Google Voice vs. AT&T – The battle of the sex lines

Once upon a time, there were two competing services that would help people talk to each other. One of them was a corporate titan, large and powerful, able to buy just about anything that stood in its way. This company had a history of poor customer service, and because they were one of the biggest in the land, there was no reason for them to change their practices. As they saw it, customers were unlimited resources that you could squeeze money from whenever you needed to. This company was named AT&T

One day, another company crossed into the land of telecommunications and saw an opportunity to provide the citizens of the land with a free service that would work as well, or better, than the existing service that they were getting. This service was free, but only available to certain members in this land because this company felt it was important to thoroughly test new offerings before providing them to the general public. This practice of offering free service had made this company well known and loved across the many regions of the internet. This company was named Google, and the service was called Google Voice.

AT&T had been aware of Google, but didn’t feel threatened until AT&T felt that Google didn’t have to play by the same rules as AT&T. One of the things that AT&T was upset about had to do with the rules dictated in the Communications act of 1934. To paraphrase the act, there are some areas in the community, serviced by rural local carriers that have the ability to exorbitant termination rates to the long distance carriers (like AT&T), and then use deception and trickery to get customers to call their numbers. Offers of free adult chat and teleconferencing were presented to the rest of the nation and these rural carriers were able to charge a fee to the phone companies to connect to their lines. The rural carriers would then split the extra income back to these “traffic pumpers.” AT&T had been forced to provide service to these rural carriers, but since these costs could be transferred straight through to their existing customers, AT&T wasn’t that upset with the situation.

A few weeks ago, AT&T became aware that the Google Voice service was able to block access to the numbers in the rural carrier community, and decided to bring this to the governing body in this land – the FCC. After much lobbying persuasion, ATT&T convinced the FCC to investigate the invite only, open phone system that Google Voice provided. The FCC issued a letterto Google, asking them to explain why they feel that they are above the Communications Act of 1934.

Over the next few days we are going to investigate this story so that you can better understand this situation. We here at thetelecomblog.com will provide you with the information about the two companies, Google Voice and AT&T, to ensure that you have the facts to form your own opinion.

Is this Goliath v. Goliath, or is this more like comparing apples to oranges.

Stay tuned!

Written by: Jason Finnerty. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Identi.ca, or Friendfeed

A re-cap of the 3 new carriers coming to Canada this Fall / Winter. 2 are doomed !

Competition will not only be fierce between the new carriers, but even more so as the incumbent carriers stake their position and fight aggressively to hang onto their market share.

In the last few weeks TheTelecomBlog.com has profiled all 3 of the new carriers in separate blog postings, and on Tuesday we started a 4 part series looking at which of the 3 carriers would survive. This is part 2.

A re-cap / summary of the new carriers are as follows:

Public Mobile:
After announcing their plan to provide Canadians, well for now only those that live in Toronto or Montreal, an alternative to the big 3 cell providers, Public Mobile is looking to jump in bed with Wal Mart to ensure that they continue to become known as the low cost, high-frills option in the Canadian cell phone market. The company is interested in placing their products in the hands of Canadians in Ontario and Quebec, and feels that their target market is available at Wal Mart and other convenience location.

Public Mobile scooped up the G-band for only $53 million in the wireless spectrum auction last year – nearly 80% less than what the other parts of the spectrum went for. Public Mobile has been able to show that they are serious about providing real competition to the big players: Telus, Rogers, and Bell. The question is: can they afford to be the affordable cell phone provider? With no hardware designed to be used in this spectrum, combined with a target market of 2 million customers, this will be an interesting company to watch. But everyone loves an underdog!

Wind Mobile:
After spending $442 million on spectrum in the Canadian wireless auction Globalive is poised to provide an exceptional customer experience at discount store prices by partnering up with Wind Mobile. They hired Alcatel-Lucent to create the 3G network required to launch the Windmobile products across Canada to ensure that the network is able to meet the demands of today and the needs of tomorrow.

Globalive has asked Canadians what they want, and is now in the process of finding a way to provide it.
With over ten years of experience in the telecommunications field, Globalive is well suited to meet the challenge of upsetting the Big Three – Telus, Rogers, and Bell.

