On this week's podcast, I spoke with Mike Barry about the current state of WiMax, and what his company is doing to move it forward. Mike is the CFO of Saskatchewan-based Vecima Networks, one of the few publicly-traded Canadian IP communications vendors. It was nice to talk about a TSX-listed company now, given how Espial just went public there last week. I'm working on them for an upcoming podcast, so stay tuned.
Mike and I talked about where fixed WiMax is today, including issues around standards, in-building coverage, what's driving adoption and what types of operators are embracing it. Mike also commented about emerging trends and applications, especially around video. He also touched on elements that make Saskatchewan a good place for their company to be based.
You can download the podcast here, as well as read more about Mike Barry.
Technorati tags: Vecima Networks, Jon Arnold, VoIP podcasts, WiMax
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Monday, June 11, 2007
Nokia Siemens Analyst Night
The Canadian team for Nokia Siemens Networks hosted an analyst dinner tonight, and unlike the global events for the major vendors, this was much more relaxed and intimate. The time was definitely well spent, and we got to learn more about what they're doing to establish their brand here in Canada. Also got some insights about what's behind their new logo, and we even came up with some great branding ideas that involve hang gliding,wireless networks and solar energy. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but you know, it just might work...
This seemed like an appropriate place to show off my Nokia N93, and for a change, other people had cooler phones than me - but given the audience, that's to be expected.
"In Claude We Trust" Pettus
Technorati tags: Nokia Siemens, Jon Arnold, Canada
This seemed like an appropriate place to show off my Nokia N93, and for a change, other people had cooler phones than me - but given the audience, that's to be expected.
"In Claude We Trust" Pettus
Technorati tags: Nokia Siemens, Jon Arnold, Canada
Saturday, June 9, 2007
My Waterloo Mini-Tour - the World's #1 Intelligent Community
On Thursday, I finally got to do my mini-tour of Waterloo, which is one of Canada's most dynamic hubs for tech and innovation. I'm not going to re-tell that story here, but suffice to say it's a real hot spot if you didn't know that by now.
The quickest way to demonstrate that is via the recent news that Waterloo has been rated #1 in the world by the Intelligent Community Forum.
I've written a few posts about this, most recently about Waterloo making it to the top 7 finalists, and now they've taken the #1 spot. That's a pretty good story, and I'm here to share it with you.
We may never win the Stanley Cup again, but Canada knows what to do with broadband! Actually, my gut tells me that Jim Balsillie will land the Predators and the team will end up right there in Waterloo. If that happens, not only will Canada's chances of winning another Cup greatly increase, but they could well end up winning it right in Waterloo. How about that for a feel-good story?
Back to my trip. During my visit, I spent time with a few different people, including a very cool demo with a company called LiveHive Systems. I recorded a few interviews, which are being produced into podcasts, and I hope to have those ready for posting some time next week, so watch for those. When the pods are ready, I'll have more photos to post as well as the details about who I met with. For now, I'll just share one for posterity...
John Tennant (CEO of Canada's Technology Triangle Inc.), myself, Mark Whaley (Councillor, City of Waterloo)
Technorati tags: Waterloo, Jon Arnold, Intelligent Community Forum
The quickest way to demonstrate that is via the recent news that Waterloo has been rated #1 in the world by the Intelligent Community Forum.
I've written a few posts about this, most recently about Waterloo making it to the top 7 finalists, and now they've taken the #1 spot. That's a pretty good story, and I'm here to share it with you.
We may never win the Stanley Cup again, but Canada knows what to do with broadband! Actually, my gut tells me that Jim Balsillie will land the Predators and the team will end up right there in Waterloo. If that happens, not only will Canada's chances of winning another Cup greatly increase, but they could well end up winning it right in Waterloo. How about that for a feel-good story?
Back to my trip. During my visit, I spent time with a few different people, including a very cool demo with a company called LiveHive Systems. I recorded a few interviews, which are being produced into podcasts, and I hope to have those ready for posting some time next week, so watch for those. When the pods are ready, I'll have more photos to post as well as the details about who I met with. For now, I'll just share one for posterity...
John Tennant (CEO of Canada's Technology Triangle Inc.), myself, Mark Whaley (Councillor, City of Waterloo)
Technorati tags: Waterloo, Jon Arnold, Intelligent Community Forum
Friday, June 8, 2007
My Skype Update with Don Albert
Just trying to tie up some loose ends before the week is out. Was on the road Thursday, and today was packed with calls, so I'm a bit behind on my posts.
I wanted to share with you some highlights from my Skype meeting on Wednesday. Don Albert is Skype's VP and GM for North America, and was here in Toronto as part of a media tour. Skype was nice enough to include me in the mix, and I was happy to come down to meet with Don at eBay Canada's office, which is very close by for me.
Don provided a great overview of all the good things Skype is up to - all of which is public, and I'm just going to share the highlights here.
He updated me on the new features in version 3.2, especially the personalization features and expanded use of video. What I found most interesting are the expanded ways for using PayPal. Integrating Skype with PayPal is certainly one of the ways eBay is looking to make their investment in Skype pay off, so this isn't a surprise. However, it's really neat to see how you can now send funds via PayPal to anyone in your Skype contact list. It seems so obvious, and just think of how appealing this will be to people who want to send money back home to their families. Or sending money to your kids away at college. Great feature.
