Re: Industry on hold for CRTC VoIP regulation (Feb. 17)
Big business loves regulation. It stifles innovation and ensures that the incumbents face less competition. It only makes sense
that the battle cry for the CRTC to introduce regulation to VoIP comes from an organization like BCE with the most to lose from a competitive threat to traditional wire-based phone service.
I say get rid of the CRTC and let the market sort out the details.
James Broen
Re: Rogers takes ‘leap of faith’ on voice over IP (Feb. 12)
It’s interesting to hear the position that they have taken on VoIP and DOCSIS. It wasn’t always that way.
As for reliability, the five 9s of legacy telephony (99.999 per cent guaranteed uptime) is difficult to measure up to. However improvements in encoding schemes, G.729 and DSP equipment in the end devices has lead to improvements in reducing packetization delays. As one who led integration of media (voice and data) testing over a large HFC environment, I was hitting high call completion numbers and acceptable call quality scores using networking technology that was just becoming commercially used.
Many customers using discount long distance providers have been realizing VoIP without even knowing it. Packet to TDM serialization delays are well documented in the tech journals. Too bad the customers aren’t reading the journals. I guess they have no quality concerns?
S.E. Starcevic
Re: Sault Ste. Marie telco puts broadband over power lines (Feb. 4)
Since BPL (broadband over power line) occupies much of the spectrum presently occupied by licenced users, what is the interference potential and what mechanism is in place to resolve complaints?
If you generate a nuisance value you can be held liable.
Ralph Cameron
Re: Sault Ste. Marie telco puts broadband over power lines (Feb. 4)
What is being done to assure privacy? I believe BPL is sending signals down unshielded power lines. What is to prevent hackers or other ill-intentioned people from hacking in and intercepting data?
Dick Wilson
Re: Life of PI (Jan. 20)
Thanks for promoting the existence of PIPEDA and helping to educate Canadians in corporate Canada about its existence.
Even small businesses owners would have to have been living under a rock in order to miss the news that PIPEDA was on the way. Several organizations, including the commissioner’s office, have posted compliance how-to guides to ease the process.
From my experience as a privacy and information risk management specialist (whose clients are members of the pubic and private sectors in a range industries) it is clear that most still don’t get it. Frighteningly few among them — including members of the media — are aware of PIPEDA or PIPA or the larger privacy and information risk issues.
While it is true that the various Privacy Commissioners have posted how-to guides, the public is caught in a Catch 22: They don’t know enough about the subject to know the right questions to ask; and without even a basic awareness of the issues, they lack the knowledge that there are privacy commissioners to consult or Web sites to visit.
That the Commissioners’ Web sites are inadequate is evident when, after an article about privacy appeared in the Calgary Sun showing me holding our company’s Privacy Bill of Rights, we were flooded with phone calls from people who wanted a copy of that piece for their own company. Not a privacy policy that addresses their company’s business; our company’s Privacy Bill of Rights. Several of the callers were adamant that merely having that piece would satisfy their obligations under PIPA and PIPEDA.
What might surprise many people is the fact that some of the most unaware individuals are the executive and IT practitioners at technologically advanced companies, multinational companies, publicly traded companies, and industry associations.
Sharon Polsky
President, Project Scope Solutions Group
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