Telus broke the news last week when it announced that it will acquire Mobilicity for $380 million, creating a precedent in the Canadian wireless market. This move, however, appears to be perfectly legal, despite at first glance being in conflict with Ottawa’s own rules.

For this reason, other wireless startups such as Wind Mobile have raised their voice and asked the government to make it clear whether it is going to uphold its own rules on the sale of Mobilicity.

Speaking with Ottawa Citizen Anthony Lacavera, the CEO of Wind Mobile said incumbents such as Rogers, Bell and Telus shouldn’t be allowed to use loopholes or make creative deals to get around the rules.

“The government can say either you can do deals like that or you can’t,” Lacavera said in an interview. “Rules are always open to some interpretation. So at a minimum, the government needs to be clear and decisive and fast with what they say.”

As Industry Minister Christian Paradis said, he will take his time and review the Telus–Mobilicity deal, but the question is how much time the process will take. Keeping in mind the June 11 deadline for submitting applications for the upcoming wireless spectrum, the future of the wireless startups pretty much depends on the Industry Minister’s decision on the sale of Mobilicity.

The wind of change is blowing in the Canadian wireless market. You may recall that Rogers and Shaw have reached an agreement in which the latter “optionally” gives the unused AWS wireless spectrum it acquired back in 2008 to Rogers, triggering an uproar in the mobile market.

There is also another move that could hint toward Ottawa relaxing its own rules: it allowed Wind Mobile to become the first fully foreign owned wireless player in the country. This move was later “explained” by Industry Minister Christian Paradis, who said that the mobile market needs foreign capital to support wireless competition.

Yet the government’s years-long effort to seeding wireless competition in the country seem to have reached a dead end, mostly because of the government’s awkward methods for helping wireless startups.

Did you like this post? TheTelecomBlog.com publishes daily news, editorial, thoughts, and controversial opinion – you can subscribe by: RSS (click here), or email (click here).

Written by: Istvan Fekete. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.

It has been a rather lively year for the Canadian mobile industry so far with companies like Blackberry launching new phones and wireless providers such as Rogers and Bell trying to make themselves more appealing to customers.

This has provided mobile retailers with the perfect opportunity to capitalise on the busy market such as Glentel who have announced a strong start to the year.

The Burnaby based firm have posted a 106% profit from where they were in 2012 as they posted sales results of $305.7 million during Q1 of 2013.

Glentel owns several different mobile brands that include Wireless Wave, TBooth and the newly launched Target Mobile.

One of the reasons for Glentel enjoying such a strong start to the year is thanks to the launch of the new Target Mobile shop in Canada.

After winning the contract at the back of last year, Glentel were involved with the launch of 46 separate stores across Canada since February.

The launch has helped boost the retailer’s presence in several states including Alberta, British Columbia and Manitoba as well as within Toronto whilst there are further plan to launch another 78 sores by the end of 2012.

Alongside the success of the new Target Mobile stores, Glentel has also seen success thanks to the performance of their international subsidiaries in both America and Australia.

In the US, both Diamond Wireless and Wireless Zone earned a combined total of $163.3 million in sales over the first period of 2013.

Meanwhile, Glentel’s latest acquisition Allphones performed solidly in Australia with the release of several new smartphones such as the HTC First and the Galaxy S4 to post figures of $45.6 million.

By already posting strong figures at the start of the year, Glentel executives are already planning to expand later on in the year. This was underlined by their President and CEO Thomas Skidmore who stated that “With store expansions in Canada, U.S., and Australia, including our recent entry into the Philippines with our first four mall stores in Manila, growth opportunities seem abundant as we now operate in four countries on three continents.”

With there still several major product launches still to come plus the review of current wireless laws, it seems that retailers such as Glentel are extremely well placed to benefit from a growing and competitive mobile market.

With advanced 4G LTE only just arriving on the scene, Samsung has shocked the mobile world with the announcement that it has successfully developed the world’s first next generation 5G wireless technology.

As the company’s official blog explains, Samsung has created the “first adaptive array transceiver technology operating in the millimetre-wave Ka bands for cellular communications.” While utilizing millimetre-wave bands has long been recognized as a possible option for advancing wireless network technology, it was thought to be inferior due to its “unfavourable propagation characteristics,” or simply put, unusable due to how radio waves behave at this frequency.

