Things are about to get interesting in the mobile phone market in the next couple of months. Industry Minister Tony Clement disclosed today that he would be overruling the CRTCs decision to not allow Globalive to operate in Canada. The CRTC had ruled in September that the company did not meet the Canadian ownership requirements, a ruling that was heavily influenced by the incumbent mobile carriers Rogers, Bell and Telus.

This could viably be great news for Canadians as we finally have a new competitor to stir the pot in an otherwise stagnant market. The Canadian mobile phone market is what I would call “duopoly” in much of the country. Sure we have 3 big providers, but when you boil it down any choice to be made when picking a mobile provider, Rogers or Bell. Telus’ stronghold is in the West, so they don’t quite stack up to the top 2 companies. The problem with this duopoly is that there is little to no competing going on. Both of these companies are more then willing to pad their fat bottom lines instead of actually compete.

Just look at the recently launched iPhone on Bell and Telus. While it heralded a new day for choice of iPhone providers in Canada, it offered little to no incentive to consumers looking for a break on phone and data plan pricing. All 3 companies were more then content to just have the hottest handset on the market instead of actually competing for customers.

It is the hope that Globalive and their Wind Mobile brand will breathe some new life into a very stagnant market place. Canada is drastically lagging behind other countries when it comes to the cost of running a smartphone. With Vodaphone in the UK I can get a phone plan with 500megs of data for less then $35 CDN, taxes in. In Canada a plan like that is practically unfathomable. And

We can hope that Globalive is able to stir the pot a bit and actually able to bring competitive phone and data rates to Canada. Globalive is backed by telecom giant T-Mobile, so this isn’t a company that is coming into the market as nobodies. And if this leaked info from May is anywhere close to true, Canadians might finally have a true alternative to Bell and Rogers.

Ever since the iPhone was released, along with the iPod before it, it seems companies have constantly released devices that have been labeled as Apple “killers”. Devices that aim to finally knock Apple off their pedestal as market leader. To date there has yet to be an “iPhone killer”, yet that doesn’t stop the media from ramping up the hype for the next upcoming device.

I was recently at a monthly meetup of designers and developers in Waterloo and a representative from RIM was there presenting on the merits of the Blackberry as a development platform. At one point during his presentation he mentioned how Apple was very good at articulating what they are good at, yet Blackberry does a crappy job of this very thing. To me this isn’t something that is exclusively the realm of Blackberry. Pretty much every smartphone manufacturer has the same problem when competing with Apple.

After seeing this new Verizon commercial yesterday, this served as a perfect example of what handset manufacturers are doing wrong. It’s a quaint and clever concept that I’m sure Verizon paid a boatload to get the rights to using the Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer characters. But after watching that video, what handset got the most facetime in that commercial? While it wasn’t the actual iPhone in the commercial, the viewer saw Verizon’s iPhone stand-in on screen for 20 seconds of a 30 second spot. The Verizon handsets only show up between 23 seconds and 28 seconds of the video. So 66% of the commercial featured the iPhone, and 10% was spent talking about the products they sell, then the other 24% spent talking about Verizon and their network.
Message: The iPhone is useless because AT&T has a crappy network. Verizon has an awesome network. Buy this Windows phone, or buy this Google Android phone.

Contrast that ad with an Apple ad selling the iPhone. Nothing but the phone and its function are shown for the first 23 seconds. 1 second devoted to app store logos, 2 seconds for iPhone logo, 2 seconds for carrier logo and 2 seconds for Apple logo. So 76.6% of the commercial was devoted to showing the product and 23.3% was used for the of branding various partners. Apple didn’t once mention verbally the network or the carrier.
Message: Look at all the cool stuff you can do with your iPhone

Can you see the disconnect here? A new device like the HTC Droid hits the market within the last 2 weeks. It’s supposed to be a real contender to the iPhone throne. Yet the handset is relegated to 2.5 seconds of face time in this Verizon commercial. Do we know anything that the device is capable of? About the only info you get is what smartphone OS the phone is running and the price. Apparently the only reason to get one of these 2 phones Verizon is offering is because their network is better.

Apple’s device has been on the market for over 2 years now, yet Apple focuses on the positive. They show you what cool things the iPhone empowers you to do. They maximize the amount of time you see the product on screen and keep the message simple and on point. The carrier is an afterthought.

