Mobile payments promise to make your e-wallet a lot lighter

The idea of paying for things with your mobile phone in Canada is gaining momentum. Again.

The politicians, the banks and the mobile carriers all stir this pot every few years.

So don’t get too excited. It’ll die down here again soon.

At first blush, this thing called “mobile payments” seems like a grand idea. Leave your wallet at home! Just pay for stuff with your phone!

If that sounds kind of futuristic, well, it isn’t. It’s just that you’re in Canada. As usual, most of the rest of the world is way ahead of us on this. But for once that might be a good thing. There are a lot of reasons not to use your mobile phone as a payment device.

CBC Budget Cut? We Asked for It.

Facebook just spent a billion dollars on a tiny little internet startup called Instagram.

Meanwhile, our own beloved/celebrated/maligned/despised CBC is figuring out how to suffer through a $115 million budget cut.

650 people will lose their jobs at the CBC, and at least 6 programs will be cut.

Instagram, on the other hand, only employs 13 people. They were all just made instant millionaires.

Okay, I get that the trials and tribulations of a national public broadcaster are very different from the success of a private firm that has experienced a high profile aquisition. That’s very much an apples-and-oranges story.

But that’s not the story. The story is us.

Conservative Internet Spying Bill is the Gun Registry of the Information Age

Trading bullets for bits, the Conservative government is this week replacing the infamously invasive and expensive long gun registry with a disturbing piece of pricey government paranoia, the internet registry.

In expressing the delusional underpinnings of his government’s new internet spying bill, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews decreed that folks who don’t support his proposed law are in league with child pornographers.

He delivered that illogical edict right about the time he solicited NDP support to scrap the long gun registry by saying, “It does nothing to help put an end to gun crimes nor has it saved one Canadian life”.

(In truth, there’s been a 41% reduction in homicides by long guns since the registry was introduced. But it’s well known Conservatives don’t deal in facts, so we’ll ignore that for now.)

Toew’s statement is actually hilarious because, no doubt, ten years and a few billion tax dollars from now, some NDP minister is going to say the exact same thing about his internet registry.

Telecom Foreign Investment: It’s Customers vs. Shareholders

2012 will see a lot of debate on the question of increased foreign investment into Canadian telecommunications carriers.

Small players and consumers like the idea of increased foreign investment because the inevitability of increased competition will drive prices down and quality of service up. Corporations don’t like it because it draws value away from their existing shareholders, as pointed out in a recent Globe and Mail article (Telecom firms under pressure to keep up with smartphone obsession):

Incumbents, though, oppose an asymmetrical reform of foreign investment rules, arguing it would benefit foreign investors at the expense of Canadian shareholders.

That’s the heart of the problem with Canada’s telecommunications carriers: a focus on shareholder value over customer satisfaction. (It’s definitely the problem with our northern carrier.)

However, keep this quote from Roger L. Martin’s “Fixing the Game: Bubbles, Crashes, and What Capitalism Can Learn from the NFL“ in mind:

“We must shift the focus of companies back to the customer and away from shareholder value. The shift necessitates a fundamental change in our prevailing theory of the firm… The current theory holds that the singular goal of the corporation should be shareholder value maximization. Instead, companies should place customers at the center of the firm and focus on delighting them, while earning an acceptable return for shareholders.”

Imagine if Canadian telecommunications carriers put investors in the back seat and began to focus on customers instead. Because isn’t the the foundation of economic theory: a happy customer?

Texting and Driving is on the Rise – And We’re Surprised?

From a Associated Press article (“Texting while driving up 50% in U.S.“) published on the CBC today:

“New U.S. federal safety data shows texting while driving increased 50 per cent last year, despite a rush by states to ban the practice.”

Using mobile devices for things like texting while driving will continue to rise, despite laws in most regions of North America, including the Yukon. Why? There’s no stigma attached to the practice. In fact, it’s a socially-supported sport of sorts.

Among mature adults it’s a common conversational thread to boast about one’s texting-and-driving exploits. The juicier the near-miss, the more social points you score.

As an example, here’s a recent conversation I had with a friend:

Them: “I texted you like 6 times! Why didn’t you text back?”

Me: “I was driving.”

Them: “So?”

Why Canada Might Give Refuge to Muammar Gaddafi

The curly-haired dictator strides into the living room at 24 Sussex Drive, drops himself into a couch and tosses his muddied army boots up on the coffee table.

“Laureen!” he shouts. “Champagne! I must celebrate my new home!”

Mrs. Harper squeezes the Prime Minister’s hand nervously. “Yes, Mr. Gaddafi,” she says, then leaves the room.

Picking his nose, the deposed Libyan despot watches her go. “And wear those CFM boots from the royal wedding at dinner tonight. I very much like them.”

“Now wait a minute Muammar,” the Prime Minister interjects. “You can’t talk to my wife that way.”

Muammar Gaddafi gets up off the couch, flicks a booger on the floor, and approaches Stephen Harper.

“Stevey, Stevey. Thank-you for letting me in your country.”

Gaddafi gently grasps the Prime Minister’s tie and straightens it as he talks.

“Now that NDP prick is gone, you can do what you want. So here I am!”

He rests his hands on Harper’s shoulders.

“And I am here to work. You must pass your internet spy law so that I can give you what you need. I know more about spying on citizens on the internet than anyone else.”

Harper brushes away the former dictator’s dirty, calloused hands.