Globalive is funded by Orascom, an Egyptian based cell phone conglomorate with spectrum and operations all over the world, Orascom has deep enough pockets, skill, and experience to make a real go of this. The problem – Globalive has been plagued with issues regarding Canadian ownership which could threaten their launch. Globalive’s cell brand will be called Wind Mobile.

Dave Wireless:
Dave’s acting President is Dave Dobbin, previously of Toronto Hydro Telecom. For those that live in the Toronto area you might remember Dave from his radio ads urging customers to come to one of his seminars on network security. Incidentally, the fact that DAVE Wireless and DAVE Dobbin both share the same name is completely coincidental, although very convenient. DAVE is headed up by John Bitove, controlling shareholder of XM Radio in Canada, and KFC Holdings, Director of Priszm Brands, which owns KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell franchises across Canada.

The Dave wireless team says that they are on track to launch their product line in early 2010 in 5 Canadian cities: Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and Ottawa. By opting to roll out HSPA+, the Dave team is hoping to be able to offer speeds of 21 megabits/sec.

With no information about pricing and plan options on their website, the Dave mobile team is going to be answering a ton of questions prior to the launch. They seem to have provided the least amount of information, and will probably be the last of the 3 to launch.

These are the players, and these are my predictions. One will play and two won’t stay.
Check back next Monday to find out which two new-comers have already had a public spat debate.

Written by: Jeff Wiener. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Identi.ca, or Friendfeed

Verizon helps you prepare for natural disasters

Verizon want’s to save your life!

All too often you hear that companies only take-take-take. Well Verizon is showing that sometimes, it’s important to give back to your community – and not just to those that are your customers.

To honor the 20^th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake, Verizon has teamed up with some other major sponsors to fund “The Big Rumble” – an initiative to help communities prepare for natural disasters.

Here are some tips from Verizon to help you prepare for an emergency:

• Know how to use call forwarding at home. If you have to evacuate, forward your home phone calls to your cell phone.
• Conserve battery power and free-up wireless networks for emergency response agencies by limiting non-emergency calls.
• Keep a cell car-charger in your vehicle in case you must evacuate.
• Save emergency phone numbers in your cell phone for one-touch dialing.
• Store back-up batteries for electronic devices, including your cell phone.
• Consider using text messages to communicate.
• Understand your cell phone’s capabilities: email, weather updates and news reports are all tools that can help after a disaster.
• Small business owners can help employees stay connected to the Internet, email and company databases with high-speed data services for laptops.

It’s too easy to be cynical and just write stuff like this off as PR. You might already know these steps – but you probably know someone that doesn’t.

Spread the word, tweet it, facebook it, blog about it – but take action – don’t just read and leave.

Or be part of the community – what should be added to this list?

Written by: Jason Finnerty. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Identi.ca, or Friendfeed

Apple patching up iPhone jailbreak

Cupertino is apparently getting into the security business, locking down an exploit that has enabled ambitious users to unlock the previous versions of the iPhone.

Since shortly after the introduction of the first iPhone, development teams have been able to exploit a flaw in the phones OS, enabling them to create a modified OS with the ability to install whichever apps the user wants – legal or not. This process also enabled users outside of the US to use the phones in their home country (yup – I was one of them!)

The fine folks at mobilecrunch have a great description of the process:

“If you want the full technical rundown of the exploit, you can find it here. In its simplest form: as with all computers, the iPhone requires something called a “Bootrom” to startup. During the startup process, one stretch of code in the Bootrom fails to ensure that the content being loaded is within a certain size limit. By throwing more instructions at that chunk of code than it’s intended to handle, exploiters are able to make the iPhone do damn near whatever they want; in this case, the jailbreaking process.”

Does this mean that the next version/release of the iPhone won’t be able to be jailbroken? Possibly, but like all other computer systems – if the people that want it bad enough put their minds together, they’ll be able to crack the new code in no time at all.

Good luck to the dev team!