However Samsung has claimed to have overcome these deficiencies with its new adaptive array transceiver technology, an advancement that the Korean tech giant says sits at the core of 5G wireless technology, providing “data transmission up to several hundred times faster than current 4G networks.” [Italics mine]

To meet the ever-increasing data demands of the mobile world, next generation wireless solutions such as a high-speed 5G cellular network will require a broad band of available frequencies, Samsung explains, much like a wider pipe is needed to increase water flow. As mentioned, while millimetre-wave bands are not some new magical source of wireless bandwidth, they have long been thought to be inferior because of the difficulty radio waves, and thus data transmissions, have at this frequency.

However, the company’s new adaptive array transceiver technology has allowed researchers to overcome the deficiencies of the millimetre-wave band, utilizing “64 different antenna elements” to solve the radio propagation loss, which in turn allows researchers to transmit data in the “millimetre-wave band at a frequency of 28 GHz at a speed of up to 1.056 Gbps to a distance of up to 2 kilometres.”

Given this recent breakthrough, Samsung has also announced its plans to accelerate the development of the array technology necessary for 5G wireless network deployment. But for those who think the future is here, don’t hold your breath, as the company has announced its projected deployment for this 5G technology is 2020, giving 4G network technology plenty of time to complete its rollout and become agonizingly slow, with lots of time leftover for us to once again crown the next iteration of wireless upgrades as the mobile saviour we’ve long been waiting for.

In the end, while its certainly exciting to hear about the developing future of wireless technology, and while we’re all shocked by claims that 5G will post network speeds several hundred times faster than current 4G LTE technology, just think how far along our technological needs and expectations will be in seven years, meaning when it arrives 5G will likely be a lot less futuristic and a lot less effective at meeting our exponentially increasing data demands.

Did you like this post ? TheTelecomBlog.com publishes daily news, editorial, thoughts, and controversial opinion – you can subscribe by: RSS (click here), or email (click here).

Written by: Matt Klassen. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.

Telus has entered into an agreement to acquire Mobilicity for $380 million, an unprecedented move in the Canadian mobile market, the incumbent announced. The deal was pretty foreseeable, as earlier this month Mobilicity reached out to the government for financial help.

The news comes after the struggling wireless startup had scoured the globe for a buyer without obtaining any tangible results. As the court filing obtained by the Globe and Mail shows, financial advisers have contacted more than 30 potential purchasers, which include incumbents, local players, international telecoms, and even US private-equity companies.

Telus even confirmed that it was approached by Mobilicity back in December. “In December of last year, Mobilicity first approached us about a deal. One of the reasons they felt TELUS would be a great fit is they genuinely appreciate our customer focus and the improvements we’ve made over the past few years. We have the best client loyalty in the business and it continues to get better. Mobilicity approached TELUS as the best option for their company and customers. They have considered all of their options – and when I say all, I mean all,” TELUS Vice President of Corporate Communications Nick Culo writes.

But the dark clouds have kept on gathering above the wireless startup. After growing to 250,000 customers and having 150 employees on board, Mobilicity faced the harsh reality: it needed to either find a buyer or restructure its capital and secure additional funding, otherwise the road would lead to a dead end.

And finally, the rich prince on a white horse came: Telus. Happy ending, and hopefully they will live happily ever after.

Unfortunately for wireless customers, the story doesn’t end here – it is only the beginning.

For a start, this means a big hit for wireless competition, because one wireless startup is down, although it could secure less than 1% of the 27 million Canadian mobile subscribers. But let’s not forget that another two wireless startups are reportedly up for grabs.

After the news broke, critics warned that this would prompt higher prices for monthly cellphone services if the deal went through.

For Mobilicity customers, this means they will be approached in the Telus way, and they will benefit from the incumbent’s national coverage and faster data speeds on its 4G LTE network.

For Mobilicity’s 150 employees, the deal means they will have an option to retain a permanent position at Telus.

The deal is subject to conditions, including approval by Industry Canada, the Competition Bureau, and Mobilicity’s debt holders.

Did you like this post? TheTelecomBlog.com publishes daily news, editorial, thoughts, and controversial opinion – you can subscribe by: RSS (click here), or email (click here).

Written by: Istvan Fekete. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.

