Canadian Telecom Market Becoming More Competitive

Always seems to be local news of note when I go away.

So, two quick items to mention in absentia. Yesterday, Canada's Minister of Industry, Maxime Bernier, announced the latest decision on competition, and basically the news is that the incumbents will be better able now to compete on a level playing field with the competition. This is certainly good news for Bell and Telus, and consumers should start to see more aggressive marketing and pricing from them for VoIP plans in the near term. There's more to the story than this, and will steer you to Mark Goldberg's blog, where he has a couple of posts on this.

For a synopsis of the news, the Globe & Mail had their writeup yesterday. I'm posting it not so much for the article, which is ok, but all the reader comments, which I really enjoy. The overall sentiment is definitely pro-competition, and a few of them point out what I've long been saying - the "competition" the CRTC is protecting aren't little startups - it's the big cablecos, who are in no danger of going broke if the telcos dropped their prices tomorrow. There's a fair bit of cycnicism in the reader comments as well, that the telcos will never lower their prices, so there are a few layers of emotion to this issue.

Secondly, Bell Canada had their annual Business Review Conference today. I attended last year, and quite enjoyed it. Unfortunately, it comes during the Cisco conference, and many Canadian analysts are down here! Mark was there, and filed a short, but punchy post about it, and I suspect the analyst ranks were a bit thin there today. Sorry I missed it - thanks for being there, Mark!


Technorati tags: Mark Goldberg, Jon Arnold

Canadian IP Thought Leaders Series - James Wanless and Talkster's Enterprise Mobility Solution

On this week's podcast, I spoke with James Wanless, the President/COO of Toronto-based Talkster. This is a pretty interesting startup that's come up with a very interesting solution for enterprises to better manage both the cost of mobile telephony and the management of all these accounts. Lots of startups are chasing the "cheaper LD calling" market, but that's a commodity game, and doesn't really help the business market.

That's where Talkster is focused, and John gave a good overview of the nature of these problems and how he's trying to address them now. He also provided his perspective on how the Canadian and U.S. wireless markets are different, and why their service makes more sense in Canada.

Turns out our timing was good for this podcast. Today was Talkster's beta launch, so James has been working overtime to get it right, and you can read more about it here. Small world - I just saw James - he and I were on the same flight yesterday to San Francisco, and I'm in San Jose now, waiting for the Cisco analyst conference to start tomorrow. Can you guess what I'll be blogging about next?

Another item of note - fellow blogger Ken Camp included Talkster in his "Magnificent Seven" posting - which has been getting a lot of attention. His post is noted on Talkster's home page, which makes me feel good. This is one company that "gets it" with bloggers.

To download our podcast, click here. At this link you can also read more about James.


Technorati tags: Talkster, Jon Arnold, VoIP podcasts, James Wanless

Cisco TelePresence Launch - Media Coverage Afterhoughts

Having had a day or two pass since the demo on Wednesday of Cisco's TelePresence system, I just wanted to comment briefly on the media coverage.

The event was well attended by analysts and media, but from what I can tell, the next day buzz was pretty underwhelming. That's not to say the demo didn't go over well. I thought it went over very well, and everyone I've talked to came away impressed. No question there.

But outside the handful of people on hand, I really wonder who else knows about it today? From what I could tell, the only other visible coverage of this besides my blog post was from another blogger - Paolo del Nibletto from IT Business, who sat next to me at the demo. If you go to his post, you'll also see his recap of the same High Road XMas party I was at - and just posted about - but his is a better read than mine!

Don't get me wrong. It's not like there's nothing else coming. I know there will be feature articles coming from business magazines and the trades - but these will run later, long after the demo. In terms of mainstream news, I didn't see anything. From what I understand, only 1 of our 4 big dailies covered the demo, and nothing ran in their paper, even though I was interviewed for the story. I don't follow all the radio and TV programs, but I'm not aware of anything there either.

To be fair, of course, TelePresence is not a mainstream consumer story, so I can't really expect them to jump all over this. On the other hand, Cisco is trying hard to be as consumer-friendly as Microsoft, and after all, they did spend a billion dollars putting TelePresence together. Canada may be a small market in the scheme of things, but I thought there would have been a bigger buzz around this.

