency, as contemplated in the Order. The Companies will keep the Commission apprised of all developments

In the original cabinet Order, the letter suggests no Commission process was contemplated prior to the industry submitting a proposal. Although the agency was contemplated as being funded by the industry, a majority of governors and the CEO of the agency are supposed to be unaffiliated with telecommunications service providers.

We’ll see how this evolves.

The group that submitted the letter to the CRTC is missing the perspectives of the competitive side of the industry – the cable companies, resellers and MTS Allstream. It is not clear to me that those groups shouldn’t have an equal opportunity to put forward proposals.

Will European mobile penetration drop?

May 17, 2007
EUEuropean 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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