Last week’s Price Cap decision has a few elements that create a lot of flexibility for ILECs in areas that aren’t fully competitive.

Optional services have been designated as uncapped – those are features like call waiting, voice mail, calling line ID, etc.

Couple that with the CRTC allowing an unprecedented flexibility in price de-averaging, down to the individual subscriber, and you need to ask what is left to be forborne?

The Commission retains the ability on a case-by-case basis, to determine whether the particular pricing strategies of the ILEC lead to discrimination that is unjust or confer a preference or disadvantage that is undue or unreasonable. To this effect, the Commission notes that subsection 27(4) of the Act places the onus on the Canadian carrier to demonstrate that any discrimination is not unjust or that any preference or disadvantage is not undue or unreasonable.

Commissioner Langford’s dissenting opinion asks some interesting questions:

What’s the difference between deregulation, forbearance in other words, and [this third price cap regime]? For consumers, the answer will be, very little. In fact, in the future, consumers living in forborne regions will be better protected. At least they’ll have competition to rely on.

As always, there is certain to be lively discussion of these issues and others at the Regulatory Blockbuster on June 13 at The 2007 Canadian Telecom Summit.

Technorati Tags:
CRTC, Stuart Langford, Price Caps

Nortel CTO John Roese has some interesting insights on network intelligence and the implications on security in his blog posting Security built in, not bolted on. His views were stimulated by CNet coverage of a talk delivered by Bruce Schneier [of BT Counterpane] at Info Security Europe 2007.

In the blog post, John speaks of the challenges of

the nice simple, high-performance, global Internet was so unintelligent that it could barely detect, much less defend, itself from these attacks

How do service providers guard their own networks and provide security to their customers? Some might ask, “should they?”

Contrast the current internet with his view of the future:

One of the reasons I feel that WiMAX 802.16e (not just the RF part but the whole system) has a strong possibility of playing a major role in the 4G hyperconnected future is that in addition to being a high-performance, low-cost broadband transport system, it leverages the IEEE security learnings (specifically the trials and errors of the Wi-Fi world) to deliver a system that makes few assumptions about the end systems’ security, but realizes that it must control access, protect transport and remain resilient even in the presence of the unknown.

The CNet article cites Lord Alec Broers, chair of the House of Lords science and technology committee, as having suggested that every company, from operating system and application vendors to ISPs, needs to take greater responsibility for the security of end users.

As I mentioned earlier, John Roese is delivering the closing keynote address at The 2007 Canadian Telecom Summit, June 13.

Technorati Tags:
John Roese, Nortel, Bruce Schneier, Canadian Telecom Summit

I received an interesting package of information in the mail last Friday.

Enclosed were white papers and reports setting out distinctions between Nortel’s and Cisco’s approaches to IP telephony. In various articles, Nortel boasts a uniquely integrated strategic alliance with Microsoft, cross-licensing patents and joint sales and marketing.

The documentation claims Cisco’s approach is more network centric. Is that a bad thing? Is such an approach better for engaging carriers as channels to market, regardless of the technical merits of the architecture? Carriers might prefer network centricity.

I note that Nortel has been named the official supplier of converged network equipment for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver and Whistler, with plans to converge all of the voice, video and data traffic over a single IP-based network backbone. At Nortel’s AGM this week, Mike Zafirovski spoke of the Olympics contract and others as evidence that Nortel has regained momentum, taking advantage of opportunities created with hyper-connectivity – a theme raised in the blog musings of Nortel CTO John Roese. Nortel is “back in the game“.

John Roese and Microsoft Communications Sector CTO Michel Burger are certain to provide their perspectives on their alliance during keynote addresses at The 2007 Canadian Telecom Summit, June 11-13. Jeff Spagnola, Cisco’s VP Marketing for Service Providers will also be addressing the Summit in a keynote address June 13, preceded by an introduction by Cisco CEO John Chambers.

Technorati Tags:
Cisco, Nortel, Microsoft, Canadian Telecom Summit