Canadian Market Just Doesn’t Get the Nexus One Google Phone
I'm not claiming to be an expert or anything, but I did spend a good six months following the HTC Hero story before it came to market. In case you missed that one, its release was a watershed moment in the history of the Android OS. Many people have agreed that it was the first device to really compete with the iPhone head to head and showed that Google's foray into the smartphone realm was more than just a half-baked afterthought.
I haven't followed the Nexus One story much at all, actually, until now. But I believe that it makes the Hero seem like just another iPhone rip-off. That's because what we are getting with the Nexus One isn't just another smartphone, it is a whole different way of relating to the telecommunications industry.
Many people are still unaware of VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol). This is a telephone service that works just like your traditional landline, except instead of using an analog signal (the kind used by Alexander Graham Bell himself in the first phone call), it uses a digital signal that is transmitted over the internet. The great advantage of this technology is that traditional phone lines can still be used, but using digital technology increases the bandwidth of the transmission. In other words, you don't need an analog signal anymore, all you need is an internet connection (whether that be DSL or cable or satellite) and you can make and receive telephone calls.
This technology has yet to make its way into the cellular market for many reasons. The main one being that its introduction would seriously hurt the bottom line of cellular companies. Just think, with VOIP on a cell phone you don't even need a "Talk & Text Plan". All you need is a data plan. With a data plan you can use Skype, or Google Voice or some other technology out there that we haven't even heard of or hasn't been invented yet.
The Nexus One is pushing the limits by going for the jugular of the cellphone industry. That main vein is the outrageous prices that the industry places on consumers for traditional services that have basically been rendered obsolete by the emergence of new technologies like VOIP (don't even get me started on the text-message thing, which is an even more outrageous story of manipulation and incredibly lucrative for the entrenched powers).
The reason that most people don't know about this in Canada is obvious. Rogers, Bell and Telus have the highest rates of any cellular companies in the world. Anything that would jeopardize their cartel is blasted in the major press because they not only control a lot of the media directly, but also indirectly through advertising. They aren't going to be paying the Globe and Mail or National Post or even the Toronto Star for advertising if their reporters are telling the public how they are being ripped off (much less reporting those stories themselves).
This missing puzzle piece in Canada, to really make the Nexus One a game changer in this market, will be for some Canadian Cellular company to offer "data only" cellular plans. What that would look like is that you buy a sim card from a cellular provider and pay for a data plan only instead of a talk and text with data which is the current norm. This really isn't that different from buying a USB stick that you hook up to your laptop, it is just that we still don't think of smartphones as handheld computers. The reality is that is just exactly what they are. Millions of dollars in advertising revenue are being spent to keep you and everyone else in Canada from realizing this (and to be fair, it is happening in the US as well, but at least T-Mobile is already on board with Google).
I have an inkling of hope that Globalive will be offering this type of service through Wind Mobile, but only time will tell. As for me, I'm hoping that Google offers the Nexus One directly to Canadian consumers sooner than later, I want one! How about you?
Welcome to Mimico
I was looking up directions today on Google Maps and tried to zoom and accidentally activated their Street View feature. I didn't know that they had mapped our neighborhood yet, the last time I had checked had been quite a while ago. From the looks of the photos they were taken over the summer.
So, anybody wondering what it looks like where I live in Canada but can't come for a visit, now you can see for yourself. And like any good trip to Mimico, we have to start at the Beer Store...
Sean Carroll and the Arrow of Time
Why does time move in only one direction? Why are some events cyclical and some others happen only once? What is the relationship between these two experiences we have of time? These are some of the questions that Dr. Carroll explores in this lecture he recently delivered at the Quantum 2 Consciousness festival in Waterloo, Ontario. I'm really glad that they made this lecture and others available online so those of us who couldn't make it can still listen in.
There’s a Hero Coming to Canada
Right now it is mostly just speculation, the "smoking gun" seems to have been revealed on Isaiah's Tech blog. As he points out, the Hero is now listed on the Canadian portion of HTC's website in the support section. There are also rumors that Telus and Bell are going to be putting the Hero in their lineup this fall as they roll out their HSPA offering. I, personally, would be very happy if the HTC Hero came to Bell because they're my current carrier.
I've been collecting news and reviews about the HTC Hero on Twine for a while now and believe that it is looking to become the greatest smartphone rival to the iPhone over the next year. It may not be able to break the iPhone grip by itself, but a slew of other Android powered phones are in the works from multiple manufacturers, all offering slightly different features and setups.
The big winner? ARM Holdings of Great Britain, whose low power, ultra-efficient microchips are what power all of them, including the iPhone.