How much time in prison would you expect one to serve if they robbed 24 million people or if their swath of destructive actions wreaked over $20 million in damages? If these crimes were committed in the real world you might justifiably assume the guilty would never again see the light of day, sentenced to incarceration for the rest of their natural lives, but commit those same crimes in the digital realm and things, my friends, are drastically different.

This week four “core” members of the well-publicized LulzSec hacking group were sentenced in the U.K. yesterday after all pleaded guilty to various hacking related charges. Ryan Ackroyd, 26; Jake Davis, 20; and Mustafa al-Bassam, 18, were sentenced together with Ryan Cleary, 21, sentenced after a slightly longer two-day hearing in London.

Not surprisingly the four got off with relatively stiff slaps on the wrist, with Ackroyd sentenced to 30 months—serving half—and Davis 24 months—serving at least 12 months—in an institution for young offenders. Bassam received a suspended sentence of 20 months, and Cleary was ordered to serve half of his 32-month sentence. Justice served attempted I suppose.

While the exploits of this hacker commune are too many to list, the most notable was the 2011 attack against Sony and its Playstation network, when millions of dollars in damages were done and the information of millions of users was stolen.

The key factor motivating these relatively light sentences seemed to be the fact that none of the accused created the swath of digital destruction for financial gain, as the prosecutors were seemingly unable to establish just how much any of the men actually earned from their various hacking exploits. Of course the fact that they didn’t make money off of this makes it all the more serious, not less, as it shows a disturbing penchant for wreaking destruction and havoc with no more motivation than their amusement, by far the scariest sort of criminal I would say.

While certainly not confirmed, what’s even more disturbing is what these digital criminals will likely be doing once they’re released, no doubt agreeing to a common plea bargain that would see them cast into Her Majesty’s counter-Cyberterrorism service, using their undeniable talents to fight against their own.

To wit, you might remember the well-publicized story of LulzSec leader Hector Xavier Monsegur (known in hacker circles as “Sabu”) who was found to be working with the FBI as an informer for at least six months following his capture, news that at the time shook the hacktivist community and resulted in several additional arrests.

Considering the relatively light sentences and the fact that cushy well paid government jobs likely await when their stint is up, you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t consider this a decisive strike against the heart of anonymous hackers the world over, as even the aloof and detached emotional responses of the accused demonstrate that even when hackers are caught there’s not much to be afraid of.

In the end, I will admit that there’s a certain politically motivated element of the hacker life that I respect, almost as if they’re stickin’ it to the man in so many ways I want to but never can. But that said, more often than not the destruction wrought by such hackers seems to have little or no purpose behind it, with companies and individuals suffering monumental damages at the whims of a people hiding behind their keyboards.

Did you like this post ? TheTelecomBlog.com publishes daily news, editorial, thoughts, and controversial opinion – you can subscribe by: RSS (click here), or email (click here).

Written by: Matt Klassen. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.

BlackBerry is planning to release its popular messaging platform, BBM, for iOS and Android as early as this summer, the company has announced. This means the platform barriers will finally fall, and you will be able to connect with your friends using BBM and share the love.

This also means that the company has finally admitted its current status on the mobile market: the best place to be right now is on iOS and Android. According to the most recent announcement on Google I/O, there are 900 million Android devices out there spread across the globe, while Apple’s latest stats talk about 500+ million iOS devices worldwide.

From this perspective, the 60 million BlackBerry userbase looks small.

But how does the messaging competition stack up? Again, we’ve heard yesterday that GCM (Google Cloud Messages) delivers 17 billion messages each day, meaning 200,000 push messages each second.

Apple’s iMessage, announced with iOS 5, delivers 2 billion messages each day, according to January stats.

The most recent BlackBerry stats reveal that BBM users send 10 billion messages on a daily basis, but as a comparison, WhatsApp, boasts 20 billion daily discourses, and currently has 200 million active users. A tremendous performance.

By developing a BBM application for iOS and Android, BlackBerry admits its place in the tech giants’ top list: it will never bring back those golden days, because it will never unseat either iOS, or Android.

With the company’s desperate need for a success story – it is losing ground even in the enterprise market, as the has Pentagon opened up its network to iOS and Android devices and granted both iOS 6 and Samsung Know the security certificate the two needed to create a strong base in the enterprise — and the BBM app for iOS and Android could be one.

