Wirelessnorth.ca

This being the first Monday of the month, a few mobile monday events are happening. Out west:

MoMoVan May 4th – Focus on Mobile Health The next Mobile Monday Vancouver (MoMoVan) will take place on May 4th at the Granville Island Brewery (6-8pm). We are going to focus on Mobile Health and will be bringing in speakers and panelists to tell you about what is going on in the space locally and what the implications are for healthcare. Stay tuned. Details coming next week.

psst: if there’s anyone interested in covering the event in Vancouver for WirelessNorth.ca let us know.

Meanwhile in Toronto another momoto event is coming up under the (rather improbable?) title of Toronto: The Epicentre of Global Mobile Internet Innovation and Economic Growth with some local folks from the .mobi advisory group.

For both events, tickets are the right price, free.

If you have, or are about to spontaneously organize, any mobile event this monday in your hometown let us know. We’ll help spread the word.

The surprise? Bell is not among them. The following 3 bidders have put up a million bucks in deposit to bid on the “849-851 MHz and 894-896 MHz for Air-Ground Services”

• MTS Allstream Inc.
• Sky Surf Canada Communications Inc.
• Wair Inc.

This is a relatively narrow bit of spectrum but enough, in theory, to pump up some broadband wireless from the ground to the air. As in internet on Air Canada (and maybe westjet, porter etc.). A couple airlines offer the service in the US already (Delta, Virgin and soon Air Canada too actually). Bear in mind it’s not quite as easy to do the same thing in Canada. A) Canada is big B) There’s lots of pretty big empty parts C) there’s fewer planes in the sky to drive economies of scale. That being said, with only 2Mhz each way, maybe you don’t want to many other planes sharing your airwaves.

Those of you oldtimers (2006ish) may remember and lament the old Boeing conexion satelite internet service. Sadly it came and went before it’s time. Those were the days before *everyone* had a wifi device (or three) and, more crucially, before power plugs on aircraft seatbacks (major FAIL). But, unlike ground to air, satelite internet worked on long haul transatlantic flights quite nicely.

Previously on WirelessNorth.ca: Woo! AirCanada bringing in flight wireless

From the WirelessNorth.ca submission engine:

Last year, Telus asked Industry Canada to publicly review Globalive’s ownership structure (globalive-under-fire). However, their request was turned down.

Now, Telus is questioning the legality of Industry Canada’s 5-month long extensive ownership review of Globalive. They are asking CRTC to publicly re-examine Globalive, so that they can have their own say in it. More on Toronto Star here:

http://www.thestar.com/article/622883

Do they want to create roadblocks for Globalive, or delay their launch?

Tony Lacavera, Globalive’s CEO, has also posted about this on wirelesssoapbox.com. He says, “There are a lot of people in the telecom industry looking at WirelessSoapbox so if you have something to say about this latest move by Telus – I’d invite you to share it here.”

LINK: Re-examine wireless start-up, Telus urges

From the WirelessNorth.ca inbox:

Context: The CRTC requires the major telco incumbents to provide wholesale access to enable independent ISPs to be able to offer broadband internet services over their networks. The intention of the rule is to create better competition for last-mile internet services. Understandably, Bell/Rogers etc. have never liked this arrangement and generally have tried to do everything they can to make life, and business models, difficult for these indie ISPs. Last week, this letter from Rocky at Teksavvy:

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,

Rocky

Rocky Gaudrault
Chief Executive Officer
TekSavvy Solutions Inc.

Teksavvy is WirelessNorth.ca’s ISP. Recommended: Tekksavvy.com

Here’s what we know. Globalive (our only new nationwide entrant) has partnered with Alcatel in the west and Nokia in the east to build them a cellar network. The bad news is they are, reportedly, still in phase of locating acquiring tower real estate. To make life a little more difficult, Globalive is also catching some flack for using a lot of US labour (really Alcatel’s labour) rather than hiring the local talent apparently ready/able to do the work. Take that for what you will.

This is, of course, funny because our government -over much lamentation of the incumbents- mandated something called “tower sharing” in the recent spectrum auction. Meaning that the existing carriers were supposed to share space on their towers with the new kids whenever “reasonable”, “safe” and “practical”. Unfortunately None of the new entrant CEOs we’ve spoken with have particularly optimistic about tower sharing arrangements.