On that note, I can't help but mention that my blog post got a fair bit of attention from the blogger community - none of it based in Canada - here, here, and here as examples.

If you follow my posts, you'll know that I'm an advocate for the legitimacy of blogs as a credible news source. Increasingly, for a lot of tech and telecom stories, it's the bloggers who have the scoop, and more importantly, they have the real deal on the story. Now, I'm just one blogger, and a pretty small dot in the blogosphere, but time and again, I'm finding the best sources are the digital scribes.

I think there are a combination of factors at work here - mainstream media doesn't know the blogger community well enough yet to find the right sources for the right stories, mainstream media doesn't yet trust the blogs as a credible source, and even if they did, their editors wouldn't let them use them. And on the other side of the fence, the bloggers probably don't do enough to build links to the media community, which probably just reinforces the perception that bloggers are too insular, opinionated, detached from the mainstream and lacking in proper fact-finding skills to be of much value. Well, there's probably truth on both sides, and there's a lot we could explore here, but another time. It's late, and I've said my piece on the Cisco coverage.



Technorati tags: Telepresence, Jon Arnold, Cisco

X Marx the Spot - High Road's Xmas Party

I don't get out like I used to - now that's a blog unto itself - but last night I attended the 10th anniversary party/XMas bash for High Road Communications. They are one of the top tech PR shops in town (Canada actually), and Microsoft Canada is a big part of that.

These parties are always fun, and this one was held in a pretty dimly-lit venue call Nectar. It was a real test for my Nokia N93, and only a few pix turned out well enough to use. Am still feeling my way around this phone, and I've got work to do to get better low light photo results.

So, here's the best of the bunch. I just wanted to say in passing that the media/analyst community is pretty small here, and a number of the people who were at Cisco's Telepresence launch the day before were here too. Small world.




Sarah Spence and David Crow


Thanks Sarah...



Cool bar, huh?





Technorati tags: Jon Arnold, High Road Communications

It's Cisco Time - Next Stop, San Jose

One more trip for me this year, and then I can stay close to home for a while. Yayy!!!

Next week I'll be attending Cisco's annual analyst conference, now known as C-Scape. If you're curious, the new name has to do with attending this event to "SEE" the future land"SCAPE", at least according to Cisco. Got it? I'd much rather escape into the sea, but I don't see that happening.

Anyhow, I'm not sure if this new name is tied to their new logo and branding image, which is hard not to notice. I don't know about you, but I prefer the old Cisco logo. That's another conversation, and I think I'll leave that for another time. But if anyone wants to pick up the ball on that one, let's get it rolling.

I'm fascinated about logos and the message/image they try to convey. On that topic, it's hard not to thing about the new Alcatel-Lucent logo, which has, in fact, been getting lots of attention, and rightfully so given the importance of the merger.

Better stop now - this is a Cisco posting, afterall....



Technorati tags: Jon Arnold, Cisco

Canadian IP Thought Leaders Series - Michael Weening/Microsoft Canada and Network Mashups

This week's podcast was with Michael Weening of Microsoft Canada. He's the Director of their Communications Sector here in Toronto, but was physically located in Redmond for our call. We were going to talk about the Canadian market and how enterprises here are working with Microsoft's various IP initiatives. However, we got pre-empted a bit by the announcement made during ITU about Microsoft's Connected Services Sandbox.

The timing was good, since the Sandbox idea covers a lot of the ground we were going to talk about. So, that's where we went, and put as much of a Canadian spin on things as we could. Turns out that wasn't hard to do, since Bell Canada is a founding participant, as are two leading Canadian vendors, Nortel and Ubiquity. We both agreed that Canada is very well represented in this initiative.

The podcast and press release both tell the story pretty well about the sandbox concept, but in short, it's very much a Web 2.0 story. Microsoft is creating a digital sandbox, of sorts, to support "managed network mashups" among software applications and platforms to help service providers create new and exciting offerings for subscribers. In this regard, the sandbox is part of their bigger vision termed "Telco 2.0", which is probably going to be another podcast.

You can download the podcast here, as well as read more about Michael's background.