If it can boost its userbase, it could signal both investors and future users that it is something still worth caring about, and that it still has huge potential as a services provider. Going even further, success for BBM for competing platforms could also increase the number of potential BlackBerry customers.

Did you like this post? TheTelecomBlog.com publishes daily news, editorial, thoughts, and controversial opinion – you can subscribe by: RSS (click here), or email (click here).

Written by: Istvan Fekete. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.

It’s been no secret that in the tech industry one of the most popular (although arguably the least effective) weapons against a successful rival isn’t product development or radical innovation, its patent related lawsuits. For several years now patent wars have raged between mobile titans like Apple and Samsung, each trying to use every legal tool at their disposal to block or stymie their opponents at every turn.

So it comes as no surprise to hear that Apple is trying to add Samsung’s new Galaxy S4 to its growing list of Samsung products that infringe on Apple patents, the hope being of course to nip the new smartphone in the bud before it’s able to penetrate the mobile market.

Despite Apple’s recent patent victories against the Korean tech giant however, its unlikely the Cupertino Company will get much help from the courts in its fight against the Galaxy S4—which seems destined to be one of the biggest sellers in Samsung’s history—for the simple fact that the pace of lawsuits is much too slow and the growth of the smartphone market is far too fast.

As I alluded to, while patent litigation is practically the default tack companies take to try to stymie the development efforts of their closest competitors, it strikes me as one of the least effective means of curbing cutting edge development that may infringe on a company’s intellectual property, given rapid smartphone growth and device turnover.

Simply put, in the modern mobile market a phone like Samsung’s Galaxy S4 has a relevant shelf life of approximately two years, which in today’s market is generally two development cycles. That means that the phone will spend a year being the cutting edge choice for consumers, and then spend another year being the budget alternative to its more powerful successor. After that the phone sales will drop dramatically as the company and consumers move on to bigger and better things.

That means, unfortunately for Apple in this case, that by the time the courts get around to addressing the accusations of intellectual property infringement, which in our modern legal system is likely at least a year from now if not more, the device itself has had plenty of time to saturate the market, earn revenue for the company, and start to fade from view.

In fact, while the legal teams at both Apple and Samsung seem to be working overtime with patent suits and counter-suits, far more often than not the devices that are eventually found to be infringing on one or the other’s intellectual property are phones that are severely outdated, meaning the hit to a competitor’s pocketbook is negligible at best.

So why bother with patent litigation to begin with? For starters, I will admit that defending one’s intellectual property is important, but when it’s a weapon used to hamstring one’s opponent, it strikes me as a worthless endeavour and smacks of desperation.

The fact of the matter, as Roman Tsibulevskiy, patent attorney at Goldstein Patent Law, explains, is that the “Inclusion of S4 on the infringing list will not put any dent in S4 sales any time soon, because courts take too long and consumers don’t pay attention to this list, as most consumers just want a good and affordable smartphone.” This means that if Apple really wants to combat Samsung’s growing popularity, it might want to spend a little less money on its legal team and a little more money on research and development.

Did you like this post ? TheTelecomBlog.com publishes daily news, editorial, thoughts, and controversial opinion – you can subscribe by: RSS (click here), or email (click here).

Written by: Matt Klassen. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.

Over the past few years, Canada has been strengthening its infrastructural ties with the US in order to minimize any possible disruption to services that overlap between the two countries.

But a huge step has been reached as the two nations have agreed to an agreement which will see the sides share frequencies across the border to help improve wireless networks along the border.

The agreement will initially focus on spectrum needed to run the internet in border communities smoothly and provide better broadband coverage in both countries.

The news comes as internet spectrum continues to be a hotly contested issue in Canada with the spectrum licenses coming up for renewal in a few weeks.

With the announcement of the new agreement between both Canada and the US, it means that towns near the US border will experience much less chances of interference affecting the Internet in the region.

Initially, the spectrum will be shared from frequencies ranging from 350MHz to 3700MHz which covers all form of internet including high speed broadband connections.

It will see that connections on both sides will be joined together creating one complete network rather than sticking to within their own countries.

As the effects of the agreement kick in, it means that multiple device will now be able to access an internet network without the potential to lose access or be kicked off thanks to geographical limitations.

In another strand of the new deal, it will also give public bodies better methods to warn of threats to the area such as the improvement of public broadcast systems.

