Many believe the lack of competition is holding back wireless growth in Canada, where mobile phone use rates are lower than our North America neighbours to the south. About 65% of Canada's population had a mobile phone last year compared with 88% in the US, and 70% in Mexico.

With Canada's three largest mobile carriers, Rogers, Bell and Telus account for 95% of the Canadian market, Public Mobile's aggressive plans couldn't come at a better time.

Public Mobile will initially operate later this year in Toronto and Montreal. According to Krstajic, for $40 customers will get unlimited local calls and text messaging. And Public Mobile customers won't be tied to minimum contracts in order to subsidize the cost of their handset - instead, they will have to buy phones at full price. What a novel idea.

The Public Mobile brand is a result of the Canadian wireless spectrum auction last July that raised $4.25 Billion. While the auction was dominated by the big three, 40% of the licenses were set aside for new entrants. Among the new entrants was the unglamorously named, US equity-backed 6934579 Canada Inc. which quietly spent $52M on spectrum.

6934579 Canada Inc. came out of the woodwork as BMV Holdings in October and which then launched the Public Mobile brand in February.

Remember in high school when being mean to people made you more popular? Fortunately the internet was built by people who weren’t at all popular in high school so the same rules don’t apply. To build up your social media reputation you’ll need to be accountable, genuine and nice to people.

Why? Well, because the Internet isn’t a zero sum game. Collective intelligence, collaborative projects, sharing tools – the more people cooperate the more everyone benefits. Also, have you seen how much there is on the internet? You aren’t the only show in town. If you’re a jerk people won’t waste their valuable time on you.

Google is the new resume. That stuff on the internet? Yeah, it stays around forever. You want to start an online brawl with someone? Sure, maybe it’ll get you a spike in traffic, but people will be able to search it for years to come. Do you really want to be known for throwing a tantrum? Leave that to celebrities who can’t spell.

Pack some serious Whuffie. Whuffie is the ephemeral, reputation-based currency of Cory Doctorow's science fiction novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. The currency of choice on the Internet isn’t money it’s social capital. To earn it you need to put in some serious interaction time with people. Throwing more money at social media doesn’t usually work; you have to walk the talk. Want to know more about this? Tara Hunt wrote a book, and you can pre-order it RIGHT HERE.

Give more than you take. This is different than giving away your product for free. This is being a part of a community, bringing something to the table and sharing it without expecting anything in return. Amber Naslund gets it and shares ten ways to give it away on her blog.

Be authentic (or what’s with the “almost everyone” part). Being nice is cool. Being fake-PR-ish is not. A part of being awesome is being honest. If you don’t like something, you can say so, just don’t be rude about it. Authenticity is one of the things that helps people really connect with you. While you are aspiring to be the nicest person ever make sure your personality is still shining through.

Despite not having the slickest design, the site is functional, providing a tag cloud of government departments who seem to be given prominence based on how much money the department has awarded in contracts.

For example, clicking on "Public Works" (by far, the biggest spender, according to the site) shows that they recently awarded a $31,500 contract to Madison Paving. Clicking on the company name from that list shows me that they also received additional contracts in 2008 and one more in 2007.

Links are also provided to view the actual contract.

Overall, it makes a good companion to Stimuluswatch.ca as a way to keep tabs on where tax dollars are going.

But as the hearings continue, there's one theme that has been really sticking out to me: the need for competition. 

A lot of focus has been put on consumers who don't Internet service providers slowing down their preferred applications like BitTorrent but would regulations to stop the practice really be necessary if there was true competition?

As it stands right now, a few large companies have control over the infrastructure that makes up the Internet and smaller ISPs have to buy wholesale access from them.

For example, in Ontario, most small DSL providers are buying wholesale bandwidth from Bell. Now Bell has admitted to using traffic-shaping and throttling, even at the wholesale level.

So even  if a consumer feels they're not getting the Internet service they're paying for because their ISP is intentionally slowing down online video, it doesn't matter if they switch. The smaller competitor's service is still throttled, regardless of whether the smaller company wants it to be or not.

Preventing traffic shaping at the wholesale level would allow smaller ISPs to decide on their own what kind of controls should be in place and even offer a completely open network with no restrictions.

Consumers would then have a real choice and if neutral networks truly are important, most would abandon the ISPs who are throttling and implementing bandwidth caps for the competition, which would in theory force the larger providers to reassess their policies.

Of course, for this to happen, the CRTC would need to step in and stop the practice of applying traffic shaping to wholesale customers. The Canadian Association of Internet Providers has tried in the past to get the CRTC to do just that but were unsuccessful.

Time will tell the current round of hearings will change any minds.

Thoughts?

In the above chart, the Online % Reach is the percentage of Canadians online that each entity reaches. As an example, Metrolyrics hit double digits and reached 10.2% of all Canadians during May. Metrolyrics traffic continues to grow with a .7% increase over the previous month.

We know this Top 20 list doesn't necessarily include all the top startups in Canada - so tell us who you think we're missing and we'll submit them to comScore next month to see if they're worthy of Top 20 status.

Thanks again to comScore for sharing this valuable data with Techvibes.

Net neutrality is the principle that Internet use should be free from any restrictions from the service providers.

