The full news release announcing the details can be found here. Our CEO, Mike Coates, has written a blog post about this that also might interest you.

The background? As we all know, public engagement is a critical component of today’s public relations and public affairs landscape. Attitudes and behaviours related to how and when we receive and share information are changing, and the public now expects to be involved in decision-making and fully engaged in discussion around issues that affect them. These new expectations are having a profound effect on government and on business, which need to consider and be seen to consider the public’s seat at their boardroom table.

I’m pretty excited to be moving over as Director of Social Media and getting to know everyone in both the Toronto and Ottawa offices.

We wanted to share this news with you today. However, over the next few weeks and months as we learn more about Ascentum’s unique services and experience, we look forward to introducing the team to you.

Should you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to let me know.

See what you can do with 6 Gigs

With 6 GB of data you can:

• Stream 100 hours of video on Youtube™ or
• Download 1493 songs or
• Update your social status 1148 times every day or
• Send 19,980 emails
• Forget the Wi-Fi, 6 GB is enough for all your needs

I think the most interest point is the last one, “Forget the Wi-Fi, 6 GB is enough for all your needs”.  Its pretty indicative of the pressure Rogers in facing in the market.  There competition isn’t really Bell, or the new start-ups like Wind Mobile.  It’s increasing home, office and increasingly locations that offer free Wi-Fi access.  Even my personal favourite Tim Hortons is getting in on the action with Wi-Fi in many of its locations and even location based search that filters by Wi-Fi.

Its no real surprise then that the plan is priced at twice the original 6GB plan but a bundle of talk time features and unlimited text messages, which are 2 other services in decline with VoIP and iMessage/gTalk/Blackberry Messenger eroding their value.  Data is going to be king from now on but with LTE access it’s also far easier to consume data quickly and run into overage charges…

I think the trend we’ll see is that we’ll use less data from Rogers, and other wireless carriers and it’s data access will become almost like radio in your car.   A service you use while you’re on the go but not overly valuable while at home or work, or increasingly having a “Double Double”.

BlackBerry devices, and specifically their browser experience have become horribly out of date and there appears to be no migration path.  The BlackBerry market share today is dominated by the BlackBerry OS 5 & 6.  These two Operating Systems make up approximately approximately 70-80% of the BlackBerry install base, depending on the stats you believe.  Black Berry OS 7 has arrived too late, has largely been over shadowed by BlackBerry OS 10,  and is not available on the majority of the devices.

Lets look at BlackBerry OS 5 browser first:

• Often had 4 browsers installed for WAP, Internet, Hotspot and BES/Intranet. Each of these browsers has different defaults in terms of Javascript and functionality.
• Emulation mode Internet Explorer and Firefox, meaning the site will try to use Javascript functions that don’t work in the BlackBerry browser
• Very poor DOM update support, RIM has apparently advised not to make any DOM updates via Jquery Show/Hide for example
• Very poor media player integration, most sites ( like Youtube ) still present Real Media streams to BlackBerry OS devices because their media player is so broken

I estimate this  functionality puts the BlackBerry browser functionality somewhere around 2003, approximately 9 years off the competition.  The browser is almost useless on most modern websites and one of the reasons why mobile carriers offer unlimited internet on BlackBerry devices, they know you won’t be using it to surf…

BlackBerry OS 6 devices make a lot of improvements :

• Most devices have a single browser instead of the 4 different apps and Javascript is enabled almost universally
• Dropped the BlackBerry browser for Webkit based browser
• Dropped Internet Explorer and Firefox emulation
• No real improvement in media player, most sites still present Real Media streams

I think the main issue with The BlackBerry OS 6 browser is the lack of a decent media player, trying to get embedded media to play  consistently proved nearly impossible without using a Real Media stream ( RSTP ). The browser handles HTML 4 sites reasonably well and supports most Javascript functionality.  BlackBerry OS 7 brings the browser into the modern era with HTML5 support and HTML5 media support.

BlackBerry OS market share overall has fallen to under 7% of the global market share by most accounts.  And now we understand the 80% of their install base has no apparent upgrade path.  This is a really big problem…  As a device vendor, BlackBerry is getting dangerously close to being irrelevant.  It has great contracts with wireless carriers that earn it a share of traffic from its devices but these devices will be decreasing quickly now as they age and wireless carriers seem to have more incentive to push Android based devices that don’t have this revenue share.

So what would I do if I were RIM?  Push out a browser update.   Trying to reboot their OS and device hardware lines will take too long.  They need a relevant browser in play, the devices do email/messaging reasonably well, and by getting a browser in play it will extend their devices long enough to earn a opportunity for future business.   Most sites are reporting a large increase in mobile traffic but lack an opportunity to monetize the mobile experience.  If BlackBerry could provide a good mobile advertising experience ( similar to what iAds attempted ) it could have a real opportunity to win back market share.  I’m sure BlackBerry OS 10 will have huge improvements and a fancy new Browser but it doesn’t address their existing users and a migration path.