Written by: Jason Finnerty. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Identi.ca, or Friendfeed

CRTC screws Canadians. It’s normally Bell Canada that’s screwing us.

This email just landed in my inbox. It’s an appeal to speak up about new cable fees being proposed by the CRTC – ironically, this came from Bell Canada. Of course you see the irony in this email – it’s like the “Pot calling the kettle black” isn’t it ? Bell Canada asking us to speak up about new fees.

My question to Bell – how about all of those hidden fees, charges, surcharges, excuses, and years of bad service. Wait, you’re still screwing us – hidden charges, mistakes on bills, and this whole Net Neutrality thing has really got me frustrated.

Either way, it sure looks like another tax.

Dear Customer,

Help stop your TV fees from increasing. CTV, Global and the CBC have recently asked the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to significantly increase TV taxes.

The CRTC has been asked to do this by having Bell and the other operators pay more, which would result in higher fees for you.

We don’t think that’s right, you shouldn’t either. So please speak and have your say.

This is what’s happening.

The CRTC has told satellite and cable companies to hand over $100 million a year as of September 1, 2009. These fees are being passed on to you.

This money is passing through something called the Local Programming Improvement Fund (LPIF) ˆ straight to media giants like CTVglobemedia and Canwest Global, straight to the CBC.

No new local programming, no improvement to anything other than the bottom line of broadcasters.

You are now likely paying for this on your TV bill.

You should also know that hot on the heels of that campaign, CTV, Global and the CBC are now lobbying for even more.

Each year, satellite and cable companies pay hundreds of millions of dollars to broadcasters. We contribute to the CRTC’s operating budget. Although to date these fees have not been broken out on monthly bills, you need to know they exist ˆ especially because the TV networks still want more.

If the CRTC gives in to the broadcasters’ latest demand and lets local TV stations charge for their currently free over-the-air local signals, it would more than double the portion of your Bell TV bill going to government fees ˆ and into the bank accounts of the broadcasters, like CTV, Global and the CBC.

In fact, if the CRTC lets broadcasters have their way, then government-imposed fees will be just shy of one billion dollars.

It’s time to say enough. Help make it stop. Let the CRTC know what you think about new TV taxes – have your say.

Written by: Jeff Wiener. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Identi.ca, or Friendfeed

3 new cell companies coming to Canada. My guess – 2 are doomed. Public Mobile, Wind Mobile, or Dave Wireless ?

Do you remember that old University “first day” story about the professor that gets in front of the class and says “look to your left, now look to your right. Next year one of you won’t be here”.

I’m going to do some forecasting and make a similar statement about the future cellular market. We have 3 new companies opening shop in the next 6 months, and my prediction is that two of the 3 cell companies won’t be around in 1 year.

Here’s my prediction of what the market will look like next year at this time:

One of the cell companies will have trouble launching. Their technology will be rife with problems, which in turn will strain their customer service department with phone calls. A negative sentiment will set-in fairly quickly – they won’t make it past the one year mark.

One of the cell companies will launch successfully, but, they will struggle to differentiate themselves from the competition and will find it difficult to fund the expansion beyond the first year. Plans won’t materialize as expected, and they will be forced to sell the business at a discounted price to one of the incumbents.

One of the cell companies will launch successfully, will understand the marketing, customer service, and pricing model, and will become a formidable competitive force in the Canadian cellular marketplace.

My crystal ball suggests that – one year from this December, we will have 4 well established cellular players in Canada. Bell, Telus, Rogers, and ______________________ (FILL IN THE BLANK)

Who might that be ? Read on …

And, check back Thursday for the continuation of this post. This posting is part of a 4 part series on a re-cap of the new cell companies (Pubic Mobile, Dave Wireless, and Wind Mobile) coming to Canada, a round-out, analysis, and perspective on who will succeed, and who will fail.

More: TheTelecomBlog.com has profiled all 3 new carriers in previous posts. You can read about them:
Coming to Canada this Fall – profiling Public Mobile
Coming to Canada this Fall – profiling Wind Mobile
Coming this winter to Canada. Profiling Dave Wireless.