Essentially one use of the Internet (checking e-mail for example) should not intentionally be made faster than another, like watching a video.

Over the past three days, there have been many submissions before the CRTC but the main sticking point has been throttling and traffic shaping.

During the first day of the hearings, Sandvine Incorporated and Juniper Networks, two companies specializing in traffic management, made the case for traffic shaping, arguing the practice can bring better service to consumers by slowing down the few Internet users that are hogging the most bandwidth, along with blocking malicious traffic like spam. 

However, other submissions were very much against the practice.

Zip.ca, who've recently announced that it will bring legal streaming videos to Canadians, argued that traffic shaping could impact their ability to deliver online video to consumers at acceptable speeds.

The Zip.ca submission also noted that the major ISPs are also providing video-on-demand service and any bandwidth rules put in place should also apply to their own services, otherwise it is unfair.

This, of course, gets into the issue of competition.

While there are smaller ISPs available in Canada, they still buy their bandwidth wholesale from the larger providers.

For example, in Ontario, the majority of independent DSL providers buy their bandwidth from Bell, who admit to throttling. 

On day three, MTS Allstream decried the practice and in a submission, stated that ISPs should not be throttling at the wholesale level.

Finally, there was much to say about what is often viewed as the big-bad villain of the Internet: peer-to-peer networks.

Peer-to-peer (or P2P) networks allows users downloading the same file to share pieces of that file with each other, essentially spreading the bandwidth around, making the transmission of large files more efficient.

However, ISPs have claimed that heavy usage of the protocol puts a heavy load on the networks and this is why it is often the main application to get throttled.

Plus, it is frequently used to distribute pirated material.

That said, the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (among other content creators) submitted that the platform can be used for the efficient transfer of legal material and provides independent artists a low-cost distribution network with a high reach.

The hearings will continue until July 13th.

For more information on the hearings, University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist has been providing lengthy daily summaries of the hearings on his blog.

For even more, see the full transcripts of the hearings on the CRTC web site.

That's about to change - well, kind of. We're opening up the content gates and looking for the best How-to content out there with a couple of rules.

• Contributors must reside in one of our 13 network cities.
• Article content must be original and should include links and images.
• Posts must be non-promotional however we will attach your Techvibes directory business card to your post.
• Only one How-to blog post will be published per day.

So if you've been sitting on a great How-to blog post idea and want to get it out to the Techvibes audience, be sure to submit it now. Here's an example of the type of topics that we're looking for:

• How to find the right VC for your business
• How to build an iPhone App
• How to choose a Web Development company

Blog posts can be emailed to me directly. First come, first served.

Hottypo member Rezart Bajraktari explained how several users have managed to save money by utilizing Hottypo: "One user was able to snatch a Star Wars collectible for $700 when other ones were selling around $2000. Another person was able to purchase a car speaker system for $800 when the same brand was selling for $1500+. There were a few other ones with vintage wines that had big savings. There seem to also be a lot of savings with video games and movie items."

Hottypo brings the fun feeling back to eBay auctions, its simple design and technical features make it easy to spend hours hunting eBay for some misspelled bargains.

Impact Ventures was quietly mentioned in the groups June newsletter as a new program which will help talented innovative youth find funding, office space and guidance for new ventures. Impact says the program will be based on the famous Y Combinator model and will provide seed capital to new ventures. The program is launching a pilot in the fall with a full launch coming in 2010. Three to four stat ups will take place in a three month pilot of the program which will take place in Waterloo.

It will be interesting to see how this project unfolds, a Canadian Y Combinator style program would be a welcome addition to the entrepreneurial community. Many start ups founded by students struggle to find adequate seed funding and office space there will certainly be no shortage of start ups willing to participate.

After running pilot programs in a variety of locations across Canada, today’s announcement about the Hamilton Tiger-Cats marks an important milestone for Vex Canada. The partnership will allow stadium attendees, including fans watching Tiger-Cats games, to access free Wi-Fi through a stadium-wide HotSpot facilitated by Vex Canada. This will enable attendees to access the Internet using smart phones and laptops without incurring data charges.

The Vex model is different than hotspots you might have used in the past. Vex aims to marry a hotspot provider such as a coffee shop with advertisers. While the company is open to smaller-scale local advertising, the goal is to do national advertising wherever possible. Vex wants to build a national, ad-supported Wi-Fi network.

Vex started in Brazil in 2002, and has since grown to over 8000 hotspots in more than 35 countries. The model varies from country to country, depending on the local circumstances (users in some countries pay a fee, while users in other countries see ads).

I had the opportunity to meet Asif Khan, the Toronto-based entrepreneur charged with managing Vex Canada, a few months ago. He definitely brings passion to the table, and has been traveling across the country in recent months learning about what already exists (such as the Free Wi-Fi project here in Edmonton) and meeting with Wi-Fi leaders. Asif told me that Vex evaluated a number of models for Canada before finally settling on the ad-supported one.

I share Asif’s vision for Wi-Fi everywhere, and I’m eager to see if Vex can deliver on that. Wi-Fi providers in Canada haven’t been very successful thus far, and combined with the occasional discussion about municipality provided Wi-Fi, Vex faces an uphill battle. Asif has setup a blog for Vex Canada, and is an active user of Twitter too, so it’s easy to follow along.