There will be a host of improvements on services on the 4940 – 4990 MHz spectrum which will help authorities send messages on treacherous weather and local threats on various systems such as the Advanced Wireless System and the Personal Communication Service.

Neither the FCC nor Industry Canada has stated when the agreement will come into effect but with both sides agreeing to share their resources on the border, it will mean that residents in border towns can look forward to a much more stable wireless and internet connection in the near future.

At the time they were seen as bold words from Blackberry, the company CEO Thorsten Heins stating that within 5 years there won’t “be a reason to have a tablet anymore.” While some took his utterances as nothing but sour grapes from a company bereft of a successful tablet offering, others were intrigued by Heins’ vision for the future, perhaps even inspired by his clarity of purpose…but then he went and opened his mouth again.

During a Q&A session at the company’s annual Blackberry Live event yesterday, Heins clarified his company’s tablet strategy, offering some additional, and not to mention contradictory, thoughts on the tablet scene; thoughts that simultaneously made me feel that Heins doesn’t quite know what he thinks about tablets or the future of the mobile segment, and certainly has no idea how to build a successful tablet platform.

So what is Heins’ brilliant tablet strategy? Well, it happens to be almost exactly the same one that his failed predecessors Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie envisioned several years ago with the defunct Playbook, recreating tablets as complementary technology to Blackberry’s smartphones.

While the tech blogosphere is awash in stories about Heins’ apparent tablet flip-flop, few seem to have given thought to his words regarding his company’s tablet strategy, words that worringly outline a development plan almost identical to the one that resulted in the firing of the company’s previous co-CEOs a few short years ago.

According to Heins’ cryptic and contradictory comments, the company’s mobile computing strategy is built around one keystone: the smartphone. “We believe in a single element of mobile computing: one on your hip,” Heins said yesterday during Blackberry Live. Then 15 minutes later Heins further muddied the waters by offering this insight: “The industry got stuck on the term tablets,” Heins said, adding that, despite his previous comments, he does see a role with larger-screen devices. “We want to create something that’s easier to use.”

From his comments it’s becoming increasingly clear that Heins’ goal is to recreate the tablet experience so that they don’t run on a separate operating system, relying instead on a Blackberry smartphone to act as the brains of the device. The tablet would ostensibly be nothing but a large screen companion device, without an operating system of its own.

So imagine the ease of use Heins’ vision of the tablet future will bring: you relaxing on the couch ready to watch a show on Netflix or read the day’s newspaper on your tablet, when you realize your smartphone is out of power from a day’s worth of use, rendering that ‘easy to use’ large screen tablet in front of you absolutely useless.

In the end I have to say that from Heins’ comments last month to the cryptic tablet strategy he espoused this week the man is either a brilliant visionary on par with Steve Jobs, recognizing mobile consumer trends before people themselves know what they what they want, or a bumbling fool, desperately rehashing the company’s once failed (and only) tablet strategy in hopes of achieving different results.

Did you like this post ? TheTelecomBlog.com publishes daily news, editorial, thoughts, and controversial opinion – you can subscribe by: RSS (click here), or email (click here).

Written by: Matt Klassen. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.

Blackberry Live has become a yearly highlight now as the Canadian manufacturer bring some of the biggest names in entertainment and technology together to show off what the company has achieved in the past year.

Whilst the last couple of events have come when the company was under increasing pressure, this year’s show comes with the company riding a wave of success from the release of the two new Blackberry 10 phones.

Even though not many people are expecting any major announcements at this year conference, the company are likely to answer some of the most buzzing questions that the company have raised in previous months such as their stance on tablets and plans for more Blackberry 10 devices.

Alongside this, there is expected to be appearances and performances from numerous celebrities throughout the 3 days including Alicia Keys and The Alabama Shakes.

The tablet taboo

As always with Blackberry Live, there are always one burning question that the company will need to answer to satisfy critics and industry analysts.

This year, many will be looking to see the stance Blackberry will take on the development of tablets following the company distancing themselves from the devices.

Last month, Blackberry chief executive Thorstein Heins called tablets just a current fad and that they would be considered obsolete in 5 years time.

With this in mind, it looks increasingly unlikely that the rumoured Blackberry 10 Playbook will not come into existence at any point in the near future.

