Wirelessnorth.ca

If you look at it one way, no matter how you get your next smartphone, the the monthly charges are going to cost you approximately the same for the next three years. At a typical $90/month that’s $3000 over three years. You have two choices, you can pay $3000 over three years at the big carriers (maybe somewhat less at Wind or Mobilicity) AND pay for an expensive unlocked phone ($779 for that lovely 32GB iPhone4, and something equally speedy for the next top-end BBerry or Android), or you can save $500 and lock in to a 3 year contract.

The sad fact is that there are no special deals for anyone who opts out of the 3-yr contract and phone subsidy game. If you take service from the big three, you are paying for everyone else’s hefty handset subsidies whether you sign a contract or not.

The contract doesn’t lock you in to using the same phone for 3 years. At least it doesn’t cost you any more to upgrade more often than every three years, and locked phones have nearly the same resale value as unlocked.

It is fun and handy to have a SIM-swappable unlocked phone. But is that worth forgoing $500 in free hardware every three years? For some people, especially frequent travelers, an unlocked phone can be a lifesaver in roaming fees. But then you could get that contract phone anyway and root/jailbreak or trade it in on eBay.

Canada may be renown as the world leader in contract length, but that shouldn’t stop you from taking back what meager compensation you can each time that clock finally does come up. Right?…

Discuss.

Not to mention Vancouver, Montreal and a lot of other great mobile development happening across the country, but it’s great to see Toronto (and Canada) earning some international recognition.

White boards abound, as groups of 20-somethings huddle around computers tweaking software that delivers CNN Money, Time and other tier-one news feeds to the BlackBerry and iPhone.

Only, Polar Mobile isn’t in Silicon Valley. It’s in Toronto. Conservative, cold, conventional Toronto — which is home to one of the world’s biggest clusters of mobile-application companies this side of Silicon Valley.

“It’s very much a hotbed,” said Michele Perras, director of the Mobile Experience Innovation Centre, a non-profit mobile-apps research and consulting organization. Perras estimates there are 200 mobile-apps-development companies in the greater Toronto Area, while another 750 GTA companies now have mobile-content offerings.

Proximity to several schools with world class computer-science and design programs, such as the University of Waterloo and the Ontario College of Art & Design, is one reason for Toronto’s emergence as a mobile-apps hub. Availability of public and private-sector funding is another, as is access to entrepreneurs and engineers who cut their teeth working at or with Blackberry maker Research In Motion Ltd.(RIMM), whose headquarters are just one hour west of Toronto in Waterloo, Ont.

just a few years ago, would you have expected such a headline?

LINK: Toronto Becoming A Hub For Mobile-Apps Companies [WSJ]
Non-paywall version: here

In theory, cable TV is a dead media. We have sufficient technology, today, that we can stream any episode of anything ever recorded, anytime, in real time, and in HD to any broadband household. A few decades from now, this whole idea of only being able to watch pre-selected recorded content at certain hours of the day is going to seem awfully strange and quaint. Not to mention the bizarre ritual of millions of subscribers manually making millions of copies of that content on their PVRs when perfectly good original copy already exist on the cloud.

Now in reality, traditional cable/satelite tv isn’t going away anytime soon. The service is reliable, it offers an important easy/lazy level of usability that pc-based alternatives haven’t nearly matched yet. But clearly the writing is on the wall. And services like netflix streaming, and boxee, and youtube, and many others are closing in.

BUT! great news for endangered cable executives everywhere: guess who controls all of the last-mile internet pipes in North America? It’s like having foxes as the sole provider of the chicken pipelines.

Even Michael Hennessy Telus’ top lobbyist has been sounding the alarm that the real net neutrality issue isn’t net neutrality, it’s vertical integration. This concerns, because Telus doesn’t have the same media assets as Bell and Rogers.

When companies with substantial media assets and huge legacy distribution businesses (a.k.a. cable tv) also own the only pipes into your home, it would be crazy not to expect them to use every available lever to favour their own content stack over any others.

And so on the eve of netflix coming to Canada, Rogers cuts their broadband caps (again).

