Apparently, not everyone was enthralled with Virgin Mobile Canada's use of three "nurses" in the much-hyped launch of the wireless service earlier this week. If you didn't see any of the television coverage, Richard Branson rappelled himself from a four-story building where the scantily-clad and buxom nurses were anxiously waiting for him.
The PR stunt, which saw the "nurses" chained to a car representing Virgin's rivals before being freed by Branson, has drawn the wrath of the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario, which believes it degraded the reputation of nurses. Can't say that I blame them, although you could see how Branson's "nurses" would raise the spirits of many hospital patients. Do you think Virgin is worried about the RNAO's complaint? Not a chance! Instead, Virgin will revel in any publicity - good, bad or indifferent - that's generated.

Nortel has hired ex-Cisco executive Gary Daichendt as its president and chief operating officer. Bill Owens will remain CEO and will become vice-chair. I don't know too much about Daichendt or how he fared at Cisco but his hiriing is, if anything, intriguing. Come back later today or tomorrow, and I'll try to offer more insight into the mysterious Mr. Daichendt.

This may not be the biggest telecom news but the FCC's decision to level a $15,000 fine against North Carolina's Madison River Communications for blocking VOIP calls to customers is an interesting and troubling development. According to CNet, the FCC made its move after Vonage and Nuvio complained broadband providers were blocking or degrading their service. For Vonage and its rivals who piggyback on high-speed networks, it is heartening the FCC is prepared to protect them but you wonder how many other network operators are fooling out with packet prioritization. It's like catching an athlete such as Jason Giambi for taking steroids but missing out on the fact there are dozens of other players doing it. Many consumers are already leary about jumping on the VOIP bandwagon without having to worry quality of service issues.

It's nice to see BusinessWeek has picked up on my contention Google is a company in search of the next big thing. In an analysis piece Ben Elgin contends Google's phenomenal success in search has "blinded" it from aggressively pursuing other opportunities. He argues Google has wronged itself by not being more gung ho about new ventures such as GMail. "Google is a one-trick pony," Forrester analyst Charlene Li says in the story. "It's a nice trick, but it's all they do."
Not sure whether Elgin, who writes for BusinessWeek from Silicon Valley, will be invited to Google's spawling headquarters any time soon but I like his thesis. While there is no arguing Google is the search engine giant and churning out tons o' cash, senior management needs to look down the road and position the company for the next wave of growth. This may require it to do something radical like making a multi-billion dollar move to acquire a real business rather than trying to seed internal ventures such as comparative shopping, social networking, e-mail and desktop search. Maybe Google should look to eBay, which is attempting to diversify through deals for companies such as Rent.com.