Don also updated me on how Skype is doing in Canada, and shared some metrics for the first time. That was very helpful, and all I can say is that Skype is pleased with their progress to date up here.
Finally, there was a nice display of Skype-compatible devices - some familiar and some not. I really liked the Philips cordless DECT phone, which allows you to access Skype without being on your PC. It's not available in Canada yet - hopefully later this year. Same for the IPEVO USB Skype phone. It's got a built-in display, so you can scroll through your Skype directory without having to go back to your PC screen or monitor. And then there's the Belkin WiFI phone, with Skype pre-loaded. WiFi access, of course is always a wildcard, but it's branded as being Boingo friendly, although I don't think that does us much good up here. I should also add that Skype has a retail deal now with WalMart, so they're definitely going mainstream - no surprise there!
On the Canadian front, I'm planning to do a podcast soon with Don to talk specifically about the market here, so watch for that in the next few weeks.
Technorati tags: Skype, Jon Arnold, Don Albert
I wanted to share with you some highlights from my Skype meeting on Wednesday. Don Albert is Skype's VP and GM for North America, and was here in Toronto as part of a media tour. Skype was nice enough to include me in the mix, and I was happy to come down to meet with Don at eBay Canada's office, which is very close by for me.
Don provided a great overview of all the good things Skype is up to - all of which is public, and I'm just going to share the highlights here.
He updated me on the new features in version 3.2, especially the personalization features and expanded use of video. What I found most interesting are the expanded ways for using PayPal. Integrating Skype with PayPal is certainly one of the ways eBay is looking to make their investment in Skype pay off, so this isn't a surprise. However, it's really neat to see how you can now send funds via PayPal to anyone in your Skype contact list. It seems so obvious, and just think of how appealing this will be to people who want to send money back home to their families. Or sending money to your kids away at college. Great feature.
Don also updated me on how Skype is doing in Canada, and shared some metrics for the first time. That was very helpful, and all I can say is that Skype is pleased with their progress to date up here.
Finally, there was a nice display of Skype-compatible devices - some familiar and some not. I really liked the Philips cordless DECT phone, which allows you to access Skype without being on your PC. It's not available in Canada yet - hopefully later this year. Same for the IPEVO USB Skype phone. It's got a built-in display, so you can scroll through your Skype directory without having to go back to your PC screen or monitor. And then there's the Belkin WiFI phone, with Skype pre-loaded. WiFi access, of course is always a wildcard, but it's branded as being Boingo friendly, although I don't think that does us much good up here. I should also add that Skype has a retail deal now with WalMart, so they're definitely going mainstream - no surprise there!
On the Canadian front, I'm planning to do a podcast soon with Don to talk specifically about the market here, so watch for that in the next few weeks.
Technorati tags: Skype, Jon Arnold, Don Albert
VoIP Saves the Day
If you put your mind to it, you find a telecom angle in just about anything.
Around 5pm today, we had some very severe weather here in Toronto. I'm sure you've experienced this from time to time - you can see the weather radically changing before your eyes - gusty wind, sky gets dark real fast, and you can just feel a heavy rain is coming any second. Well, that's exactly what happened, and we ended up putting off our plans to go out. During the course of the storm, our landline phone service went out for a little while. That rarely ever happens, but the weather created enough havoc to do just that.
The loss of phone service wasn't really a big deal at that time of day, but needless to say, our broadband service stayed up, as did my VoIP lines. It was a nice reminder that each form of telephony - landline, wireless and broadband - has its strengths. For all the times I do have problems with VoIP - either for landline or PC-based - this was one of those times I was glad to have it. So, put one up in the points column for VoIP.
This really isn't a remarkable story, and I didn't have a blog post in mind when this happened. What changed my mind is what I saw when I went out a bit later after the storm had passed. One of the great things about Toronto is the abundance of trees and green space, but on days like this, Mother Nature's dark side takes its toll.
Driving around, I couldn't believe how much damage had been caused. Street after street, I came across branches down on the roads, and in a few places, downed Hydro lines - which is pretty scary. The worst one came on the street I turned onto that I was planning to park at. This one was like something out of a disaster movie. Never seen this before.
An entire tree - tall, full bloom, mature - was uprooted and toppled over. It crashed right on top of a van parked in a driveway, and thankfully, nobody was inside. The tree took down all kinds of Hydro and phone wires, and blocked off the entire street. Our street didn't have any damage like this, but when I saw all those wires down, it wasn't too hard to figure out why our phone service went out.
Of course, I couldn't resist taking some photos. It wasn't like a morbid crime scene - nobody got hurt - and this is where my Nokia N93 came in very handy. More than anything, I felt like a street reporter coving a local story, so here you go with my LiveEye (how about LiveIPTV?)coverage...