This is where Apple has diverged from all other handset providers. They control how the iPhone is sold and marketed. They don’t allow it to be lumped in with a bunch of other similar looking phones in the carriers marketing. Essentially they are selling a phone, they don’t care about the network or the carrier, they allow their product to sell itself instead.

When talking to the RIM rep I commented to him about Apple’s carrier relationship and marketing contrasted with how Blackberry and the rest of the smartphone makers. He mentioned that BB spends a lot of time managing and working their partnerships with carriers, helping them implement things like carrier branded app stores. While I’m sure they do great business together, Apple has done it differently. They only need the carrier for their network and retails sales channels. Apple handles pretty much everything else. The carrier is an afterthought.

You would figure that Apple’s way of doing business would have carriers running the opposite way, yet as seen in Canada recently, nothing could be further from the truth. Bell and Telus, after losing large chunks of marketshare to Rogers and their exclusive iPhone arrangement, spent billions of dollars to build an HSPA+ network in part to accommodate the iPhone. Now that Rogers exclusivity agreement with Apple is over rivals Bell and Telus will also be offering the iPhone as well. This after Bell spent the summer mocking the iPhone in their Palm Pre ads. It will be curious to see how Bell and Telus will market the iPhone, given Apple controls the advertising and they won’t be able to play the my networks better then your network card against Rogers.

Handset manufacturers will never create this “iPhone killer” if their device is always playing second fiddle to the carrier.  By allowing the carrier to handle promotion of their devices they are shooting themselves in the foot with every new handset they release.  While Apple’s iPhone stays in the spotlight, the latest RIM, Motorola, Palm or Samsung device just becomes part of the crowd because carriers don’t market one smartphone any differently then they do the others in their lineup.

It’s been about 6 months since my wife and I decided to go cable free after moving to our new house.  At first it was an experiment to see how we’d fare without the $60 cable bill.  After 6 months I’m to the point I would question why I would ever go back to subscribing to cable.

We are currently subscribing to Rogers Express service, which allots us 10mb service with a 60GB download cap.  The bonus to having Rogers internet without having cable is the fact that we actually do get a handful of channels, as Rogers is unable to shut off all of the channels and provide us with internet.  We get Global, CTV, CBC and Omni 1 and 2, along with a smattering of other channels.  This is great since much of the syndicated primetime shows appear on Global or CTV in Canada anyways.  Then we’re just left to fill in the gaps.

Our current setup in the house has a HTPC Hackintosh setup in the living room, then an Xbox running XBMC in the bedroom.  When I want to watch something on live TV that isn’t on our TV, I typically turn to Justin.tv.  Quite often you can find a live stream of popular shows just by searching their listings.  I find this is pretty indispensable for live sporting events.  Even if I had cable I would rarely be able to catch Senators or 49ers games because I live outside their broadcast market.  You have to pay for $250 packages like Centre Ice or Sunday Ticket, and even then you’re paying for tonnes of games you’ll never watch.  The football season has started and I’ve probably watched more 49er games this season then I have in the last 2 combined, even with the ability to timeshift and watch west coast NFL broadcasts.  No more suffering through Buffalo Bills games anymore for me.

If you want to watch episodes of shows that have already aired, you can’t really go wrong with a site like SurfTheChannel.  You can pretty much watch back episodes of pretty much every show on television.  There are also quite a few sites out there that allow you to stream DVD quality movies too, many of which are still in theatres.  Watch Movie Links has all sorts new releases, ready to watch.  No downloading or anything which is pretty sweet.  I think my favourite for doing this is NinjaVideo, always has quality streams and is organized really nicely.  They even have every documentary you might ever want to see which is awesome for those who might miss content from channels like Discovery or National Geographic.

The compromise to using online feeds is that you can’t always count on great quality for these feeds.  Some of them are fantastic, others are pretty crummy.  Going cable free isn’t for everyone, as sometimes it does require patience to find what you are looking for online.  But once you get used to how to use online streaming there are a world of options as to what to watch online.  I find nowadays I watch TV I actually want to see instead of being tied to TV schedules and whatever garbage might be on right now.   Not spending $60 a month on cable has been a great decision for us.