Written by: Jeff Wiener. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Identi.ca, or Friendfeed

$100. That’s it. That’s all T-Mobile is giving customers for their Sidekick dataloss

Given the choice of being either Kanye West’s PR spindoctor, or anyone on tech support for T-Mobile Sidekick – my choice would be easy. No matter whose acceptance speech Kanye interrupts, it’s still going to be less damaging than what’s going on at Sidekick these past few days.

A quick timeline of events:

Oct 1 – 10 – T-Mobile Sidekick users experience intermittent random data outages. Some customers remove/replace battery to troubleshoot problem. Phones are unable to communicate with the servers, resulting in loss of data on devices. T-Mobile advises customers do not let batteries run out completely.

Oct 10 – T-Mobile announces that there might be a problem with their servers, and this might impact the users. Sidekicks were pulled off the shelves. Customers offered up to $20 credit for inconvenience (equal to 1 month of data service)

Oct 12 – T-Mobile offers $100 credit for customers that experienced “significant” data loss

T-Mobile has this on the Sidekick website:

T-MOBILE STATUS UPDATE ON SIDEKICK DATA DISRUPTION, MON., OCT. 12

Dear valued T-Mobile Sidekick customers:

We are thankful for your continued patience as Microsoft/Danger continues to work on preserving platform stability and restoring all services for our Sidekick customers. We have made significant progress this past weekend, restoring services to virtually every customer. Microsoft/Danger has teams of experts in place who are working around-the-clock to ensure this stability is maintained.

Regarding those of you who have lost personal content, T-Mobile and Microsoft/Danger continue to do all we can to recover and return any lost information. Recent efforts indicate the prospects of recovering some lost content may now be possible. We will continue to keep you updated on this front; we know how important this is to you.

In the event certain customers have experienced a significant and permanent loss of personal content, T-Mobile will be sending these customers a $100 customer appreciation card. This will be in addition to the free month of data service that already went to Sidekick data customers. This card can be used towards T-Mobile products and services, or a customer’s T-Mobile bill. For those who fall into this category, details will be sent out in the next 14 days – there is no action needed on the part of these customers. We however remain hopeful that for the majority of our customers, personal content can be recovered.

Sidekick customers can continue to visit T-Mobile Sidekick Forums (http://www.t-mobile.com/sidekick) on a regular basis to access the latest updates, as well as FAQs regarding this service disruption. The Forums also offers tips and suggestions for rebuilding content on your device.

******************************************************************************************************

What is the right amount of compensation for customers that experienced data loss? Is $100 too much, or not enough? If you only have one backup, you might as well have none – but was this communicated to the T-Mobile customers? What is “significant” data loss ?

Written by: Jason Finnerty. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Identi.ca, or Friendfeed

No Kanadian Kindle ? When will Amazon bring the Kindle to Canada ?

“This is the future of book reading. It will be everywhere.” Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball and Liar’s Poker.

Yes, everywhere but Canada.

It looks like Amazon’s ebook reader, the Kindle, is going to be shipped to 100 countries, but Canada isn’t one of them. The reason? Amazon is still shopping for the best deal on the wireless carriers available in Canada. Now that Telus and Bell have HSPA+, there are more options for Kindle users. Amazon wants to go with the cheapest best option available among the available international carriers.

What is Kindle ?

- Revolutionary electronic-paper display provides a sharp, high-resolution screen that looks and reads like real paper.
- Simple to use: no computer, no cables, no syncing.
- Wireless connectivity enables you to shop the Kindle Store directly from your Kindle—whether you’re in the back of a taxi, at the airport, or in bed.
- Buy a book and it is auto-delivered wirelessly in less than one minute.
- More than 350,000 books, newspapers, magazines, and blogs available available, including more than 105 of 112 current New York Times® Best Sellers.
- New York Times® Best Sellers and New Releases $9.99, unless marked otherwise.
- Free book samples. Download and read first chapters for free before you decide to buy.
- Top U.S. newspapers including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post; top magazines including TIME, Atlantic Monthly, and Forbes—all auto-delivered wirelessly.
- Top international newspapers from France, Germany, and Ireland; Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeine, and The Irish Times—all auto-delivered wirelessly.
- More than 5000 top blogs from the worlds of business, technology, sports, entertainment, and politics, including BoingBoing, Slashdot, TechCrunch, ESPN’s Bill Simmons, The Onion, Michelle Malkin, and The Huffington Post—all updated wirelessly throughout the day.
- Lighter and thinner than a typical paperback; weighs only 10.3 ounces.
- Holds over 200 titles.