“Muammar, you don’t get it. I can’t just ram that legislation through right after Jack’s funeral. It’ll seem insensitive. I need more time.”

Gaddafi lifts a crystal decanter and pours generous doses of scotch into two glasses.

“Oh, I have time, Stevey. Plenty of time. I’m on your payroll now. But if you want to know what your citizens are doing on the internet, we have to get moving.”

He hands the Prime Minister a glass.

“So until I can work, I wait. Now send in your pretty daughter. I want to discuss something with her.”

The Drawbacks to Toktumi/Line2 in Canada

I’ve written about the great Toktumi/Line2 (I wish they’d settle on one brand name, really) VOIP service before. It’s a cost-effective, easy-to-use way to make long distance phone calls from your mobile device.

You sign up, get either a toll-free or local number in Canada or the US, pay a flat monthly fee ($10 for a local number, $15 for a toll-free number) and then you can make calls within North America at no additional cost.

I’ve subscribed to it for a while now instead of subscribing to a long distance plan with Bell. However, I’ve never adopted it for general use. I’ve never shared my Toktumi/Line2 number with friends, family, or business colleagues.

Two things prevent me from doing this:

1. text messaging is not supported with Canadian numbers, and
2. your phone number is not displayed accurately on call display systems outside of the US.

Both of these shortcomings unfortunately make Toktumi/Line2 unacceptable for general use anywhere outside of the US.

Call Display

Call display is a telephone owner’s single-most valuable defense against telemarketers. Most of us depend on it to identify who’s calling us, and then use that as our primary decision-making factor in whether to answer the call or not.

There’s an unwritten rule that we all seem to subscribe to: Do Not Answer Unrecognized International Calls.

Why not? Because 9 times out of 10, it’s a telemarketer.

For example, as I wrote this, a call came in one my iPhone. It looked like this:

Would you answer that call? No, me neither. So I didn’t.

Unfortunately, Toktumi/Line2′s numbers only represent themselves accurately on call display within the US, and only when you’re using a US-based phone number.

If you subscribe to a Canadian number with Toktumi/Line2, your number will be displayed on the device of the person you’re calling as an international call, even if you’re calling locally.

For example, say you subscribe to the Vancouver number 604 800 3719 with Toktumi/Line2, when you call someone it will display to them like this:

Would you answer that call? No, me neither. And that’s my own Toktumi/Line2 number.

If you take a few moments to “parse that string”, that is, break it down into its separate parts, you might recognize the Vancouver area code. But nobody does that. Most of us would see the “+64″ and instantly dismiss the number as illegitimate.

That’s a huge drawback to using the Toktumi/Line2 service in Canada: when you call people, it’s likely you’ll be perceived as a telemarketer and your call will be ignored. It’s happened to me on many occasions, in fact.

One other major drawback to your number being displayed incorrectly? People can’t call you back. If they do, they end up making a long distance call to a foreign operator who informs them that the number they’re calling is invalid.

Text Messaging

Simply put, Toktumi/Line2 only supports text messaging on US-based numbers within the US.

You can’t text to or from a toll-free numbers, and you can’t text to or from a Canadian number.

That’s a huge drop in value if you’re outside of the US.

Using Toktumi/Line2

For folks in the US, Toktumi/Line2 holds tremendous value and utility. You can call and text all you want around that country for next to nothing (you can make calls to Canada at no additional charge, too). It’s a sweet deal.

Unfortunately, the service for us folks outside of the US is less enticing. You can’t text, and your phone number is misrepresented to the recipients of your calls.

That said, it’s still a great cut-rate long distance telephone service. If the people you’re calling are willing to risk answering a call from an unrecognized international number. And that’s a big if.

The Value Proposition of Northwestel’s Internet Services

A conversation earlier today about Northwestel’s recent minor adjustments to their internet services plans (read about them in the Yukon News story, Telco selectively increases rates and bandwidth) got me playing with numbers. I was trying to get a sense of the value of Northwestel’s internet services in Whitehorse compared to other Canadian jurisdictions. I’ve established Shaw’s services in Dawson Creek, British Columbia, as my benchmark for these exercises. Dawson Creek is just outside of Northwestel’s jurisdiction, being about 400 km south of Fort Nelson, and is comparable in size to Whitehorse (actually, it has about half the population of Whitehorse).

My goal was to summarize the value of the internet services in Whitehorse compared to a similar Canadian jurisdiction outside of Northwestel’s service area. It’s easy to say things like, “Dawson Creek residents pay just $75 a month for 400 GB of data and download speeds of 50 Mbps, and we pay $130 for 90 GB of data and download speeds of 25 Mbps”. But what does that mean? What does it look like?

From my view, there are essentially two components to any internet service: data transfers allowable and the speeds at which you’re able to transfer that data. So I decided to just illustrate these two aspects of service against cost, on a 1:1 basis, then compare Northwestel in Whitehorse to Shaw in Dawson Creek. Here’s data (click on the image for a larger view):

Across both grids, everything is 1:1, so you can directly compare Shaw’s costs and data allowances against Northwestel’s. To me, this directly addresses the question of value between the two services.

Next, there’s speeds:

Again, across both charts, it’s a 1:1 ratio.

I don’t know about you, but I get a remarkable sense of a lack of value in Northwestel’s service offerings compared to Shaw’s. And it’s not a moderate difference. It’s significant.