Looking to answer bigger issues in society

One theme that is set to take precedent during this year’s event is answering some of the bigger issues in society including the role of women and helping the developing world.

This year’s marquee guest is Alicia Keys and apart from performing at the event, the Grammy award winner is also set to be involved in several sessions showcasing the growing role of women in the technology industry.

Keys has featured in several advertising campaigns for Blackberry over the past year and has become of the major celebrity endorsers for their products.

Another issue that will be talked about is the growing technology market in developing economies where Blackberry has enjoyed strong sales particularly in Africa and Asia.

It’s expected that the company will unveil new strategies that will showcase how Blackberry will increase their presence across the world.

With Blackberry seemingly focused on developing current strategies and products, it seems that this year will be more about showing about how Blackberry wants to solidify their growth rather than leaping straight back to the top of the mobile phone empire.

As consumers continue to clamour for ubiquitous connectivity in this ‘connected everything’ age, government agencies and private sector companies are turning to Wi-Fi as their wireless saviour, implementing the wireless technology to increase connectivity over land, sea, and air, with the latter the latest focus of the Federal Communication Commission’s development efforts.

While increasingly airlines are offering in-flight Wi-Fi services there remain several barriers in the way of mass adoption, namely the subpar quality of service and the price one pays to access it. Recently the FCC announced its plan to boost bandwidth for in-flight wireless, meaning faster (and hopefully cheaper) service for business and vacation travellers alike.

But the FCC’s in-flight wireless plan has already run into some serious turbulence, as the proposal from the government regulatory body is almost identical to the proposal submitted by global chip manufacturer Qualcomm, leading many to question the FCC’s relationship with, or sheer dependence on, the private sector company for developing a nationwide in-flight wireless  development plan.

There’s no question that it looks bad when the FCC’s action plan for developing a usable and affordable in-flight wireless network comes directly from the pages of a proposal it received several years ago from Qualcomm. But while many cry foul and assume the FCC is somehow in cahoots with the chip maker I happen to think the situation is far more dire: the FCC has no idea what’s its doing.

Simply put, it’s a case of ineptitude, not shady backroom dealings, that has the FCC essentially plagiarizing Qualcomm’s 2011 in-flight Wi-Fi development proposal, given that no other private sector company has come forward with any plans and the FCC has neither the knowledge of Wi-Fi deployment nor the resources to gather the requisite information it needs to make its own decisions.

The details of the FCC/Qualcomm proposal involve the following: “The number of aircraft offering broadband service will quintuple from about 3,000 in 2012 to 15,000 by 2021, according to the FCC. The Commission is forwarding Qualcomm’s suggestion of tapping into the 14.0 to 14.5 GHz band to provide a secondary service that would not interfere with fixed satellite service (FSS) Earth-to-space communications.”

The bandwidth the FCC makes available will be licensed to carriers on a 10-year lease with the stipulation that it be dedicated solely to in-flight wireless services.

There’s no question that such upgrades will increase the effectiveness of in-flight wireless services, as connection speeds now, as many business travellers surely know, are truly a roll of the “broadband dice.” Further, by increasing the effectiveness more consumers will use the service, making it a profitable venture for more companies that in turn will drive the price of the service down, making this a much needed upgrade in this ‘connected everything’ age.

In the end, while some are crying foul over the FCC’s apparent partnership with chip maker Qualcomm in developing this in-flight wireless plan, I happen to think the FCC is simply not smart enough to engage in such shady backroom dealings; the horrifying truth being that the FCC’s use of Qualcomm’s wireless plan is wrought from desperation fuelled ineptitude, not shadowy intent.

Did you like this post ? TheTelecomBlog.com publishes daily news, editorial, thoughts, and controversial opinion – you can subscribe by: RSS (click here), or email (click here).

Written by: Matt Klassen. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.

With more people choosing to use mobile devices to access the web, it has meant that telecom companies have managed to earn a bigger slice of the internet market.

However, this has placed the firms into competition with internet service providers and the ISP’s are not happy with the way that mobile providers are conducting their business.

Internet providers believe that mobile firms are hoarding their spectrum and getting an unfair advantage against other companies.

The spectrum battles are based on the 3.5MHz frequency which focuses on the high speed internet connections that are now common in many cities and towns and is being introduced for both homes and businesses.