The Kindle sounds great. Now, what’s wrong with Canada ?

A few weeks ago, who would have guessed that there would be too much competition in the Canadian cellular market ?

Is this another instance where Canada is snubbed due to the high price of our cellular providers? The Globe & Mail seems to think so, comparing the Kindle delay to the iPhone situation that saw Canada get the phone almost a year after it was launched.

It will be nice to see the options that the new entries into our market will bring. Public Mobile, Wind Mobile, and DAVE Wireless can’t get here soon enough.

Written by: Jason Finnerty. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Identi.ca, or Friendfeed

Even my Mom is reading this Blog ! And yes, Mom, Rogers did show up !

I called my Mom on my way home from work yesterday evening and she asked me how the Rogers installation was going. She said she had read this blog. My mother ! Reading a Telecom Blog !! (Click here to catch up on this story)

My immediate thought – Oh No. If my mother is reading this blog then I must be completely off base. This is a Telecom Blog. You know – technical stuff. No disrespect toward my mother, but, she reads Canadian House and Home. I have been in Telecom for 20 years and she’s still asking what it is that I do ! That would be cool though – in a month or so I might be talking to my mother about Net Neutrality. Can’t wait.

Anyway, I didn’t have enough time to speak with my Mom about the Rogers thing, so, let me say something to her first. Mom, I’m sorry for rushing you off the phone last night. You spooked me. And yes, Rogers did show up. We now have Rogers cable.

Truth be told, the Rogers tech was fantastic. I actually didn’t meet him, but, when you come home from work and your kids, who don’t normally care about much other then Miley Cyrus, run over and explain how nice the phone guy was, you know he must have done something right. He showed up on time. Ran and fished the cables, cross connected the phone lines to the new Rogers demarc, tested the phone line, and even, now get this, helped my wife take in the groceries from the car.

We even got a call from “the President’s office” last night asking if everything was OK.

I knew this blog would come in handy for something. I think I’m going to make this blog into my personal gripe session. Problem at the grocery store – blog about it. Flight delayed – blog about it. Crappy Canadian winter – OK, I guess I’m getting carried away.

So, what’s the message in all of this.

Don’t switch carriers ? Start a blog ? Yes to both.

And the message for Rogers, Bell, Shaw, Telus, MTS, or any other carrier. Amazing service is an elusive goal, but if done right, will propel your company to the top. Your customers are craving straight forward billing with no hidden charges, well trained customer service reps, and technicians and sales people that understand the business. And no, a 20 minute hold time is NOT acceptable.

Now, I’ve got to figure out how to use this new Rogers remote.

More: I just discovered the show “Ice Road Truckers” on the History channel. Love it.

Written by: Jeff Wiener. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Identi.ca, or Friendfeed

The iPhone’s future is now friendly

The $1 BIllion shared network that Telus and Bell have installed will reportedly allow them to carry the Apple iPhone on their respective networks.

The eagerly anticipated High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) network was scheduled to be completed for February 2010, but the early launch will allow the two cell giants to prepare for the time of the year that sees the most new wireless sales. Neither company would comment about any upcoming deals with Apple, but the promise of ending Roger’s monopoly on the smartphone must be top of mind for all three companies. The Globe and Mail is even predicting that Telus and Bell will start selling the phones next month.

Bell and Telus will be looking to acquire new and existing iPhone fanatics, while Rogers should be planning ways to provide better pricing/service to the smartphone audience.

More provider options should result in a more competitive environment for those of us that have sold our souls for an iPhone!

Written by: Jason Finnerty. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Identi.ca, or Friendfeed