Another Day, Another CRTC Decision Goes Against Bell, Telus And Others

Yesterday Bell along with their “friends” Rogers and Telus lost a decision to keep resellers from reselling Internet services at the same speeds that they do. Today according to the CBC the CRTC said that they along with Aliant and MTS Allstream must give refunds to customers who were overcharged between 2002 and 2006, but they also must now supply DSL to rural areas:

The phone companies, including Bell Aliant and MTS Allstream, must give refunds to customers who were overcharged between 2002 and 2006. The rebates will be between $25 and $90 per customer, the CRTC said Tuesday.

The regulator also approved a plan for the deployment of broadband internet to 287 rural and remote communities at a cost of $421 million, with roll-out taking place over the next four years.

“Today’s announcement is a positive solution for Canadian consumers,” CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein said in a statement. “Subscribers of the major telephone companies in urban areas will enjoy a rebate on their home telephone service. And residents in hundreds of rural communities will soon be able to take advantage of the many social and economic benefits broadband internet access provides.”

That’s the simple explanation. The decision is more complex than that and I encourage that you read the full article to see what’s behind this.

This might shock you, but Telus is cool with this:

Michael Hennessy, senior vice-president of regulatory and government affairs at Telus, said the company is looking forward to connecting the smaller communities.

“We share that priority with the federal government,” he said. “It is unfortunate the commission reduced the amount we can spend on connecting communities by $20 million. [That] may make it more challenging.”

The fact that Bell isn’t thrilled about this won’t come as a shock to Canadians:

Bell spokesperson Jacqueline Michelis said the company is considering its options.

“It’s unfortunate that the CRTC has denied customers in these rural and remote communities access to the latest broadband network technology and advanced services,” she said.

“The CRTC does not have the expertise to choose technologies. Providing we meet any service requirements set out by the CRTC, technology choices should be left to the service providers.”

Suck it up Bell. If your “buddies” see no issue with delivering this service (other than the cash that they have to spend), then you shouldn’t either.

I can’t wait to get my cheque. I’m sure other Canadians are as well.

Rogers Announces Back To School Contest

I got an e-mail from my “best friends at Rogers” announcing a contest:

“We’re offering some great prizes including a new laptop with Rocket built-in, a Rocket mobile hotspot and a BlackBerry prize pack.

To participate, all readers have to do is post a comment telling us how winning the prizes would change the school year for the student or teacher in your life. Or, if you are a student or teacher, the impact they’d have.

More details here.”

If you’re in Canada, and you want to score some neat prizes, you know what to do. Just show me some love if you win.

CRTC Says That Resellers Must Have The Same Access To The Canadian Internet As Incumbents

If you’re Bell, Telus, Rogers or some other major Canadian Internet provider, you have to be a bit upset right now. That’s because the CRTC has ruled that companies who resell Internet access on their networks have to have the same access to speeds that the incumbents have:

The decision is a blow to Canada’s entrenched telcos, which had appealed an earlier version of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunication Commission’s decision to the federal cabinet, it may alter the expansion of advanced networks across the country and into rural areas.

I have to admit, I’m happy about this. I get my Internet access from a DSL reseller called Teksavvy and I’ve been stuck at 5Mbps downstream/800Kbps upstream. The problem is that Bell has speeds that are much faster than that. That’s not even remotely fair and it’s good that the CRTC has seen fit to take this action. However, before Internet users in Canada stop traffic and hold a parade, they may want to note this:

Another appeal to cabinet is still possible. Telus said it is mulling further action and a spokesperson for Industry Minister Tony Clement said another review remains possible. “Because the decision by the CRTC can be reviewed by the Governor in Council, it would be inappropriate to comment further,” the spokesperson said in an e-mail message.

Lovely. But at least there’s some progress on this front. That’s a good thing.

RIM Avoids Ban In India…. For Now

I’m not sure who blinked first, but it seems that there is a stay of execution in RIM v. India circus:

After initially setting an Aug. 31 decision deadline, the Ministry of Home Affairs released a statement Monday granting more time for negotiations. Over the next two months, RIM will negotiate with the government and will also provide authorities with access to its encrypted data.

The two parties have been in talks for the past several weeks to negotiate security and privacy issues related to the encrypted e-mails and instant messages sent over RIM’s network.

“RIM have made certain proposals for lawful access by law enforcement agencies and these would be operationalized immediately,” the ministry said in a brief statement. “The feasibility of the solutions offered would be assessed thereafter.”

Here’s how I read this. Either negotiations are going really well, or RIM caved. It’s not clear which. It would be really nice if RIM would clear the air about all of this. But I suspect that they won’t. Too bad. At least their stock went up slightly on the news.

Google In Talks With Hollywood To Get Pay Per View Movies

If you’re Apple with the iTunes Store, Netflix, or even Rogers with their Rogers On Demand Online service, some new competition may be about to hit the streets. Several sources have told the Financial Times that talks are underway for a service that would stream major movie releases on YouTube:

Citing people with knowledge of the situation, the newspaper said the new service is likely to first launch in the United States, followed by other countries over time.

