Catherine McLean had an article in Saturday’s Globe and Mail about the Verizon FiOS gamble, betting the company on fibre to the home (FTTH), as contrasted with the approach of most other telcos to build fibre to the node (FTTN) and use traditional copper wiring to enter the home.

While Bell Canada has its own satellite service to deliver TV, there is still a race for interactive service speeds. With Videotron’s 100Mbps service trial announced this week, the telcos are racing to catch up to the cable companies.

So far, Verizon is the only major North American carrier to commit to as high a fibre content in its diet – uniquely positioning it to surpass the cable speeds demonstrated last week by Videotron. Do the capital markets have the appetite to fund any others?

The Quebec telecom market is getting to be fun to watch. Six weeks ago, I mentioned Videotron’s sponsorship of the Just For Laughs festival. Now Bell has partnered with Quebec’s most visited French-language site – tetesaclaques.tv.

If you are not familiar with Têtes à Claques, you can find some on YouTube, but who knows what the status is of that intellectual property. Better to visit the official tetesaclaques.tv website.

Têtes à Claques fans will have unlimited access to clips by subscribing to Bell’s Fun bundle, starting at $20 a month. Exclusive content like voicetones, caller ring tunes, video ringtones and screensavers will be updated each week.

A lot of companies have approached the Quebec consumer market by simply translating their English language ads into French and then sat wondering why the customers didn’t respond. Both Videotron and Bell have turned up the heat with a battle of humour.

With a quarter of Canada’s population at stake, the Quebec market is no laughing matter.

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.