TELUS gets its foot in the door

November 29, 2006
TELUSEveryone likes talking about consultative sales in the enterprise space. How do you get the customer to take the time to talk openly about their business challenges?

How does the sales team get in front of an executive team in a frank and open discussion about problems and solutions?

How is this for an opener?

If you’re like most business leaders today, you have at least one strategic initiative underway that is being enabled by significant technology investment. Yet you cannot predict whether your investment is on track to deliver business value. That’s a big problem.

TELUS has introduced a tool called BVIC to help determine the Business Value of Integrated Communications. It is a web-based tool that measures an initiative against 30 best practices for ICT projects.

Click to try BVIC. Use “business6” as the user name. Contact me and I will send you a password to try the system out. The resultant report should help the TELUS sales team generate interest among all of the corporate officers.

TELUS is running its business innovation exhibition at the Toronto Congress Centre today. BVIC is one of many stations being displayed.

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Mobile YouTube

January 25, 2017

One of my blogging colleagues thinks Verizon’s plan to offer mobile YouTube is a dumb idea. Actually, he calls the consumers stupid if they get excited by Verizon’s plan to offer access to selected YouTube videos as part of their $15 per month Vcast service.

Among my colleague’s complaints?

trying to get people to watch videos on teeny-tiny screens without neutering the world’s most popular video sharing service…and asking people to fork out $15 for the privilege.

It seems to me that YouTube videos start out ‘teeny-tiny’ on my PC monitor. They’re already just about the right size for my cel phone and as an added benefit, YouTube clips are short. Isn’t that precisely the right type of content for mobile?

As to the pricing, Verizon offers Vcast as a bundle: music, videos and games. Selected YouTube clips are just part of the total Vcast offering. A couple weeks ago, we wrote about TELUS Mobile Music, offering the music part of the Vcast suite for $20.

At $15 for the entire bundle (and the first month is free), the package looks pretty good to me.

Bounds on fair criticism

November 28, 2006
CRTCI have never been one to shy away from an opportunity to take a shot at the CRTC. That is a fact to which regular readers of this site can easily attest. I think taking shots at the CRTC is a basic part of our heritage. We drink coffee, eat donuts, kvetch about the CRTC while r-r-r-olling up the r-r-rim.

But the editorial in today’s itbusiness.ca Update crossed the lines of fairness.

I’ll leave aside many of the attacks that don’t merit the effort to address, nor the attention, other than to dismiss the comments as petty rants. But the body of the article is just void of fact-based criticism.

Case in point:

The single most significant moment in the CRTC’s history came earlier this year at a telecommunications conference which staged a “regulatory blockbuster” roundtable featuring the main incumbents and their cableco rivals. Theirs was a spirited, sometimes acrimonious debate, and it was followed up by Industry Minister Maxime Bernier’s appearance where he said he would steer the CRTC away from regulating in favour of market forces. Where was Dalfen?

I am honoured that the writer considers that The 2006 Canadian Telecom Summit hosted the single most significant moment (wait ’til you see The 2007 Canadian Telecom Summit, June 11-13). But, where was the Chair? Uh, he was the closing speaker at that event. And he spoke at each of the previous 2 events as well. We have photos to prove it. The Globe and Mail even had a story about it.

The editorial concludes with:

Dalfen’s successor has to do more than speak behind press releases. He or she needs to prove not only well-versed in emerging technologies but capable of capturing the attention of the Canadian public. … The next CRTC leader needs to be a voice that cannot – will not – be ignored.

Can anyone really say that our current chair has a voice that can be ignored? C’mon.

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Bell building better broadcast buildings

November 28, 2006
VancouverWhat is the best way to ensure you get a building properly wired for advanced telecom? In the case of the new Vancouver Convention Centre expansion, you get the official supplier of telecom services for the 2010 Olympics to do it for you.

BellBell Canada announced it will partner to deliver the world’s most technologically advanced meeting facility when the convention centre expansion is completed. The facility will be the media and broadcast centre during the 2010 Olympics.

Building access can often be a thorny issue for carriers. How do you develop business strategies that make sense for the building operator and service providers while providing infrastructure and opportunities for both to deliver superior customer service?

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University hack-tivism breaks through filters

January 25, 2017

Why did the Toronto Star run a New York Times story yesterday about Psiphon, the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab project to circumvent internet censorship? After all, we wrote in May about the Star running an more in-depth story by its own staff writer more than 6 months ago. Was this a new form of newspaper recycling?

The NYT article appears to be timed to preview the software’s launch, scheduled for this Friday.

I noticed an interesting juxtaposition of two recent news stories. On one hand, we had an announcement last week about Canada’s major ISPs announce an initiative to begin filtering illegal content from their network; and, this week we’ll watch the launch of Psiphon software, designed to help criminals circumvent such filtering.

The original Toronto Star story in May raises some interesting issues of research ethics:

Sometimes the lab performs tests remotely, taking control of unprotected computers inside the censoring country without permission. This poses an ethical controversy, but Deibert says it’s for the greater good: “We don’t worry about that too much.”

The Lab even has “black boxes,” mini-sized computers that can be “planted” discreetly inside these countries to run the tests. “This kind of research is illegal in almost every country we do it in”

Is ‘criminal’ too harsh a term for Psiphon users? By the Lab’s own admission, The content being ‘liberated’ is otherwise illegal in the country of the user.

To what extent is Psiphon going to be used to evade the efforts of Project Cleanfeed Canada, thereby liberating child exploitation images from the repressive regime here that seeks to limit internet freedom.

Last May, Michael Geist expressed his support for Psiphon:

“These initiatives are exciting,” says Michael Geist, an expert in law and the Internet at the University of Ottawa. Any ethical qualms in using Psiphon to circumvent the censorship regulations of a foreign country should be put to rest, he says. “There are international instruments that override even sovereign governments, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

But Professor Geist is supportive of the Cleanfeed project, and continues to host a lively dialog on his blog.

Will as much research effort be expended on technology solutions to help enforce what democracies define to be illegal content?

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