In a few weeks, the licenses for the 3.5MHz frequency will be reviewed which means that many internet and telecom providers will be looking to get their chance to make an impact in the internet market.

Whilst competition is certainly going to be fierce for each license, some internet providers are already commenting that some of the major telecom companies have an unfair advantage through satellite companies that own spectrum but don’t use all of their resources.

Much of the focus is seemingly aimed towards Inukshuk Wireless which is a joint venture between Rogers and BCE. At the moment, Inukshuk owns around 75% of the total spectrum in Canada but has only focused its products in select areas.

This has angered several ISP’s including Xplorenet Communications who have submitted a formal complaint to Industry Canada in a bid to open up the market.

Xplorenet’s report featured several damning statements about Inukshuk and accused the company of stifling competition. In their report, the company said that “to allow carriers to continue to hold large amounts of spectrum licences without proper deployment by the end of their licence term simply endorses spectrum hoarding strategies.”

At the moment, Xplorenet only owns 5% of the available spectrum and having used nearly all of its available limits, they are hoping that their reports will open up the door to further investment for both the company and other ISP’s.

BCE and Rogers have defended their Inukshuk venture believing that the lack of compatibility with mobile devices on the 3. 5MHz frequency is the reason for not using all of their potential. In a statement, Inukshuk said that “Canadians will be more effectively served by the implementation of the most innovative and advanced technologies such as LTE, even if this means that the deployment requirements must be extended again.”

With no decision yet to be made on the spectrum licenses, it’s likely that the matter will rumble on for weeks to come. But Inukshuk will need to show that they will make good use of their share if they want to stop rival ISP’s such as Xplorenet getting a firmer foothold in the market.

Did you like this post ? TheTelecomBlog.com publishes daily news, editorial, thoughts, and controversial opinion – you can subscribe by: RSS (click here), or email (click here).

Written by: Andrew Roach www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.

Amazon has long been known for its disruptive capabilities, having already turned the publishing industry and ecommerce markets on their heads. Now, if rumours prove true, Amazon has the mobile sector in its sights, as the latest market speculation has Amazon developing two high-end smartphones as well as an audio-streaming device, expanding its range of Amazon branded hardware beyond the company’s current Kindle e-reader and Kindle Fire offerings.

But what is most intriguing about these rumours is the sort of smartphones Amazon is rumoured to be creating, as The Wall Street Journal has reported that at least one of the handsets might support 3D video display, using advanced retina tracking technology to display a 3D image much like a futuristic hologram, offering a three dimensional picture from nearly every angle.

It’s the sort of rumour that many would hope would apply to Apple, but these days the tech market isn’t expecting much from the Cupertino giant. That said, it’ll be interesting to see if these rumours prove true or turn out to simply be more ‘vapourware’ in a increasingly stagnant mobile market.

If these rumours prove true it’ll certainly be interesting to see what effect it has on the innovation-starved mobile market as a whole, as Amazon has never been one to shy away from such risky advancements or one to avoid potential market upheaval. But despite the fact that Amazon has shown a great ability to create its own markets and then dominate them, can Amazon find success in the smartphone market with a 3D handset?

To wit, about the only thing out of place among these emerging smartphone rumours is what Amazon would really gain out of the endeavour, with many wondering how the ecommerce giant would utilize the mobile medium to do what all Amazon branded do…sell its products.

Simply put, while there’s no question behind the logic of the Kindle Fire, the company’s popular Kindle eReader offerings, or even the rumoured soon to come TV set-top box–as all offer great platforms for ecommerce–a smartphone needs to be more versatile, and if Amazon can’t offer the same mobile experience with its desired deep integration with ecommerce, no one will care if the phone offers 3D technology, it won’t sell.

Further, one has to ask if the market is ready for 3D mobile display, as consumers have been woefully slow in adopting 3D TV technology, meaning there may not even be a market for 3D smartphones.

That said, this is clearly a way for Amazon to differentiate itself from the mobile pack. As Josh Crandall, principal analyst at NetPop Research, explains, “All of the leaders are looking for the next miracle technology…Apple has its watch, Google has its Glass, and now Amazon has its 3D phone. Amazon is no longer a bookstore, it’s a major player in cloud computing and hardware. The media and gadget fans have a lot to look forward to.”