Google and YouTube “talked about how many people they could steer to this … it’s a huge number,” the newspaper quoted an executive with knowledge of the plans as saying.

IF this is the case, then anybody who is in this market should be very afraid. Google is really trying to take over the world and this would be the the natural next step for them. Given the amount of eyeballs that visit Google and YouTube, this would steal marketshare away from anybody who is in this market. No wonder Apple is having a media event this week that is rumored to have new pricing for media on iTunes.

Intel Close To Buying Infineon For $2 Billion

I guess Intel has a lot of cash to spend. Days after buying McAfee, Intel is close to dropping $2 billion on Infineon:

A purchase of the unit, which makes processors used in Apple Inc.’s iPhone, follows Intel’s $7.68 billion acquisition of McAfee Inc., announced Aug. 19. Chief Executive Officer Paul Otellini is using deals to get chips into a wider range of devices. While Intel semiconductors run more than 80 percent of the world’s personal computers, they’re absent from phones now on the market.

This would pretty much put Intel into the smartphone game as that is the only area that they are not presently selling into. Assuming this happens, how would such a purchase affect Apple?

Stay tuned to find out.

Paul Allen Files Patent Suit Against Apple, Google, Yahoo, To Name A Few

Paul Allen who is best known for helping to co-found Microsoft, is suing a number of tech companies for patent infringement:

Mr. Allen’s suit, filed in federal court in Seattle, asserts those three companies and eight others are using technology developed a decade ago at the billionaire’s now-defunct Silicon Valley laboratory. Mr. Allen, a pioneer of computer software, didn’t develop any of the technology himself but owns the patents.

The targets of the suit are a who’s who of the tech world. Apple, Google, AOL, eBay, Facebook, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo and Google’s YouTube subsidiary are all named, and Google for one plans to fight:

“This lawsuit against some of America’s most innovative companies reflects an unfortunate trend of people trying to compete in the courtroom instead of the marketplace,” a Google spokesman said. Other companies named in the suit said they planned to defend themselves or weren’t available to comment.

The lawsuit centers around four patents that appear to be key technologies of the operations of the companies that are being sued. Not to mention that they would be technologies of e-commerce and Internet search companies in general:

The technology behind one patent allows a site to offer suggestions to consumers for items related to what they’re currently viewing, or related to online activities of others in the case of social-networking sites.

A second, among other things, allows readers of a news story to quickly locate stories related to a particular subject. Two others enable ads, stock quotes, news updates or video images to flash on a computer screen, peripherally to a user’s main activity.

This really sounds like patent trolling to me. I am surprised that someone like Paul Allen would be behind something like this. But I guess he needs the cash, even if his lawyers are going to get a significant cut. In any case, he’ll see these companies in court.

India To RIM: Business Is Done Differently Here

In what amounts to a big F.U., India has rejected RIM and its attempts to stop BlackBerry service from being shut down. Oh yeah, the head of a powerful industry group had this to say about the matter:

“It need not have escalated to this level,” said Rajan Mathews, director general of the Cellular Operators Association of India. “Folks like RIM have to understand business is done differently here.”

Oh really? You’re just ticked off because RIM hasn’t folded to completely unreasonable demands. Besides, if that’s how business is done in India, then I’ll avoid doing business in India. It’s that simple.

In any case, this is going down to the wire since the deadline is the 31st. Any bets on who blinks first?

Another Nail In The Coffin Of Flash…. H.264 Is Now Royalty Free

Adobe must have looked at this announcement with some amount of fear. The news has hit the wires that H.264 has become royalty free:

MPEG LA announced today that its AVC Patent Portfolio License will continue not to charge royalties for Internet Video that is free to end users (known as “Internet Broadcast AVC Video”) during the entire life of this License. MPEG LA previously announced it would not charge royalties for such video through December 31, 2015 (see http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachments/226/n-10-02-02.pdf), and today’s announcement makes clear that royalties will continue not to be charged for such video beyond that time. Products and services other than Internet Broadcast AVC Video continue to be royalty-bearing.

The main stumbling block to ditching Flash was the uncertain licensing future of the H.264 standard. That’s now been removed. Sites like YouTube will never be charged for playing videos which makes H.264 VERY attractive to web developers. So you can bet that two things will happen. First, browsers will rush to support H.264 (and I’m looking at you Firefox and IE when I say that). Second, Flash is never going to be seeing the light of day on any of those iDevices as there’s officially no incentive for Apple to hook up with Adobe on Flash.

Adobe, you have a problem.

Get Drunk, Shoot The Server… WTF?

One of the strangest stories that I’ve seen lately is this one. An employee of a Salt Lake City mortgage company allegedly got drunk and shot in the firm’s $100k server:

Salt Lake County prosecutors say Campbell called police late on Aug. 12, claiming a man had stolen his gun and fired into the $100,000 computer server owned by RANLife Home Loans, located at 268 W. 400 South.

However, investigators allege that Campbell had been drinking that night at the Twilight Concert in Pioneer Park with a co-worker and had returned to his office afterward and shot the server.

Take home message: Drinks, guns, and computers don’t mix.