You'd think Skype's Niklas Zennstrom would have wanted to crow today at VON Canada about poachin Microsoft executive Lenn Pryor, who headed up Channel 9 and was Microsoft's director of platform evangelism. Om Malik has this wicked quote from Pryor's blog on why he left: “I decided to swap problem sets from one that I am not passionate about any more to one that I AM deeply passionate about. I just couldn’t go on being an evangelist for a gospel that I don’t believe I can sing. I am returning to focus on what I enjoy most, building amazing things that make people happy, change lives, and make money.”
Perhaps Zennstrom is waiting until we have dinner with him tonight to talk about his big employment coup. Earlier today, he told me Skype has modest hiring plans - preferring to hire the best and brightest rather than a lot of people. (Sounds like Hiring 101 to me but I digress.)

Perhaps the quote of the day from VON Canada comes from WaveRider Communications CEO Charles Brown who said that "Wi-Max is perfect because it doesn't exist". While having great promise, Rose argued there are still many challenges facing the technology as inter-operability issues, high equipment costs and inconsistent quality of service. I'm sure these are the words that Clearwire CEO Craig McCaw wants to hear given he's trying to build out a Wi-Max network in 100 U.S. cities. The sense I get about Wi-Max is there is plenty of excitement but it's not quite ready for prime time from a business perspective. As a result, demand for equipment has been stifled as businesses struggle to determine how to use Wi-Max and make money from it.

There has been lot of talk today about what's driving VOIP. The industry is naturally excited about the technology and its potential to drive adoption and revenue. The problem is there seems to be disappointment about the rate of growth. The main driver continues to be price rather than features. AOL Canada's Craig Wallace said research suggests the primary driver for early adopters is price as 81% of VOIP early-adopters have jumped on the bandwgon to save money. Primus' Matt Stein said features need to stay front and centre to make a VOIP mainstream product. The key, he said, "simplify, simplify, simplify" to improve service and the customer experience. I'm still waiting for service providers to jump on the cordless phone bundle approach with suppliers such as VTech and Uniden. It makes complete sense for Vonage to have retail stores sell its service and a cordless phone service beside it. Even better would be a coupon from Vonage offering you a rebate if you bought a cordless phone system from one of its partners.

I had a short chat with Skype's Niklas Zennstrom during VON Canada. You have to like his math: 34 million registered users, 1.2 million paying costs, very low marginal costs. Sooner or later, the telecom industry is going to have to take Skype seriously. You can either embrace disruptive technology or try to kill it. Look at how the music industry, which jumped all over new technology in the form of CDs, continues to wage a Don-Quixote-like battle against the P2P world.
I have already bumped into start-ups looking to become part of Skype's eco-system. One of them is Ottawa-based Iotum Corp., which is providing contextual messaging services for VOIP service providers. According to Iotum CEO Howard Thaw, Iotum is "Find me, Follow me on steroids".

Jeff Pulver kicked off VON Canada with a keynote covering everything from his childhood interest - obsession? - with ham radios to his lament on how VOIP is being sold on price rather than features. A particularly intriguing idea is his belief that the VOIP industry's "Steve Jobs" are Skype's Niklas Zennstrom and Digium's Mark Spencer. He suggested, however, their roles as industry pioneers/innovators may not be appreciated in the short term because they are currently seen more as disruptive influences within the telecom industry. "The iPod for communications happens to be Skype," Pulver said. "Whether we like it or not, it's here." Wonder whether Zennstrom will return the compliment during his VON Canada keynote later today.

It looks like the battle over a new collective bargaining agreement between Telus Corp. and its unionized workers could get even nastier after Telus said yesterday it will use limited lock-out measures to jump-start negotiations. It has been 3.5 years since the last collective agreement expired, and negotiations have had more starts and stops than a Model T. Getting a new agreement would be the cherry on Telus CEO Darren Entwistle's strategic sundae given the success of his other corporate plans, which have included the acquisition of ClearNet (now Telus Mobility), a massive reduction in costs and debt and the creation of an Eastern Canadian CLEC. You wonder what Telus is thinking with the limited lock-out plan. Will this just incite the union to ratchet up the battle or deliver a message that a deal needs to be done soon?