The BCE and Aliant corporate rearrangements went through last week, clearing the way for the launch of Bell Aliant Regional Communications Income Fund today.

Income trusts are seen to be a way to “unlock additional value” for shareholders by getting rid of income taxes in the corporation and issuing taxable dividends to the unit-holders.

I have some issues with the income trust gyrations. First off, I’m not crazy about the financial engineering itself – it seems like a lot of cost and effort being expended that could be rendered moot by a federal budget. Second, I am concerned about the level of inter-dependence in the ongoing operations of the regional company.

The US Senate rejected the temptation to intervene in the market for internet services. I am waiting to hear from various quarters of how this is evidence of a conspiracy of telcos and cablecos and their power to manipulate legislators.

I don’t subscribe to that view. But, I’m willing to wait for the Oliver Stone movie before forming a final opinion.

The lack of a good catchy phrase to summarize their position is one of the challenges that internet infrastructure folks have had in their efforts to communicate their position.

‘Net neutrality’ is a catchy phrase around which their opponents rally. So is ‘Save the Net.’

Who wouldn’t want to save the Internet? Shame on you if you don’t. But let’s face it, ‘save the internet’ and ‘net neutrality’ are too simplistic to accurately describe an issue loaded with far more subtle complexities.

As described in a recent article by The Heritage Foundation

In recent months, the net neutrality controversy shifted focus after several major telephone companies announced their intentions to offer priority service to content providers for a fee that would enable these providers—such as Internet phone service operators, broadband video providers, and others—to purchase express service.

The article notes the irony of Yahoo! being a member of a coalition advocating net neutrality regulation. Yahoo! plans to offer a similar “certified e-mail” service for a fee. Yahoo! has already announced a deal with Research in Motion to provide preferred access to Yahoo! services on BlackBerry wireless devices.

Randy May has used the term “Net Neutering” to describe the impact of net neutrality.

Rendering broadband providers perfectly neutral by dictating that they be nothing more than dumb pipes, unable to treat any applications or content that use their network facilities in any way differently, would, in fact, neuter the Net.

I’m sure we’d manage to get by in a world with Net Neutrality legislation. But it could get boring being stuck with just plain vanilla. It would be like life in Pleasantville in the B&W. We’ll save that metaphor for later.

In the meantime, suggestions for a positive catch phrase?

I was corresponding with a few colleagues over the holiday weekend.

Most of the other folks with whom I work are like my style – which is probably why we work so well together.

Himal Mathew runs Fathom Strategies and he (or perhaps better, one of his clients) describes himself as an ‘un-consultant’. His client writes:

We think of you as the un-consultant. You work the way we work. You add value on our terms and feel like part of our team. Consider yourself part of our (corporate) family.

That’s the way we like to work. We’re key advisors and we know that we work at will for our clients. We want to feel like part of the family, take ownership of problems and help our clients succeed.

Himal’s client writes:

Wanted to loop back and let you know that we very much appreciated the candor of your reactions to our work. It was very helpful to get that objective voice in the room with us and one with such solid business and marketing skills. . . we will likely be calling on you again in the not too distant future. . . really felt the input was worthwhile from our standpoint.

Job satisfaction in our kind of un-consulting comes from statements such as these: ‘we will be calling on you again in the not too distant future.’

We know you have a choice. Fathom Strategies one of the associated firms that we enjoy working with.