For people interested in the growth of the wireless data market, take a good look at Rogers Communications' fourth-quarter results. The company's wireless unit got about $50-million of its revenue, or 6.4%, from data services such as short-text messaging, ring tones, screen savers, games and e-mail. It's these kind of services that boost the all-mighty ARPU, which warms of the hearts of analysts on Bay St. and Wall St. What's interesting about Rogers' data performance is that 60% of its revenue now comes from consumers rather than business customers - whereas it was the other way around a few years ago.
Another intriguing development is Rogers' decision to license Visto's e-mail software. Rogers Wireless CEO Nadir Mohamed said Visto is a less expensive option to provide e-mail to people who wouldn't or won't buy a Blackberry. Could this be the chink in Research in Motion's stranglehold on the wireless e-mail market? Anyone who thought carriers would be reluctant to deal with any e-mail developer other than RIM should think again when Canada's biggest wireless carrier decides to go in another direction. I'm far from being anti-RIM but the reality is there are other options out there, and competition will heat up as 3G networks put more focus on data services.

Turns out the alliance between Skype and Motorola does include wireless devices. According to Skype's Daniel Twigg, Motorola Wi-fi devices with Skype software will be launched by the end of 2005 - with Europe and Asia being the first markets targeted.
As I talked about in a previous posting, I'm curious about Skype in Motorola will work given it appears to disrupt the carrier-device maker Holy Alliance. The wireless carriers make a lot of money from long-distance so how Motorola goes about offering users a way to make cheap or free LD calls without pissing off its carrier partners will be an interesting strategic exercise.

A day after Shaw Communications Inc., Canada's second-largest cableco, unveiled a $55 a month Internet telephony service in Calgary, Primus Canada is dropping the price of its TalkBroadband packages by $4 to $16 a month - a move it says will offer savings as much as 68% compared with traditional telephony service - and adding more features. Primus said it wants to stoke demand for VOIP by "delivering more value".
My take is Primus, which only has "several thousand" customers despite in the market for more than a year,, is scrambling to give the business a jolt before the cablecos - Rogers, Videotron, Shaw and Cogeco - start to gain consumer momentum. If Primus fails to execute properly and quickly, its VOIP business could easily be shunted to the background.
Its decision to lower prices suggests there could be a sense of desperation. Perhaps a good quality service has yet to resonate with consumers despite Primus being first into the VOIP market in January, 2004. There is speculation Primus could look to boost growth by pursuring Call-Net's consumer business, which includes long-distance and 300,000 traditional telephony customers.

Vonage has complained to the FCC about competitors - mostly rural local exchange carriers - blocking the use of its service. This is fascinating - at least to me - because the whole quality of service issue has been quietly sitting in the bleachers as rivals such as Vonage has moved into the telephony market.
The QoS problem is based on the fact networks operators can "sniff" the content of data packets. This opens the door for them to give preference to their own traffic while nudging competitors such as Vonage to the second tier. Of course, any network operator you ask will deny they would ever consider doing something as under-handed as traffic identification and/or blocking. That said, the telecom business is super-competitive so why not look for an advantage?
According to Information Week, there are no rules that ban traffic blocking so it is hard to tell whether Vonage will get any satisfaction from its complaint to the FCC.