Rogers “extreme” cable option is advertised as 15 Mbps with an 80GB cap at $60/month before taxes and other fees.

For the record, at full theoretical advertised speed, 80GB would earn you 12.9^* hours of usage a month, or just under 30 minutes of usage a day.

^{80GB = 696,320 megabits / 15 megabits per second / 3600 seconds in an hour = 12.9 hrs}

ps. why would this apply to wireless? Well for one it’s all the same players, for another tv and video streaming can be wireless too, and perhaps most importantly all of this logic could apply to separating voice service from wireless pipes as well.

Over the years, we’ve witnessed many desperate ways to stay connected from the woods, from expensive and slow wimax boxes bolted to trees, ziplock-bagged rocket sticks hoisted up flagpoles to, horror of horrors, surfing the internets exclusively by blackberry web browser.

This summer is different. This summer at WirelessNorth.ca’s secret floating headquarters, deep in Canada’s cottage country, we’ve got ourselves a Bell Turbo hub. The turbo hub is a 3G modem, wifi router, and several things all rolled into one shiny box. A bunch of carriers are selling them. Rogers calls it a “rocket hub”. In this case, the choice of Bell came down to testing some convenient Bell and a Rogers sim cards. In our particular location, Bell signal strength is consistently the strongest. Your mileage may vary. (Also remember that Bell and Telus share the same 3G/HSPA+ network so those two should be as good as the other).

The Bell/Ericsson Turbo hub is great! Dead sexy device (if not very woodsy-looking) all dressed in death-star black. And it does exactly what it says on the tin. You just plug this one device and one cord into the wall, and bingo you’ve got an active internet hotspot. Your network starts with WPA security by default, with the network code printed on the back of the device (protip: case-sensitive).

The thing also has jacks for everything: 4 wired Ethernet ports, usb port for network storage, phone jacks for some kind of phone service. All that’s missing is a partridge in a pear tree. But, for most people, 3G to wifi hubbing is probably what you are buying it for.

For basic connectivity, the big advantage of a hub vs tethering or a stick is that it allows more that it connects several devices (the whole household) instead of just one. The main disadvantage is that it’s tethered to the wall and doesn’t fit in your jeans. [whoa, Is that a rocket hub in your pocket or are you... etc.]

But here’s the kicker. Like most data devices still out there, the Ericsson hub only supports 7.2MBps 3G. 7.2 3G isn’t terrible, you’ll see effective speeds close to that of 5MBit DSL but with somewhat higher latency. But it’s a shame because 7.2HSPA is only one third the speed of what Canada’s networks are actually capable of. But it’s a shame because 21.6 HSPA devices (only usb sticks for now) have turned to be so surprisingly awesome. The difference in speed is very much noticeable. For this we must give the hub one hammer.

For a company that makes almost all it’s business from cellular infrastructure, it’s a puzzle that Ericsson’s own devices can’t use to the network to it’s fullest. Nonetheless, the product is a pretty good connectivity option and it beats climbing a tree with a coathanger and a blackberry in your teeth. Recommended.

The Good Easy to set up Lots of ports: phone, usb storage, ethernet Does everything but make you breakfast Good wifi performance The Meh 7.2 MBps HSPA The Hammers IF ONLY it supported Bell’s network at full speed 21MBps HSPA+ it would be perfect Breakfast not included

Back in June Industry Canada sent our fine blog an invite to participate in the consultation for Canada’s digital strategy. Being the opinionated sots sorts that we are, were (http://de-en.gc.ca/submissions/“>amongst many others) were happy to help out. A few of our ideas:

• Addressing some remaining sore points in Canada’s mobile services: international roaming and Canada’s world-leading contract lengths.
• Do not let future spectrum auctions act as a deadweight tax on connectivity: Reinvest all spectrum proceeds back into Canada’s digital economy
• On not feeding the dinosaurs: be wary of legacy business models and interests capturing the digital agenda, actively invest in new models and in disruption
• Invest in policy that enables any/all Canadians to be creators and innovators
• Waive tax on the pipes: Exempt wired and wireless data service from GST/HST
• Establishing better metrics and targets to measure Canada’s digital competitiveness

LINK: Read the full text here