1. Stability.  I know several people with the game that are completely unable to play or load it.  The game just crashes and they can’t play at all.  They don’t receive notifications and the game is unusable.  A quick search on Twitter shows several people suffering from this problem and it seems to effect the free version more than the paid version. 
2. Turn Notifications.  The turn based notifications rarely work properly.  I often notice that after a turn I have to refresh my games (pulling down) so that my wife can see my latest drawing.  This seems to be a problem across many Zynga games but Draw Something is definitely worse than Words with Friends.  Often without notifications I go days thinking it’s the other person’s turn.
3. Word List.  I’ve played about 100 games, mainly with my wife, and we’ve noticed a lot of repeat words.  This is simply stupid, we shouldn’t be getting duplicate words with such a small number of games. Zynga has announced a sponsorship program for words but I think overall the word vocabulary needs to be greatly improved.
4. Game Mechanics.  The game is supposed to force you to use bombs to eliminate letters or choose different words.  In my experience neither of these is relevant.  You can skip a turn ( by not guessing ) or get different words by simply closing the app.  This breaks a lot of the game mechanics, and probably one of Zynga’s revenue sources.

My belief is that these issues are having a huge impact on the game, especially for people that simply can’t play because the game is crashing.  I think its too early to tell how badly Zynga has over-paid for the Draw Something game, but my feeling is that Draw Something with its co-operative play could be a real hit if executed well.

• Voice Calls – I receive 2-3 calls daily with a total daily talk time of 20 mins, generally I know 2 of the 3 calls I get daily
• Text Messages – I receive about 10 a day, and send 5
• Data Usage – I use about 50 MB a day, more if I’m tethered

Just traveling to the US with your existing Roger’s plan is going to be VERY EXPENSIVE. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars. DO NOT DO IT!!!! There are a few cheaper options available from Rogers for US travel:

• $47.50 for 100mins of US Talk Time
• $23.50 for 100 US Text Messages
• $100 for 250MB of U.S. Data Weekly Pass

So for under $200, I could survive for a week in the US with my iPhone. It’s still expensive.  I wanted a cheaper solution, so I found that I could get a T-Mobile SIM card. Text messages are a little problematic but Rogers Extreme Text Messaging still allows you forward text messages. My cost breakdown for T-Mobile is:

• $30 for SIM, comes in iPhone micro-sim or regular sim
• $2/day for unlimited text, data and voice calls in the US

This allows me to use my iPhone in the US for $44/week for the first week and then $14/week after that. Very reasonable.

There are a few things you need to setup to make this work through:

• Unlocked iPhone, I’ve purchased all my iPhones from Apple since iPhone 3 so this is not really a issue for me. Getting your iPhone unlocked is about $20 on College St in Toronto and can usually be restored if you want when you return to Canada. It will often void your warranty though…
• Call and Text forwarding. My Roger’s plan includes 50% of my voice minutes being forwarded to any number in North America. You’ll need to arrange a similar forwarding arrangement or Roger’s will bill you for forwarded calls as long distance calls. Some people forward their number to a local 416 VoIP number that will forward for free to a US Number, i.e. your T-Mobile number. This is usually an extra $10/month.
• Text forwarding.Text forwarding is often a challenge, and with Roger’s is best handled by the Rogers Extreme Text Messaging plan. This is included with most Smartphone/iPhone value plans. My value plan also includes unlimited Text messages to the US. You’ll need a US text messaging plan if you want to avoid paying extra for US text messages.
• Rogers One.For all its shortcomings, Rogers One does provide a nice interface with reach me rules for your phone and can also ring your T-mobile number at the same time. You can also use this on your laptop in the US to make free calls back to Canada. The quality is similar to Skype.
• No 3G Data.T-Mobile doesn’t support the data frequencies required for 3G in the US. Originally I thought this might be a deal breaker, but its generally fast enough. I often access WiFi when I need more bandwidth.  In the US all McDonalds have free WiFi and many of their competitors do too. AT&T Wireless does support 3G but doesn’t allow SIM cards on a pay as you go plan with iPhone. Verizon and Sprint will only activate iPhones that they sell, so T-mobile is the best available right now.

Before I leave for the US, I set up all my forwarding rules and bring a paper clip to change my SIM when I arrive in the US.

