Call it an abode-supervising examiner, or a domicile scrutinizer. Call it a new line of business, a novel twist on an old idea. But whatever you do, don’t call Bell Canada’s Home Monitoring program a security system. The man in charge says it’s much more than that.

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Skype, the free or nearly free VoIP provider, claims that 30% of its 171 million registered users worldwide make business calls with the service at least some of the time. Most, no doubt, are small business users and corporate employees acting outside the corporate firewall, but a few developments over the last year have coalesced to make Skype a more interesting proposition for enterprises.

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To hear representatives from telecom equipment vendors talk, you’d think everyone plus their grandmothers are buying IP telephone systems. But judging by interviews with telecom, IT and network managers, it’s fair to say most organizations are not there yet.

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Telecommunications regulation in Canada appears to have taken a turn for the worse. It’s not that we’re headed in the wrong direction of over-regulating or regulating too little, it’s the politicization of the telecommunication file by the Conservative-led federal government that leaves a bad taste in some people’s mouths.

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This month marks the start of wireless number portability (WNP) in Canada. Come March 14, mobile users should be able to switch carriers without losing their numbers. It’s a big deal: our lack of WNP has long been described as a kind of false security system for service providers. It keeps customers, loath to change phone numbers, from leaving their existing carriers and signing deals with new ones. The common theory suggests that WNP will rid Bell Mobility, Telus Corp. and Rogers Wireless Inc. of this unwarranted advantage. But freedom is only as good as WNP service performance. And even now, so close to WNP’s supposed start-date, there are no guarantees that the system will work.

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Mass communication is often a blunt instrument. Notifying customers about a potential problem typically involves broadcasts on television, ads in newspapers or letters via snailmail – even if only a small number may be affected. And emergency communications when disaster strikes can be tragically chaotic.

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