Canadians and Super Bowl commercials

April 6, 2016

Why can’t Canadians watch those multi-million dollar US Super Bowl commercials?

The CRTC has published its annual explanation on its website.

So why are Canadian commercials substituted on the US channels?

When broadcasters buy programs from American and Canadian producers or networks, they pay for exclusive distribution rights in their home markets. The simultaneous substitution regulation, set out in the CRTC’s Cable Regulations, is designed to protect those rights.

It comes down to protecting the Canadian rights holders.

Why are Superbowl commercials so entertaining? Ad time is running $2.6M for 30 seconds this year. At that price, many of the commercials will have been specially prepared just for this one insertion, hoping to keep your attention so you don’t choose to be flushing at the time.

Cutting off sex-offenders email

February 2, 2007
The US is considering a sex-offender email registry system, in what appears to be a scheme to make law-makers feel good and protect bigger websites from litigation.

Sex offenders to register their e-mail and instant messaging addresses with law enforcement authorities. The legislation would see the Justice Department develop a system that allows social networking sites to check members’ addresses against individuals listed in the National Sex Offender Registry.

Violators who fail to comply with registering their online communication identities would face up to 10 years in prison under the bill. If the offender was on supervised release from prison, the individual’s probation would be revoked.

I have a number of concerns about this. It helps with convicted sex-offenders who are captured under this legislation, but does nothing for those who have never been caught. Since it is so easy for these offenders to acquire a new email address, the law doesn’t seem to be as effective as preventing problems as it may be to add to charges if a convicted offender is caught using an unregistered email address.

The proposal may have the support of MySpace and Facebook, but consider this proposal in the context of litigation. According to the Reuters story,

Sex offender data is currently collected by individual state authorities. MySpace and background verification company Sentinel Tech Holdings Corp. developed a technology that combines those registries to help police track some 600,000 convicted sex offenders.

MySpace is in a partnership with Sentinel.

Is anyone concerned about a barrier to entry for future social networking competitors, since new entrants will need to make use of the MySpace-Sentinel database. Does this database become a bottleneck that needs regulatory oversight? Any net neutrality concerns about this?

What will happen to sites that may not be able to access the data? What child abuse protections are there for foreign-based social networking sites?

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Bell returns to home security

January 25, 2017

Bell Canada has jumped back into the home monitoring business with an announcement yesterday about a security system that is connected using Bell’s highspeed mobile wireless network with an IP-enabled interface. Clients can go online to customize their service by deciding what they want to be alerted about, who should receive alerts, and how – whether by phone, e-mail or text message. It sounds a lot like a user-configurable VoIP service.

In addition to self-monitoring, clients can also opt for response by a monitoring centre.

In late September, I wrote about the quintuple play from western Canadian telcos SaskTel and MTS, with their security products complementing voice, internet, mobile and TV services. At the time, I noted:

With the availability of low cost intelligent, pan-tilt-zoom cameras, it seems to me that there are some interesting opportunities for integration of video monitoring over high speed networks and mobile TV – perhaps a return to this space by the major carriers. It is a natural bundle with telecom services.

Sure enough, Bell’s product announcement includes:

Home Monitoring has optional video capability that allows clients to access a live video stream from their personal Web site or have images pushed to them by e-mail or to a cell phone when an alert occurs.

I continue to like the ‘stickiness’ of security systems as part of a telecom services bundle. People just don’t seem to change their monitoring companies as frequently as other services.

All the lonely people…

February 1, 2007
UCalgaryA professor in the Faculty of Communication and Culture at University of Calgary has released a book studying the blogging phenomenon. In Blogosphere: The New Political Arena, Dr. Michael Keren asks if blogging creates new political force, or simply a gathering place for the powerless.

The U of C press release speaks to the challenge of filtering through the hyperbole commonly found in user-created content:

Bloggers have compared their writing and ideas to the great conquests in history, yet despite their excessive use of words, they conquer nothing. In the blogosphere, the death of an aging cat is on the same emotional level as an earthquake in Pakistan.

Hmmm. There are certainly millions of blogs that fit into that category. I’m not sure the description fits all of us.

I like to think of this blog as providing some unique insights on the telecom industry. Maybe a teaser here and there to stimulate you and maybe even help encourage you to pick up the phone to engage a consultant or register for The Canadian Telecom Summit.

But I may be wrong. According to the university’s press release,

The lonely people come from every country, profession and ethnicity and they belong in cyberspace, or more accurately, the isolated, lonely world of weblogs.

I’m stepping out for a few hours. I’m going to go pick up my friend Eleanor. You’ll be able to find us picking up rice in the church where a wedding has been.

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TELUS is Best Buy’s best buy

January 31, 2007
Best BuyTELUS has announced that Best Buy has selected it to provide an integrated IP network that will carry the voice, video and data requirements of the retailer for all its locations in Canada.

The press release hints at new capabilities to be added to enhance Best Buy services to its customers:

enabling new productivity-enhancing applications like a new point- of-sale system, video conferencing, multimedia, gaming, and music.

Best Buy Canada is headquartered in Burnaby, near TELUS HQ and this is an announcement coinciding with a TELUS sales conference underway in Vancouver. Winning business in its backyard is at least as important to TELUS as its eastern Canada success stories.

Will there be an affinity plan to encourage employees to purchase goods and services from the other?

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