In the end, it’s really hard to say how the impending arrival of 3D mobile technology will be received, given that there simply is no precedent to draw on. Amazon would be creating an entirely new mobile genre with its 3D smartphone, and it’ll be interesting to see if the company will strike a cord with consumers, and how the phone itself will contribute to Amazon’s overall ecommerce push.

Did you like this post ? TheTelecomBlog.com publishes daily news, editorial, thoughts, and controversial opinion – you can subscribe by: RSS (click here), or email (click here).

Written by: Matt Klassen. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.

A J.D. Power study has revealed a couple interesting facts about the Canadian wireless market: Koodo topped its consumer satisfaction survey, followed by Virgin Mobile and Wind Mobile.

Don’t let yourself be mislead by the names: both Koodo and Virgin Mobile are owned by the incumbents. The only odd-one-out on the list is Wind Mobile, the struggling startup, which is reportedly up for sale, just like the other two wireless startups, Public Mobile and Mobilicity.

But even more has been uncovered by the J.D. Power study, which was omitted by the majority of headlines, but highlighted by OpenMedia.ca: Canadian cellphone bills are up 13% compared to last year. And this is happening while the country’s overall inflation rate has been holding steady at 1%.

In an interview with CBC’s Lang and O’Leary Exchange, Steve Anderson, the founder and executive director of OpenMedia.ca, a non-profit advocate for increased competition, shed light on the incumbents’ influence on prices and services. According to Anderson, Canadians pay some of the highest cellphone bills in the world for one of the worst services. And that’s happening because the government is really protecting these big telecom companies and may be the reason why they only compete in Canada and not abroad.

To back his claims, Anderson points to the Rogers–Shaw deal: the incumbent has a plan to grab wireless assets set aside for wireless startups by the government. Despite having clear guidelines for this scenario, the government won’t even enforce their own rules to stop the incumbent.

The above case is just one example of the government’s inconsistency, which recently made public — via Industry Minister Christian Paradis — that it needs foreign capital to boost cellphone market competition. As Kevin O’Leary highlights, these inconsistencies are keeping investors away from Canada, rather than encouraging them to put their money into a wireless market controlled by three, government-protected players.

And just highlight price gauging practices, O’Leary said it was 66% cheaper for him to roam in Canada on his Verizon phone, than using his cellular plan from an incumbent. I think there is a strong demand for a change.

Did you like this post? TheTelecomBlog.com publishes daily news, editorial, thoughts, and controversial opinion – you can subscribe by: RSS (click here), or email (click here).

Written by: Istvan Fekete. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.

With the Big Three mobile providers having such a stranglehold on the industry, many people expect the firms to lead the way in almost every area of the market.

However, a new survey says otherwise as Koodo Mobile has emerged as the best provider for customer satisfaction in Canada.

In fact, the big three companies had a rather torrid time in the survey as they filled out the bottom three spots of the 12-strong line-up.

The results stem from the Canadian Wireless Total Experience Study run by JD Power & Associates which asked over 13,000 mobile users across the country.

It’s certainly a surprise to see Koodo Mobile on top of the pile as the family-friendly provider scored an impressive 765 point in the survey.

But Koodo’s success sparked a trend where the smaller mobile providers were certainly popular with their customers with Virgin Mobile and Wind Mobile rounding out the top three with 744 and 729 points respectively.

This is a stark contrast to the usual dominance of Roger, Telus and Bell who found themselves at the bottom of the pile with Rogers only scoring a total of 662 points.

Bell weren’t much better off in the survey scoring 674 points whilst Telus were slightly ahead coming in 669 points.
The figures will make for grim reading for the Big Three networks that will need to consider their approach in terms of value and service to improve their scores in the future.

Alongside ranking the providers, the survey also looked at general aspects of the Canadian mobile industry in general where the average monthly bill is now valued at $77.

This marks a jump of $9 from the $68 figure from last year with the increasing use of data being isolated as the main cause for the price jump.

It’s not surprising to see data plans as the primary cause of the rise with many Canadians now using their phones to surf the web and access social media. On top of that, the survey found that most users checked their emails at least 10 times a day on a mobile device.

As mobile use continues to grow, it means that providers will need to keep their customers happy on a regular basis and this could be one of the aspects that could help ensure the survival of many of the struggling independent wireless providers for several years to come.