Over the past few years I’ve become more skeptical of Google’s privacy policy. In 2009 they purchased Doubleclick and their tracking Cookies spanned DoubleClick and Adsense. In 2012, Google merged all of its Privacy policies into a single and fairly aggressive policy, with it assuming ownership of more of my online content. Their Privacy policy
today states “cookies that may uniquely identify your browser or your Google Account.” It’s the Google Account identifier that I really have a hard time with. At this point, my cookie is no longer an anonymous identifier. The other instance that really turned me off Google was the launch of the Google Drive, where Google’s license agreement gives them a license to all the content you put on the Drive. Contrasted to Dropbox’s policy this is plain evil…

Google has also started a stock split/dividend recently that is designed to give its founders greater control over the company. The stock split creates a new non-voting class of stock ownership and effectively decreases the value/ownership of Google stock, while allowing the founders the retain control as they issue more stock for employees and
acquisitions. Not good, maybe not entirely evil…

So after 10 years of using Google services, I’m actively looking for alternatives. I think Google Mail and Google Analytics are probably going to be the hardest to replace but we’ll see…

• Call Display with Name Display
• Enhanced Voicemail
• Voicemail to Text
• Unlimited Sent Text, Picture & Video Msgs
• Unlimited Rcvd Text Msgs – Unlimited Sent & Received US/International Text Msgs
• Mobile Backup

My plan was $20/month and satisfied my needs. At no point did I request my value plan to be removed or changed.

On February 2011 it was changed to:

• Call Display
• Name Display
• Enhanced Voicemail
• Voicemail to Text
• Unlimited Sent & Received US & International Text Messages
• Bonus: Ringbacks

Notice the removal of unlimited Unlimited Sent Text, Picture & Video Msgs, as a result I was charged $12 in Feb 2012 for text messages ( which were reversed in March ). Note, the bonus Ringback feature, which plays a song to people that call me…

By April 2012, my plan had morphed into:

• Call Display With Name DisplayVisual Voicemail Plus
• Live + On Demand Mobile TV
• Unlimited US & International text messages

Now I have visual voicemail, which basically means I see and store voicemails on my iphone. Gone is the Voicemail to text feature, the most useful voicemail feature I get. It would appear that the Ringbacks is now also gone, but I get Live + On Demand Mobile TV. I have no idea what Live + On Demand Mobile TV involves but watching TV on my phone is not overly interesting. Oh and my plan is now $20.74… The voice mail to text feature is a $6/month add-on, not available in a value plan.

Again, at no point did I request my plan to be changed. I’ve called 5-6 times trying to get my plan restored and now I’ve had to file an escalation with the Rogers Gods to have it restored. I should know in 3-5 business days if my sacrifices have appeased them… Other I think its time to explore the wireless market in Canada.

In Canada we’ve been experiencing a fairly large scandal involving Robocalls to Canadians surrounding the 2011 election.  I’ve been frustrated with Robocalls for several years and the lack of regulation by the CRTC.  A few years ago I kept getting Robocalls from a collection agency ( trying to reach someone named Brandi ) and recently I have been getting a barrage of calls from the NDP leadership campaign.  I think Robocall regulations should include:

1. Adherence to the “Do not call” list ( DNCL ).  No exemptions for collection calls, political parties, charities or newspaper subscriptions.  If a person doesn’t want calls they should not receive calls.  Currently the CRTC maintains a number of exemptions for the DNCL and these should be eliminated.
2. Meaningful Caller ID.  Most of the time these calls display a Caller ID number that is not returnable.  This makes validation of the call impossible, hence the Elections Canada fraud.  No Robocalls should be allowed to originate from a blocked number.  The banks have learned from this with their credit card transaction validation process.  All calls originate with a Caller ID number that you can call back to validate that it’s actually the real bank calling you.
3. Automated Opt-Out feature.  All Robocalls should allow a user to hit *<some number> to opt-out of future calls.  This will prevent   a lot of issues with wrong numbers in the database.  The banks have also adapted in this area with credit card validation calls allowing a user to press a key combination to speak with a live person if required.
4. Reference number in the message.  Each automated call should include a reference number that the calling party can verify and determine which number was called, and if a service provider is being used which company/organization originated the number.  When I was receiving my collection call spam, the collections company kept insisting my number was not in their database. It wasn’t, but some other 416 number was forwarded to my cell phone number.  Eventually the had to manually dial numbers dialed during the hour my calls were received to track the problem.  This would have be easily resolved if a call reference number was included in the recording.

I hope the Robocall scandal finally sees some improvements in the CRTC regulations.

The first oddity I noticed was the day I activated the service, my wireless account lost its Caller ID and my entire value package ( with voicemail and text messages ).  I had to call Rogers support to get my package re-activated after a few days of getting calls without Caller ID and friends/familly complaining about my lack of voicemail.  Rogers insisted this account change was unconnected with Rogers One setup.