Toronto Emergency Services Down to 75% Staffing Levels
I'm just trying to get the word out everyone. If you look at the wording of official City of Toronto corporation when it comes to Emergency Services, here are a few quotes:
The official statement from Mayor David Miller (who, BTW, happens to have a twitter page @mayormiller.)
And although impacted by the work stoppage, emergency medical services will continue to operate...
And city councilor for my area, Mark Grimes, put on his twitter page @Mark_Grimes:
I regret the inconveniences caused by the strike. The City is trying to bring this to a quick resolution. Emergency Services are operating.
Because the city is so focused on the lack of garbage collection, the public is still not being told clearly that when you call 911 for an ambulance, there will be less dispatchers to answer the phones, and there will be less paramedics on the road to take patients to the hospital by ambulance. Emergency response times will be affected, how could they not be with only 75% of us working?
In an emergency, seconds can make the difference between life and death. The politicians are therefore playing with people's lives at this point, asking for unreasonable concessions that will probably end up with the Province of Ontario stepping in and passing legislation, as John Laforet discusses in his blogpost City Negotiators Need to Ask ‘What Would Arbitration Do?’
I received my phone call last night informing me that I am not supposed to come to my scheduled shift for this evening. Please understand, I am not exaggerating, I am an emergency medical dispatcher for the City of Toronto. I was scheduled to go into work tonight. I can personally attest that there will be one less person to answer the phone and dispatch ambulances if you call 911 for an ambulance tonight. I am officially on strike.
Ask yourself, should the City of Toronto be able to put public health at risk for their political maneuvering? This is just plain wrong. The people that are really hurt over this are the sick and elderly, the weak and dying, those who already have no one to stand up for them. Call or email or write the mayor's office and your local city councilor and tell them that you want 100% of the Emergency Medical Services to be operational!
You can find a copy of Mayor Miller's statement as well as links to many of the media resources on the Toronto strike at Torontopedia.ca. Please help raise awareness that 911 ambulance dispatchers and paramedics are on strike as well by passing this post on to others. Thank you for your support and comments.
Rogers Profiles my Wife in Attempts to Sell a Phone
So I've been telling my wife for months to wait to buy a new cellphone because although the iPhone is really cool, Google's Android platform is even cooler being open source and running Linux and all. I've got to give it to Rogers... I had read that they were planning to launch their "revolution"in the beginning of June but haven't had the time lately to catch all the details. Just now I found this video with none other than Canadian/American actor Joshua Jackson as the Rogers spokesperson for their launch of the HTC Dream and Magic phones.
It's a little creepy, because next to David Duchovny I don't know if there is any other actor that my wife begins involuntarily salivating over every time his image appears (don't worry, I don't get the David Duchovny thing either). I never thought that there was such a specific nerdy female demographic in Canada but apparently there is and my wife is the target market.
I was going to try to get her to keep waiting because there are rumours on the internet that the new Canadian wireless entrant Globalive (aka Yak) is supposed to be coming out with the HTC phones later this year at much more competetive prices, but I don't know if I can outsell Joshua Jackson. I showed her the promo video and before I knew what was happening she started watching youtube clips of him and downloading season 1 of Fringe off of bittorrent and telling me about his upcoming movies.
Damn you Rogers, I admit I am dead sexy but I haven't been in any major movies yet. If she buys the G1 from you, you should at least give me a cut because I was the one who told her that Android was cool in the first place.
File Number # 8740-B2-200904989 – Bell Canada – TN 7181
I just received this email from my ISP. After reading it over I posted a response to the indicated URL. I wanted to show the world just how manipulative and evil Bell Canada can be. I should know, I worked for one of their mutant symbionts in the states (AT&T formerly known as SBC formerly known as Southwestern Bell before the breakup of Ma Bell when they and Verizon and Bell Canada were all just parts of the biggest monopoly the world had ever seen).
**********
Dear Valued Customer,
We are writing to you today as many activities are underway to shape/reshape
Internet use as you all know it. Over the last year some of you have been
made aware and/or have seen activities on throttling in the news or in your
daily lives. Another proceeding relating to the Internet in Canada required
Telecom providers (Bell/Telus/etc.) to provide ISPs with wholesale service
speeds that match those that they offer to their own retail customers.
Specifically, Bell has been directed by the CRTC to provide matching speeds
which would allow us all to have more flexibility in our day to day online
requirements. Instead of adhering to these directives, Bell decided to take
this issue to the federal Cabinet and at the same time file a tariff
application with the CRTC proposing to introduce Usage Based Billing (UBB)
on its wholesale customer accounts.
What does this mean for you, the consumer?
