Bell drops per-user usage-based billing proposal
Feeling the heat from the consumer backlash, Bell has withdrawn it’s UBB application with the CRTC. This must certainly come as a relief to the CRTC which can now slip out the back door without having to conduct a public hearing into the proposal risking the ire of both the Conservative Government and the public.
One interesting detail from the proposal is that the wholesale rate for data transfer is 19.5 cents per gigabyte. This confirms statements by critics such as Netflix that data caps on home internet users are there to prevent competition.
Netflix says ISP data caps are all about profits
“Netflix says Canadian Internet providers are using data caps to inflate their profits, not provide better service.” From CTV.
Rogers bungles throttling
According to a complaint filed with the CRTC, Rogers has implemented traffic throttling on it’s network which is so primitive it can’t distinguish between World of Warcraft and Peer-2-peer traffic. If it can’t tell the difference between WoW and P2P, then what else is it accidentally being caught in it’s traffic shaping?
Where is the transparency that the CRTC ordered the IPSs provide in exchange for allowing throttling in the first place?
If the CRTC was a real regulatory body then they would have ordered Rogers to immediately fix the filters, or remove them. But no, that’s not the way it works. The CRTC just pats the consumer on the head and tells them to run along. And after sharing a good laugh and a round of high-fives with Rogers over having successfully thwarted another petty complaint, they put their feet back up on the desk.
Netflix makes a mistake
At first I was excited to hear that Netflix was starting to flex it’s muscle by acquiring exclusive rights to content such as “House of Cards”, but now I’m starting to think it was a strategic mistake this early in the fight.
By becoming bidding directly for original content, Netflix has positioned itself as a direct competitor to other TV specialty channels like Showtime, who today announced it’s yanking some of its content off Netflix.
At the moment Netflix is a viable replacement for cable and as such it should not compete for content with specialty channels like Showtime. Instead it should stick to buying the back catalog and redistribution rights. This gives it access to a much larger relatively inexpensive catalog.
Instead, if all primary content distributors perceive Netflix as direct competition, they won’t be likely to give Netflix any content forcing it to obtain all content by bidding for exclusivity against all the other distributors. This will effectively relegate it to being a web based specialty channel with some nice original content but little depth in it’s catalog.
Let me put it this way, would you pay $8 per month per channel for cable just to get shows on demand? No. But you are likely to pay $8/month to replace your cable completely and be able to watch everything on demand.
Today Netflix is a replacement for cable. If they start buying content they run the risk of becoming nothing more than an expensive web-based replacement for Showtime.
Wind Mobile sold to Russian telecom company VimpelCom
This is an interesting turn of events considering the courts recently over-ruled the Conservative Governments decision to over-rule the CRTC and let Wind operate in Canada despite not meeting the foreign ownership rules. $6 Billion is a lot to pay for a small wireless company that may have to close.
Obviously VimpelCom doesn’t think that’s very likely. Either that or it figures the spectrum assets are valuable enough that it can sell them at a profit.
Netflix gets first original series
The war between cable and over-the-top services like Netflix just bumped up to the next level. Neflix has just secured rights to it’s first original show.
Ted Talks – Education
TED Talks are amazing! I should blog about them more. Here is a great one on Education.
Canadian internet users pay more, get less
“It boils down to low competition” – Nuff said….
A more in-depth Motorola Atrix review
Tech Radar has a much more in-depth review of the Motorola Atrix and rates it very highly as a phone.
Windows on Nokia cost Microsoft $1B
A few weeks ago, nobody could figure out why Nokia announced it was switching to Windows Phone 7. As it turns out, the answer is that Microsoft payed Nokia 1 Billion. Now it makes sense (no, not really). Nokia’s sinking ship is willing to tie itself exclusively to Microsoft’s sinking ship because Microsoft’s boat is bigger and sinking slower.
But the decision still doesn’t make much sense given that Microsoft reportedly outbid Google. What that means is Nokia could have accepted a large amount of money from Google to latch on to it’s rising space ship (Android), but instead accepted slightly more money for a deck chair on the Titanic.
Perhaps Nokia decided to favor Windows Phone 7 because there are relatively fewer handset makers doing so. Android is now on so many devices that it’s hard to separate yourself from the pack. On the other hand, Nokia has traditionally been a commodity handset maker which would seem to align better with Android, to say nothing of the fact that Android is based on Linux which was invented in Finland, Nokia’s head office. I guess they have other ideas…
