Like a blockbuster movie desperately grasping at a sequel, the “naughties” are dropping late hints about their imminently succeeding decade.
The past few weeks especially have spawned a series of issues that set the tone for a new era that will begin with the dawn of 2010. Continue reading
There’s a fascinating piece of analysis regarding the iPhone 3G that was published by Nielsen about a week ago. The Impact Of The iPhone 3G Price Cut outlines how Apple’s reduced pricing on its second generation iPhone completely redefines the economics of the global mobile industry:
It is hard to overestimate the impact that a $99 iPhone has on the wireless carriers and handset manufacturers in the US. The new $99 price point for the iPhone 3G completely changes the value proposition of every handset at every carrier in the US. Some observers have commented that the $99 price point “kneecaps the Palm Pre,” but the kneecapping does not stop there.
The information in the piece is particularly acute for Canadian telcos and gives Rogers an incredible edge over its competitors, Bell and Telus. (Though, it’s worth noting, the $99 price is Canada requires a 3-year contract, compared to a 2-year with AT&T.)
Compare that to a competing (and vastly inferior – like, no WiFi?) unit on Bell’s network, the Blackberry Storm, which goes for 50% more.
With Bell at the $99 price point, you’d get stiffed with the laughable Treo Pro.
It’s a no-brainer to pick up an iPhone – even an older generation one – over any unit in the Bell stable, particularly when you consider the fact that most of those current Bell units will only run on the end-of-life CDMA network and have a limited lifetime. And this pricing will no doubt force down the prices on other units from RIM, Samsun, HTC and others.
Because, I think that Nielsen is bang-on when they say that,
…voice has been commoditized and has become table stakes. Defendable differentiation will come from devices and data.
This is near-gospel truth. The “smartphone” category will become the de facto standard mobile device ongoing, and the average consumer will use it more for tasks that involve internet, texting, and IM, over traditional voice calls.
This trend, along with Apple’s rock-bottom pricing of the iPhone 3G, will force a realignment in the business model between device makers and network operators. In general, we consumers should see an overall drop in device pricing and, assuming mobile carriers keep the pace, a reduction in price for data plans.
The iPhone revolution continues.
As a result of some extremely awful customer service I received from Bell Mobility recently, a helpful soul stepped in from the company’s “Executive Office.” (Sounds exalted, eh? I think it’s the just place they send customers so pissed off they don’t know what else to do with them.) He very kindly terminated my outstanding contracts without penalty and waived some other fees. And for that, he has my eternal gratitude.
Suddenly, for the first time in what seemed like an eternity, I was without a mobile phone contract. It was as though I’d been set free. But I quickly realized, of course, that spending most of my time in the Horse required me to have a CDMA-capable phone. (A landline wasn’t an option: the $31.33 monthly cost of a featureless Northwestel line is highway robbery.)
The choices were limited: back to the awful Bell Mobility or the local subsidiary Latitude Wireless (I’ll never understand why a massive geographic region of just 32,000 people needs two mobile providers). A third option was Telus, but they aren’t permitted to provision 867 (Yukon, NWT, and Nunavut) area codes, so I’d be forced to get a number from a different region of Canada. Since my primary reason for a mobile is to provide my son’s school with a local number to contact me at in case he has a seizure, I was stuck with either Bell or Latitude.
Being a gadget freak, my next realization was more painful: the Bell (and, hence, the Latitude) stable of mobile phone offerings is desparately lame and pathetic.
What an unfortunate predicament for anyone to be in… Continue reading
Sunday nights are the perfect movie nights.
It’s a good time to distract one’s mind from the impending stresses and troubles of the week ahead. And there’s no better fare for that than escapist Hollywood, so I decided to check out a flick I’d been meaning to see for a while, Hancock.
Since I’d just upgraded my cable television service with Northwestel, I figured I’d save myself a trip to Rogers and order the movie through their new video on demand service. That turned out to be a bad idea, since they clearly don’t have all the bugs worked out yet.
I made myself a salad, settled in on the couch, and placed my order through the cable receiver hooked up to my tv. And this is what I got: Continue reading
Rather than burn gas and run all the way down to Rogers, I’ve gotten in the habit of renting movies from iTunes.
Online movies are pretty sweet. When you have bandwidth, that is.
Being netlocked as we are in the Horse, online rentals can actually be an exercise in frustration. It’s taking longer to download V for Vendetta than it will to watch. I could have walked to Rogers and back by now.
My friends down south rave that it’s a much quicker download for them. I should demand some regulation and have them subsidize my internet bills, the smarmy bastards.
Eck. I’ll have to remember to start my movie downloads a week in advance from now on. Life in the Yukon. Sigh.
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has long regulated most communications technologies in Canada. Somehow, however, the internet has been selectively left outside its domain. I would argue that must now change.
The North has benefited immensely from CRTC regulations, primarily in the form of affordable telecommunications. For example, the price of a standard fixed landline is comparable to what southern Canadians pay.
Compare that to what we pay for internet access. As I pointed out when I briefly reviewed my new cable internet connection, Northerners pay at least 225% more than southern Canadians for what are inferior internet services. If we applied that calculation to our phone services, a basic landline would cost in excess of $78 per month, without any additional services. The extra cost of northern internet services puts a significant constraint on the growth of our economy.
That alone should bring some attention to a need for internet regulation in Canada. However, when you couple it with the fact that Bell and Rogers engage in extreme internet traffic sniffing and shaping activities, it’s clearly time for the CRTC to act in the interests of Canadians.