Bell provides TekSavvy with last mile, wholesale DSL access services, which
TekSavvy uses to provide you with your Internet access. If Bell were to be
allowed to introduce UBB on this service, a cap of 60GB would be imposed on
all of its users, with very heavy penalties per Gigabyte afterwards
(multiple times more than our current per Gigabyte rate of $0.25/GB on
overages). This would inherently all but remove Unlimited internet services
in Ontario/Quebec and potentially cause large increases in internet costs
from month to month.
If you'd like to make your comments/concerns known about what Bell is
attempting to do, please do so here:
http://support.crtc.gc.ca/crtcsubmissionmu/forms/Telecom.aspx?lang=e
Select the word "Tariff" from the drop down list.
Add the following in Subject Line "File Number # 8740-B2-200904989 - Bell
Canada - TN 7181" and make your thoughts known!
The deadline for filing your comments is today at midnight, so hurry!
Regards,
*********
HERE IS MY RESPONSE:
Nothing less than the future of Canadian innovation is at stake with this tariff. The only party this helps is Bell Canada, and their legacy of control and manipulation. There is no way that this is good for the average consumer who will end up paying for it. Rather than becoming more competitive and implementing technology that gives consumers more choice and more value for their money, Bell Canada is seeking governmental approval for its mismanagement and abuse of technological resources.
Ten years ago 60 gigabytes a month of downloads would have seemed an outrageously high number. But then again, ten years ago a dial-up internet connection and 56 kilobytes per second was the norm. Even so, under ideal conditions it would have been possible to download over 145 gigabytes of data in a month! (56 kb/sec * 60 sec * 60 min * 24 hours * 30 days = 145152000 kb = 145.152 GB/month). So even though 60 gigabytes seemed like a lot back then it still represented less than half of the potential amount of data that could have been downloaded with that technology.
Today it would be a conservative estimate to say that most broadband services average around 2 megabytes per second download (2000 kb/sec). This represents a capacity increase of 35 times, so the potential data downloaded under ideal conditions comes to over 5000 gigabytes! The 60 gigabyte per month download represents 1.2 % of the ideal capacity of the system under current conditions. For all practical purposes we can expect information technology to continue to improve in at least a linear fashion and in another ten years for it to increase another 35 times in capacity. In other words, not only does this tariff look stupid now, but as times go by the apparent stupidity of it will increase as well, as that 60 gigabytes per month represents less and less of the total data transfer capacity of the system and Bell Canada is able to charge their customers premium prices for nearly all of the data traffic that passes through it.
A fair tariff (if there is such a thing) would at least consider charging overage fees based on some ratio between potential and actual use, and as more bandwith becomes available that specific number would increase. How Bell Canada even came up with this 60 gigabyte per month number itself is completely suspect. If we were expected to only drive 1 % of the speed our cars were capable of, then we would all be driving somewhere between 1 and 2 kilometers per hour.
To the people who will decide whether or not to implement this decision, please, please, do not give in to this ridiculous proposal from Bell Canada. Do not slow down the pace of innovation and progress that has been made possible through the internet by allowing them to put up a big toll gate at every intersection. Say "no" to the culture of entitlement and control that exists at Bell Canada and say "yes" to the future.
*******
Unfortunately, when I tried to submit that whole schpiel I was told that it exeded 2000 characters. So, I put in my calculations which were the most important part so the rest of my rantings will have to be remembered here.
The American Financial Meltdown Finally Comes to Canada
Shares of Manulife Financial Corp. erased 6.22 per cent, or $2.24, to $33.76 after it disclosed more than $800 million (U.S.) in total exposure to troubled Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., AIG and Washington Mutual Inc. Canada's largest insurance company made that revelation late yesterday, adding it would take an unspecified third-quarter charge with respect to some of those holdings.
Link to the original article here.
This is only the tip of the iceberg for the spillover effects of the U.S. economy on Canada, I'm afraid. I've been talking to a lot people about the financial problems south of the border over the last year and most of them have thought that Canada was immune. The banks here were'nt giving out subprime mortgage loans (though the recently stopped practice of giving a 45-year loan with no downpayment I would argue is pretty much the same thing). So everything was okay, right? Wrong, because although Canadian banks weren't giving the subprime loans, they were heavily invested in American companies that did.
It still amazes me, that the citizens of the biggest trading partner of the U.S. can think they're not going to not be negatively effected by the economic problems down south. Though there seems to be a bit of a delay here, the tide is coming in nonetheless. The next dominoe to fall? I'm betting (and I must admit hoping) on the Toronto housing market. The "strong financial sector" here was supposedly the reason that housing prices had gone down across the country everywhere but here. The out of control speculators here now have nothing left to prop up the overinflated housing prices. It is going to be an interesting winter.