Technorati tags: Microsoft, Jon Arnold, Connected Services Sandbox, VoIP podcasts, Web 2.0

Cisco TelePresence - Up Close and Personal

Today, Cisco Canada invited press and analysts for a live demo of TelePresence, and they did not disappoint! I was briefed on Telepresence recently, and posted about it, so I've made my views known already. While my basic thinking hasn't changed about the overall business case, experiencing Telepresence up close makes it very real, and you can really see why Cisco is so excited about this launch.

Before getting to the demo, I just wanted to say Cisco Canada did a great job putting this together, and Nitin Kawale gave an informative overview of Telepresence. The underlying rationale is to cut down on travel costs, plain and simple. By providing a life-like, real time experience that businesses have never had before, it is easy to see how this idea would take hold and that a business case can be built around it. Of course, for the investment we're talking about here, this is only going to fly in large companies who have serious travel budgets. It's not a mass market offering, that's for sure, but I can certainly see the fit. And I'm sure Cisco doesn't have to sell thousands of these to make it worthwhile.

Perhaps more importantly, Telepresence allows Cisco to become a player in the videoconferencing space, which has long been the domain of majors like Tandberg and Polycom. Of course, Cisco would argue that Telepresence is so life-like that it is not videoconferencing, and is a new category altogether. There's some merit to this, especially once you see how it works. Telepresence is really a phone call, believe it or not. The session is initiated over a Cisco 7960 IP phone - that's all there is to it. Of course there's a lot more to it under the hood, but it's a pretty seamless experience - which we're told is a lot harder to do than it looks. Not being a techhie, I'm inclined to agree.

Aside from pushing into the videoconferencing space, Telepresence also ties in nicely to the bigger picture of their Unified Communications vision, and being the vendor of choice for all forms of IP communications, and along with that, the platform that brings it all together. On that level, I also see the fit.

There are a lot of technical aspects to Telepresence, and the main items of note are i) the ultra High Definition video codec, ii) CD quality "spatial audio" sound and iii) broadcast quality cameras. On the codec front, Telepresence has 1080p resolution, which I'm told nobody else has. The "p" makes it ultra, whereas the common standard for 1080 is "i", which has half the resolution as "p". Now in fairness to other high end systems out there, I can't say first hand what they really have, nor have I seen any of them in person. I'd love to do that at some point, and then I'll really know the whole story. For now, though, Cisco has definitely got a good product here, and it's hard not to be impressed.

The demo was very smooth, relaxed and comfortable. It's very life-like, and the meeting table is designed so the party on the other side of the "table" looks very much to be in the room and attached to the table we were sitting at. It's a great effect, and it's no surprise that a Hollywood cinematographer was consulted early on.

The demo was led by Rick Moran and his team from the San Jose TelePresence facility, and it was very engaging. Aside from the cost savings on travel, I wanted to say that Rick noted another benefit - it's a green solution. He noted that Cisco is using TelePresence internally to cut carbon emissions related to all the travel their people do by 10%. So, there's a nice nod there to Kyoto. Am not sure it will close any deals, but definitely a worthy selling point. Thanks, Rick.

And now for the fun stuff - some photos and a video clip, courtesy of my Nokia N93. And thank you Cisco, for giving me permission to do this. This is my second post with N93 photos, but my first with a video clip. The photos give a good idea of the look of the system, but the video gives you both the look and feel of the experience. It's only about 2 minutes, and if you run out and buy one after seeing this - which you just might do - I think I may need to make a deal with Cisco....


Nitin Kawale's presentation and welcome




I just have to say that with all the buildup around finally "experiencing" Telepresence, a little Also Sprach Zarathustra would not have been out of place. Is it just me, or doesn't the 7960 remind you of the monolith in 2001 - A Space Odessey? Even just a little bit? We're talking about new frontiers here, folks....




Rick Moran and his team on the San Jose side of the table...






And finally, the video clip, perhaps the next best thing to being there. It's about 2 minutes long, and you can view it down below. Just click on the triangle in the bottom left corner to play it. Enjoy!








Technorati tags: Telepresence, Jon Arnold, Cisco, Videoconferencing