An ex-pat living in the U.K. twigged me on to an intriguing trial that Aliant Inc. is conducting involving fiber-to-the-home over the next year. It will feature more than 30Mbps of bandwidth to 32 residences in Bedford, N.S. The trial will start with 10Mbps Internet service, TV and music on the PC and Aliant Security.
Without talking to Aliant, it's difficult to get a handle on what Aliant is doing. You have to remember Aliant - then known as NBTel - killed its innovative interactive-TV service called Vibe after BCE Inc. took control a few years ago. BCE wanted to promote its satelllite-television service rather than continue the development of Vibe.
Aliant is either serious about FTTH, or it's simply making sure it gets a good handle on the technology first-hand, or it's acting as a test bed for BCE's Bell Canada unit. Not sure about the third option because Bell has been adamant about adopting the less expensive fiber-to-the-node strategy. But given I haven't heard of other FTTH trails in Canada, Aliant's "trial" is worth watching

Some good news for carriers as In-Stat reports that IP-VPN sales in the U.S. will climb to US$8.1-bllion in 2009 from US$2.9-billion last year. In-Stat analyst Henry Goldberg said IP-VPN services will "be a key battleground for service
providers looking to capture many customers who will converge their voice, data, and video traffic onto a single service in the future."

A new survey suggests interest among consumers in Internet telephony has failed to increase over the past year despite a growing number of players entering the much-hyped market.
Pollara Inc. found that only 9% of Canadian Internet users would buy Internet telephony service if it was priced at $20 a month. This is slightly higher than the 7% who said a year ago they would definitely buy the service. More than half of the 1,400 of the people surveyed online said reliability and security were key issues -- totals that did not change in the past year.
Pollara president Duncan ...   more »

According to the Toronto Star's Tyler Hamilton, Virgin will unveil its wireless joint venture with Bell Canada on March 1. Virgin Mobile Canada will focus on the pre-paid market - a business that has been increasingly ignored by the three big wireless carriers in Canada due to their obsession - and that of the financial analysts - with ARPU. Although Richard Branson is involved in Virgin Mobile Canada, do not expect fireworks given the participation of Bell. You need to remember Canada is a market where the wireless carriers have been fighting for years for economic "sanity" - a.ka. we want to make large profits after making huge infrastructure investments. I find it hard to believe Virgin is going to come to Canada and spoil the party.