Technorati tags: Toronto, Jon Arnold, VoIP
Around 5pm today, we had some very severe weather here in Toronto. I'm sure you've experienced this from time to time - you can see the weather radically changing before your eyes - gusty wind, sky gets dark real fast, and you can just feel a heavy rain is coming any second. Well, that's exactly what happened, and we ended up putting off our plans to go out. During the course of the storm, our landline phone service went out for a little while. That rarely ever happens, but the weather created enough havoc to do just that.
The loss of phone service wasn't really a big deal at that time of day, but needless to say, our broadband service stayed up, as did my VoIP lines. It was a nice reminder that each form of telephony - landline, wireless and broadband - has its strengths. For all the times I do have problems with VoIP - either for landline or PC-based - this was one of those times I was glad to have it. So, put one up in the points column for VoIP.
This really isn't a remarkable story, and I didn't have a blog post in mind when this happened. What changed my mind is what I saw when I went out a bit later after the storm had passed. One of the great things about Toronto is the abundance of trees and green space, but on days like this, Mother Nature's dark side takes its toll.
Driving around, I couldn't believe how much damage had been caused. Street after street, I came across branches down on the roads, and in a few places, downed Hydro lines - which is pretty scary. The worst one came on the street I turned onto that I was planning to park at. This one was like something out of a disaster movie. Never seen this before.
An entire tree - tall, full bloom, mature - was uprooted and toppled over. It crashed right on top of a van parked in a driveway, and thankfully, nobody was inside. The tree took down all kinds of Hydro and phone wires, and blocked off the entire street. Our street didn't have any damage like this, but when I saw all those wires down, it wasn't too hard to figure out why our phone service went out.
Of course, I couldn't resist taking some photos. It wasn't like a morbid crime scene - nobody got hurt - and this is where my Nokia N93 came in very handy. More than anything, I felt like a street reporter coving a local story, so here you go with my LiveEye (how about LiveIPTV?)coverage...
Technorati tags: Toronto, Jon Arnold, VoIP
Espial Goes Public
Espial is a company I've been following for some time, and they had some great news today. This morning was the official announcement of their IPO on the Toronto exchange - the TSX - and their trading symbol will be ESP. How cool is that for a symbol?!?!
This may well be the first you've heard of the news, as the press release has not been made available yet over the U.S. PR wires. I suspect it will hit the wires first thing Monday, but you're reading about it here today.
In short, as reported in the release, the stock will list at $7.00, and if all goes well, Espial will raise $25 - $30 million, which will go a long way to fuel their growth plans. They have a good story to tell in the IPTV middleware space, which is going through its own consolidation phase. With this IPO, Espial should be in a great spot to emerge as one of the leading independent middleware vendors.
IPOs of Canadian vendors in the IP communications space are pretty hard to come by, and I expect Espial will be well received. So, congrats to Espial, and being Ottawa-based, this is probably the best feel-good story out there, since the Senators went out quietly this week!
If you're interested in Espial, I'll be doing a podcast with them soon about the IPO, and if you can't wait for that, I also did one with them about a year ago.
Technorati tags: Espial, Jon Arnold, IPTV
This may well be the first you've heard of the news, as the press release has not been made available yet over the U.S. PR wires. I suspect it will hit the wires first thing Monday, but you're reading about it here today.
In short, as reported in the release, the stock will list at $7.00, and if all goes well, Espial will raise $25 - $30 million, which will go a long way to fuel their growth plans. They have a good story to tell in the IPTV middleware space, which is going through its own consolidation phase. With this IPO, Espial should be in a great spot to emerge as one of the leading independent middleware vendors.
IPOs of Canadian vendors in the IP communications space are pretty hard to come by, and I expect Espial will be well received. So, congrats to Espial, and being Ottawa-based, this is probably the best feel-good story out there, since the Senators went out quietly this week!
If you're interested in Espial, I'll be doing a podcast with them soon about the IPO, and if you can't wait for that, I also did one with them about a year ago.
Technorati tags: Espial, Jon Arnold, IPTV
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Canadian IP Thought Leaders Series - Chris Lyman - Fonality and Open Source Telephony
On this week's Canadian IP Thought Leaders podcast, I spoke with Chris Lyman, CEO of Fonality. The topic was open source telephony, a space that Fonality has become a leading player in. We talked about the state of open source telephony, and how using Asterisk, Fonality has been driving adoption not just in the business market, but in the home as well.
Looking ahead, Chris also talked about how new features will be the key to growth, and how over time, open source will become increasingly stable, which itself will set the stage for broader adoption. On the Canadian front, Fonality has a local footprint, and Chris talked about the market opportunity he sees there, as well as how Canada differs from the U.S.
You can download the podcast here, as well as read more about Chris.
Technorati tags: Fonality, Jon Arnold, VoIP podcasts, Chris Lyman
Looking ahead, Chris also talked about how new features will be the key to growth, and how over time, open source will become increasingly stable, which itself will set the stage for broader adoption. On the Canadian front, Fonality has a local footprint, and Chris talked about the market opportunity he sees there, as well as how Canada differs from the U.S.
You can download the podcast here, as well as read more about Chris.
Technorati tags: Fonality, Jon Arnold, VoIP podcasts, Chris Lyman
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