You would thing that after burning through the better part of two billion in a slugfest of an auction last summer, that the hard part would be over for Canada’s new Wireless Entrants. Word is though, that the rollout of wireless coverage across a country this size isn’t so easy either. Leaving aside the obvious challenges of the vast geographies, lets not mention the global economic collapse (not a fun time to be going back to the well for more capital) the new entrants current challenge is finding tower space. Or urban spaces for new towers.

Elsewhere in the world this wouldn’t be as difficult a problem. In the US, europe and many civilized countries, a majority of towers and cell sites are owned by 3rd party companies, vertical wireless hotelling/hosting businesses.

Theoretically, it’s really nobodies interest to have a lot extra tower sites. Municipalities and locals don’t like it, towers and antennas are usually ugly. Finding real estate, building the tower, routing power and data backhaul is expensive so it makes for considerable scale advantages to share.

In Canada though, we don’t have an independent, competitive tower industry. The towers are , by and larger, all owned by the big three. They do share or trade tower space amongst themselves. By share, our sources tell us, you mean “grudgingly” and “like children”.

Contacts a certain big red carrier have been suggesting they will be doing all they can to fill up their towers with equipment, any equipment, just to not leave space for the new entrants. Don’t be surprised if you see the Rogers’ family own toaster-oven staplegunned to a cell tower near you, and so forth.

Altogether, signs don’t point to “likely” that we’ll see meaningful new wireless coverage in Canada this year.

You’ll notice that Bell has primarily hung on to market share in recent years only thanks it’s acquisition of Aliant. Telus is has been aggressive at growing share, while Rogers iPhone bump is less than you might expect. Not less than you might expect however if we plotted revenue share of market instead of subscribers (postpaid+prepaid) which is what this diagram illustrates. Rogers ARPU (average revenue per user) is substantially higher. Rogers advantage of being the only carrier with the latest GSM handsets has helped them maintain the industry highest prices and the highest market share.

These totals include virtual operators (e.g. Virgin counts as Bell) and all of the big guy’s familiar wanker flanker brands.

In all cases every carrier has been adding significant subscriber numbers in every quarter over the last 4 years. But there’s a ways to go yet. Canada is still sadly behind the world in penetration. Previously: Mobile penetration ekes up to 70% in Canada, still sucks

source: CWTA (the horse’s mouth)

1. It’s slick, the interface is nice and shiny
2. There’s a good broad selection of apps
3. Damn the apps are kind of expensive ($14.99 for that game with 2 out of 5 stars?, $29 for the weather channel?? do they know I could just google the weather for free?)
4. Where are the trial versions? Did blackberry get the memo that most of the most successful iphone apps have a freeware or try before you buy version?
5. Godamn it’s slow if you are on EDGE
6. This old curve can’t actually install any apps because it’s memory is “full”
7. Basically, you curve is not really a smartphone any more
8. The app store is really for the Bold

You need to read this:

There are at least a dozen places in the developed world where you can get 100 Mbps Internet access to the Internet at a reasonable something. It’s interesting to look at some of these places. Amsterdam is fairly new. It has a lot of talk about it, but it’s rather expensive and there is only about 3,000 people connected, so far. We ought to go back and look at that five years from now and see what’s happening.

If you look at Tokyo, they’ve had fiber connectivity for quite a few years now. If you look at the fine print, there are actually deals where, at least for the first year, you can get down to $44. Hong Kong is about $35. Seoul, Korea are about $24. Stockholm is $11 a month for 100 Mbps connectivity. These are just a few of more than a dozen major cities in the developed world who have “real broadband” by my definition. New York City is of course equally dense. There is no such thing at all. In fact, if you look at the major cities in the U.S., none of them have anything like that.

What’s the issue here? It’s worth looking at some of these cities, particularly ones where the service has been available widely for more than five years to see how things have settled out. If you compare Stockholm and Tokyo, it’s interesting that Stockholm has a very, very vibrant market. Tokyo has something that we in the U.S. would consider a vibrant market, also, but it’s a lot less than what you see in Stockholm. I think that’s partly because of the layers at which things are operating. That appears to be the pattern across a lot of cities around the world.

Of course, in the U.S., we’re operating up at complete managed service Internet access from a vertically integrated monopoly or a duopoly, or if you’re super lucky, there is a third pipe. We’re stuck arguing about net neutrality. I claim if you’re arguing about net neutrality, you’re wasting your time because you’ve already lost. You’re in a world that is completely wrong. You want to be in one of these other worlds, at which point, you don’t have to argue about net neutrality…

LINK