Nortel defines opportunity

January 25, 2017

Nortel is starting to see carriers looking at expanding their long haul optical capacity. After years of dealing with the glut of capacity creating during the boom years of the tech bubble, carriers are talking about needing to invest in optical equipment again, according to Nortel CTO John Roese. Will Nortel be the supplier of choice? I suspect Lucent / Alcatel will try to get in their way.

Roese and Nortel President Mike Zafirovsky were speaking at a gathering of Ottawa technology executives at a joint OCRI / ITAC breakfast meeting on Thursday.

According to the Ottawa Business Journal story about the breakfast, the two Nortel execs detailed three trends that offer Nortel an opportunity to take the industry lead:

  • hyperconnectivity: where individual consumers are always plugged into the Internet with enabled devices;
  • network-aware applications: where network applications are easily tailored to needs;
  • true broadband: defined as a seamless handoff to provides uninterrupted mobility between home, office and points between over high-speed networks.

Keep in mind, this list mixes applications and underlying technologies. Consumers are not likely to care about hyperconnectivity or true broadband. These are considerations of what goes on behind the curtain to enable sizzling applications – as yet undefined.

Will Nortel be able to seize on these opportunities? Will Nortel’s customers be able to convince consumers to buy their solutions?

Mark Evans’ All Nortel, All the Time has more on news out of the breakfast.

Privacy laws in Canada

September 28, 2006
IPONJust under 3 weeks until our friend Stewart Dresner arrives in Toronto for the International Privacy Officers Network (IPON) meeting on October 17.

With a number of privacy related news items coming onto the front pages, I thought readers should consider attending his special one day workshop to address issues associated with interaction of Canada’s privacy, employment and human rights laws. The workshop will give you an opportunity to hear directly from both federal and provincial privacy and employment regulators.

Speakers include Heather Black, Assistant Privacy Commissioner of Canada; Frank Work, Information and Privacy Commissioner for the Province of Alberta; Leonard Marvy, Solicitor, Ontario Labour Relations Board; Nadine Côté and Kate Wilson, Associates, Torys LLP, Toronto; and Eugene Oscapella, Consultant, Privacy Laws & Business.

Subjects to be covered will include the relationship between Canada’s federal and provincial privacy laws and their enforcement; outsourcing and employment issues, including monitoring of employees’ use of e-mail and the Internet; and drug testing, and privacy of employee information in the context of mergers and acquisitions. The final session of the day will help you contribute to a collective Privacy Laws & Business recommendation to the federal legislature’s review of the private sector privacy law, or enable you to make your own recommendations.

For information, contact Stewart Dresner by email or call him at Privacy Laws & Business in the UK (011+44 20 8423 1300). The session will be held at the Torys offices in downtown Toronto.

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Inspiring excellence

January 25, 2017

I am heading to a meeting at University of Toronto this morning – part of my activities on the advisory board of the Masters of Engineering in Telecom. It is somewhat appropriate to keep alive last week’s thread of stimulating excellence in our schools.

My son is taking an interesting course this year that looks at poetry and mathematics. It is an unusual combination.

His math professor, Peter Taylor, seeks to inspire excellence. He believes we need to go way beyond repetitive arithmetic exercises found in our text books. In reviewing his writings, he argues that our traditional system of teaching math is failing our kids.

A few years ago, Professor Taylor wrote an article that is worth a fresh look. He noticed that high school English exams had a level of sophistication that was not found in the routine arithmetic that is characteristic of high school mathematics.

No mathematician I know would read any part of the Grade 12 text book for intellectual or spiritual pleasure. I don’t know how that statement strikes you but it strikes me as scandalous.

It seems to me that we need more professors like Peter Taylor, combining poetry and math, to transform the math and science curriculum in our schools. We need enhanced support of science centres, such as TELUS‘ gifts in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Montreal. We also need to get right into the schools, school boards and ministries of education.

We need to inspire an innovation generation.

In search of good governance

September 26, 2006
Former Worldcom CEO Bernie Ebbers is heading off to jail today to serve his 25 year sentence. Former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow was sentenced to 6 years for his activities.

We have often heard that competition brings out the best in all of us. Unfortunately, the telecom sector has had its share of scammers, spammers and charlatans. Perhaps we should put together a special panel at next year’s Canadian Telecom Summit?

So it was with great interest that I saw evidence of the good side of corporate Canada last week.

TELUS received recognition from Report Watch for producing the world’s best annual report. According to the announcement, TELUS has improved its ranking from 18th in 2004 and second in 2005 to number one today. A copy of the Annual Report of Annual Reports can be obtained by sending an email to the editor, Mike Guillaume.

Also, GovernanceMetrics International recognized BCE as being among the top 3 companies (together with Colgate-Palmolive and Pepsico) for overall governance according to a Reuters story.

These aren’t the kinds of things that make for sizzling ads on TV, but it can only benefit investors and customers alike that Canada’s leading telecom carriers were recognized for their corporate governance practices.

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Quintuple play

September 26, 2006
For all the talk about triple and quadruple plays in the telco / cable battlefield (choose from wireline phone, mobile phone, internet and TV), there are two Western Canadian telephone companies positioning themselves with a quintuple play – adding security into the mix of options.

We like the stickiness of security services. For all sorts of reasons, home security monitoring just doesn’t churn. It is a high margin business, often delivering more than 80% margin, even when the service is completely outsourced. People never seem to switch.

MTS AAA AlarmsSecurTekMTS Allstream has been playing in this area for some time, having acquired AAA Alarms back in 1998. SaskTel has seen success with its SecurTek operation since 1999, and is also a major wholesaler of alarm monitoring. Jon Arnold has recently written about the MTS bundles.

MTS Allstream and SaskTel have also been leading in deployment of IP-TV services. MTS TV has reportedly grabbed 25% share in Winnipeg and has successfully launched High Definition services.

There was a time that other phone companies and cable companies played in this space. 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.

From my days living in USWEST territory, I recall a slogan from an advertising poster: In the west, you either make dust or eat dust. Watch the west for innovation. We’ll keep an eye on consumer adoption of the quintuple-play in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

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