Receiving and making calls through Rogers One is clear and easy.  The call quality is very clear, especially on my Mac Book internal speakers, which I think have excellent echo cancellation.  The web interface for calls is a little flaky and often the key pad disappears after a call connects.  This is especially frustrating when connecting through a voice navigation system like Rogers support.  I often have to hang up and make the call via Skype or my mobile in these situations.

Inbound calls and text messages generally appear without Caller ID information.  I’ve been unable to resolve this with Rogers tech support.  I’ve verified that calls/texts appear correctly in my Rogers One address book.  Rogers One also provides a nice sync tool to sync your mobile contacts with Rogers One.  The tool even reads contact data provided only by the Facebook App, which most contact sync tools do not.  The only down side is that the sync appears to be manual and the app often reminds you on the device to sync your contacts.

Rogers One also brings together a number of contact preferences options.  For example, you can configure additional numbers to ring at the same time as your Rogers Wireless number, or block certain numbers ( perhaps an ex ), or blocked numbers from contacting you at all.  I haven’t used many of these features but I think they will be great for preventing telemarketing calls.

By far the most frustrating problem I’ve had is that Rogers One continually “detects” that I’ve logged in at another location and disables itself.  This means that when I’m expecting it to work it often doesn’t…  I’ve been able to resolve this with Rogers tech support either, hours on the phone with them have left me with the impression that “this just happens.”  Until it’s resolved though I don’t think I can really rely on Rogers One.  I’d be interested to understand is this is generally an issue, only on the Mac, or maybe only on a laptop that continually switches its Internet connection points?

Overall I think Rogers One is a great addition to the Rogers service in Canada but I’d switch in a second for a more reliable solution.  The service lacks integration with Voicemail and really isn’t reliable enough today.  I’m hoping it will encourage other providers ( Bell? Telus? ) to develop better solutions or partner with someone like Google Voice.

Then I went to get an purchase an app. Suddenly I was unable to purchase any apps. The error message indicated I couldn’t purchase any apps in the my region. My region? What does that mean? I was in Florida, are apps illegal in Florida? After searching for and finding the Amazon customer service contact I sent off an email asking what was going on. Amazon responded that I was unable to purchase apps with a credit card from a Canadian bank and billing address. Basically because I was a Canadian in the US I couldn’t purchase applications for the Kindle Fire. The Kindle was returned the next day.

Apple and iTunes have done something similar for years where you can’t purchase from the US iTunes without a US billing address. The easy solution to this problem is to use the iTunes gift cards exclusively with a fake address ( preferably in a state with no sales tax ). With the launch of iCloud and iTunes Music Match though the company has changed its policy to require a US credit card and matching US billing address to be added to the account.

Donations

Wikileaks recently had problems collecting donations via credit card and Paypal froze its funds, limiting it’s ability to fundraise online. The ban has been so sever the only option to donate is the BitCoins system or to purchase virtual goods.  The BitCoin system has limited support and but may offer the best alternative to avoid the Paywall.

Regretsy has recently encountered problems with Paypal and their donation support. The company seems to allow you to use and collect donations but then freezes the funds. The confusion with the Paypal donation process is outlined in great detail by The Green Geeks.

The Paywall is effectively controlling donations and deciding who can fundraise online.   I’m sure this policy is need for some legitimate cases to prevent terrorist funding etc… but these are US companies that enforcing these policies largely without government direction or oversite.

Like the Great Chinese Firewall, the Paywall is proving to be a fairly effective means to control online purchases. Its surprisingly difficult to make purchases that do not involve your bank, credit card or Paypal.  The best system to get around the Paywall seems to be BitCoin.  The BitCoin system uses encrypted coins can only one person can ‘own’ through cryptology.  BitCoin includes an exchange and a defined Coin generation process.  This process means that once you own a BitCoin it can be transfered or exchange to anyone.  Eventually BitCoin’s must be converted by to real currency, this is where the Paywall may still be effective and few conversion points exist today.

The goal behind these Paywalls seems to be to create online economies of different scales.  For example an iPhone Application that sells for $0.99 in the US might sell for $1.19 in Australia or $1.49 in Europe.  This allows Apple and the application vendors to receive significantly more revenue for the same content from international customer.   The DVD system attempted the same with the DVD region codes a few years ago  but the system was quickly cracked and different pricing regions were never fully exploited.  The digital stores have so far been fairly effective at enforcing these restrictions, largely because they can heavily control the follow of money.

While physically in the US I can purchase just about anything at US retailers using my Canadian credit card and billing address.  As soon as the transaction goes online the Paywall comes into effect and my purchases can be restricted.  A very interesting development given the state of the US economy and the need to consumer spending…