Some folks at Industry Canada, in a recent report entitled Catching up with the Jetsons, have found that Canada is falling behind the U.S. in developing our knowledge-based economy and meeting the challenges of rapid technological change. Well, in the words of a more contemporary cartoon family member…. "Doh".

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There are two new faces at Montreal telecom consulting firm Lemay-Yates Associates Inc. Pierre Cloutier, formerly of Teleglobe, the Economic Council of Canada and the federal finance department, joins as a senior consultant, while Yvan Petit is the new VP. He has worked for Ericsson Communications, Optinet, Reuters and Bell-Northern Research.

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Telus buys Clearnet, gains national coverage
Vancouver-based Telus Corp has made a $6.6-billion bid to buy Clearnet Communications Inc of Scarborough ON. If accepted by Canadian regulators, the combined wireless operations of Telus Mobility and Clearnet would create the country’s largest wireless carrier. With the purchase, Telus gains a national wireless footprint, a cache of spectrum resources unrivaled in Canada and an experienced management team. The new entity, which will operate under the Telus Mobility name and be headed up by Clearnet’s president and CEO George Cope, will be headquartered in Calgary. According to reports, the deal was finalized less than six weeks after Darren Entwistle took over as president and CEO at Telus. For more details, read the Sept. 5 issue of Report on Wireless.

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Technology may advance and companies may change, but the basic CLEC market is staying the course, a new study finds. Montreal telecom consulting firm Lemay-Yates Associates Inc (LYA) has issued Canadian CLEC Markets and Strategies 2000, a 220-page report on the evolution of the domestic CLEC market.

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Ontario Hydro will decide this fall how aggressively it will compete in bundled telecom services, pending the results of market research being undertaken this summer. Last spring, the utility joined with the Mosaic Group of Toronto to create Onsource, a billing software package that permits subscribers to compare the best prices for LD, cellular and Internet, as well as a host of non-telecom products.

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Executives at Teleglobe Inc tried to put the best face possible on their company’s second quarter financial results, but no amount of spin doctoring could hide the fact that BCE Inc is buying a very troubled company. Teleglobe CFO Michael Boychuk told a conference call of investors and journalists that revenues fell in most parts of the firm.

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A coalition of 12 telecom companies is calling for changes to Canada’s three-year-old co-location regime, saying the current rules are making it difficult for competitors to move outside urban cores and to offer next generation data services. The group, calling itself the Coalition for Better Co-location (CBC), is asking the CRTC to intervene in several co-location disputes that have arisen between its members and ILECs across Canada.

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It’s been a long time coming, but the CRTC has finally cleared the way for the retail sale of cable Internet, and at rates low enough to help ensure cable modems remain the dominant access technology for high speed Internet, at least for the foreseeable future. On August 21, the commission approved the terms and rates for third party access to cable modem service for Canada’s four largest cable operators, Rogers Communications Inc, Shaw Communications Inc, Cogeco Cable Canada Inc and Vidéotron ltée – Order CRTC 2000-789.

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