AOL Canada has finally announced plans to unveil its Internet telephony service - nearly a year after it announced its intention to be in the market by June, 2004. AOL will have two plans: a $34.95 a month plan with the features you get with Vonage and Primus, as well as 60 minutes of long-distance in North America; and a $44.95 a month service that comes with 1,000 minutes of LD.
At first blush, it seems expensive compared with everyone else in the market. Then again, AOL has always believed for some strange reason its service should be priced at a premium. The difference in the fast-emerging Internet telephony market, however, is there is plenty of competition out there and price is a key marketing issue. AOL Canada is clearly hoping its customers - estimated at 300K to 500K - will jump on the Internet telephony bandwagon by turning to AOL. If the company thrives in the telephony market, I'd frankly be very surprised. I've come to the view the market will mostly be dominated by the carriers and cablecos, and perhaps niche players such as Vonage.

According to BBM Media, seven million Canadians have downloaded music files from the Internet. While most people believe it's younger people doing most of the downloading, the most active group are 25-to-34-year-olds. The "good" news for the music industry is that downloaders spend $64 a year on CDs, compared with $51 for the general population. As much as the Canadian music industry complains about how much money they are currently losing, there is a legitimate argument to be made that downloading is legal in Canada. Until there are changes to the copyright laws and the elimination or massive scale-back of the media levy, most people are not doing anything illegal.
The media levy, by the way, doesn't help the music industry because it makes consumers pay a tax on everything from digital memory used in cameras to computer hard drives and blank CD-ROMs. Speaking of music downloading, does it seem strange that Puretracks - Canada's home-grown music downloading service - has been strangely quiet recently. You would think with iTunes launch into Canada recently, Puretracks would be more vocal.