Does anyone find it ironic Andre Tremblay is one of three people named by the federal government to conduct a review of Canada's $32-billion telecom industry given one of the issues that may be explored is whether foreign ownership rules should be eased? When Tremblay was Microcell's CEO, the wireless carrier filed for bankruptcy protection amid $2-billion of debt. One of Microcell's problems - aside from selling discount plans - was its inability to tap foreign investors for much-needed capital. As a result, it seems odd Tremblay could help change the very rules that helped sink his company.

As the snow finally melts, a man's focus turns to golf. An enterprising colleague in PR recently bought a Blackberry so he could play more golf without his wife catching on - as if, they don't already know as you happily skip down the driveway on your way to "work". Anyway, his biggest challenge now is trying to get rid of the "Sent from my Blackberry Wireless" tagline that appears on the bottom of every e-mail message. There has to be a software hack somewhere to fix this "problem", right? THE FIX: You have to love how the Blackberry/Golf community supports each other. Moments after this post went up, I got an e-mail with the tagline solution. Here's what you do: "double click on the "redirector settings" in the Blackberry desktop manager... you can dump the "sent from my...." message there..."  

The Globe & Mail has a report today that Rogers Wireless will be unveiling a new e-mail service using Visto Inc.'s software. MyMail is aimed at consumers who want wireless e-mail but are reluctant to pay Blackberry-like prices for the priveledge. It has only been a matter of time before RIM started to face more competition in the e-mail market given carriers need to pay RIM $10 a month a customer. As much as carriers love RIM's technology, how it scales and how it appeals to corporate customers, there are large dollars and cents in play, which offers upstarts such as Visto and Seven an opportunity to grab a foothold by under-cutting RIM. RIM has two options: it can reduce prices to maintain market share or decide to continue its focus on the premium, high-margin "mahogony" market - selling its products and service to C-level executives and wanna-bes. With more competition, RIM's strategy to license its software through a variety of device makers takes on more urgency.

InternetNews.com has an interesting interview with John Malloy, managing general partner with BlueRun Ventures (formerly known as Nokai Venture Partners). In particular, he talks about the firm's decision to invest in SunRocket's latest round at a time when Vonage continues to grow and new competition is entering the VOIP market. In explaining BlueRun's decision, he talks about how SunRocket's executive team comes from MCI, which means they are consumer marketers. "Now that the technology is ready, it's all about value to the end-user. It's alternative phone service. Are they competing with Vonage directly? The answer is they are not competing directly with Vonage. They are competing with Verizon and others [regional and long-distance carriers]," he said. While SunRocket is yet another service provider looking for a market foothold, Malloy makes an important point that appears lost on many people. VOIP needs to escape its roots as a cool technology. It needs to mature and take on the identity of a leading-edge service with compelling features at an attractive price.
Picking up another theme I've been running hard on, Malloy said he believes there will be VOIP IPOs this year because "Wall Street will reward them and the financial metrics will be there. If Vonage was a public company, it would have a significant market cap, and [potential buyers] are dealing with diminishing revenues". To date, I have been puzzled by the lack of IPOs. This inertia can't lie with investment bankers on Wall St., who are always looking to sell the next deal. Perhaps VOIP executives learned their lessons from the dot-com days, or maybe everyone is waiting for Vonage to open the gates.