It’s video, stupid
Message delivered by Nortel’s Chief Strategy Officer, George Riedel, at The Canadian Telecom Summit: in the Clinton administration, the slogan was “it’s the economy, stupid.”
His view for our industry: it’s video.
Wireless portability at The Canadian Telecom Summit
With 3 simultaneous sessions, I obviously couldn’t be everywhere at the same time on Monday. A guest post from a colleague who was at the Wireless Number Portability (WNP) session:
Some interesting data from this year’s WNP Panel.
Canada lags each major country in the penetration of wireless services, yet leads the world in the number of customers who have signed up for 3-year contracts. Virgin Mobile Canada (VMC) reported that 41% of Canadians are on 3-year contracts.
This will diminish the impact that WNP will have on the Canadian marketplace once WNP is launched on March 14, 2007 – IF the industry stays on track.
VMC feels that because the industry has less incentive to launch WNP, there needs to be stiff penalties for those carriers who don’t launch ontime.
There are exactly nine months between now and March 14, 2007 – let’s see if this baby will come out on time.
Generation @
Andreas Bernhardt, a member of the Group Executive at Siemens spoke toward the end of day 2 of The Canadian Telecom Summit.
He spoke of Generation X, the post-boomers who roughly cover those born in the 70’s, comfortable and generally raised with computers and technology. But more significantly, he spoke of Generation @: kids with a presumptive knowledge and expectation of the impact and capabilities of information and communications.
Siemens, as an enormous global power, active in a wide array of sectors: healthcare, electronic and automation control, telecom, power, transportation. Among the kinds of things this level of diversity allows is active involvement in machine to machine communications. Understanding the implications of intelligent homes.
I found it interesting that a number of the international speakers, including Sebastiano Tevarotto of HP, and Andreas Bernhardt, spoke of radical simplicity: enabling users to access radically innovative services, without a hint of the enabling complexity facing the end user.
More clippings – from Day 2
IT Business covered the Minister’s speech.
Reuters couldn’t bring themselves to refer directly to the event. The Minister spoke at “a telecom summit in Toronto.” Are there any others?
Lots of press, lots of stories, lots of buzz. And most important, a great evening of just plain down time at the Rogers Centre to watch the Jays beat the Orioles with perfect evening weather.
Update: The Globe carried a review by Catherine McLean and Simon Tuck of the Minister’s speech with broad reaction from the members of the regulatory panel.
The Post continued its extensive coverage of The Canadian Telecom Summit with another full page, including a story by Kevin Restivo looking at Darren Entwistle’s speech and another by Mark Evans looking at Minister Bernier’s address.
TELUS on the Broadcast review
Darren also raised the issue of the Broadcast Review Panel.
Again, 4 recommendations:
– TPR approach of minimalist regulation
– Adopt right of fair use while respecting intellectual properrty rights
– Allow IPTV providers to direct contributions to new media funds
– Set a firm HDTV transition date