In light of Nortel COO Garry Daichendt's sudden decision to walk away from Nortel, Networld World managing editor Jim Duffy's interview with Nortel CEO Bill Owens is a must read. Check out the Q&A here. Among the highlights are Owens' bizarre contention Cisco Systems is vulnerable because they don't have any strong competition. Hah! I guess Juniper Networks CEO Scott Kriens may have something to say about that.

According to Sandvine, Skype dominates the North American VOIP market with 46.2% of minutes and 40% of bandwidth. Waterloo, Ont.-based Sandvine, which tracks 1,100 VOIP service providers, said Skype users also account for 35.8% of individual VOIP callers on North American networks. “So this is not like five guys who figured out they could call Slovenia 24 hours in a row; this is a mass market phenomenon,” Sandvine’s Steve McGeown told Lightreading.com. If Skype isn't already a thorn in the side of U.S. and Canadian carriers, this is more evidence Skype is becoming a major telephony player. All it needs to do now is figure out how to squeeze more money out of its users with premium products like SkypeIn, SkypeOut, Skype Voicemail and SkypeVideo. Om Malik has a posting on a video calling applications developed by Santa Cruz Networks - providing a strong signal how an eco-system is starting to surround Skype.

The three applicants for a Canadian satellite-radio license - Canadian Satellite Radio (a.k.a. XM), Sirius and CHUM - have all been approved by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. The CRTC is requiring Canadian content of 10% and at least eight channels of local programming. In its press release, XM said it a "Canadian music ambassador" will be stationed at XM headquarters in Washington to "promote Canadian musicians to all of XM’s channel programmers and the greater U.S. audience". Not sure how an ambassador would operate but it could require him or her to nonchalantly slip Celine Dion CDs in programmer's pockets, or play Stompin' Tom Connors really, really loud.

We should know in a few minutes who gets to deliver satellite-radio in Canada and how the service has to be delivered. In other words, how much Canadian content , which will mean a heavy helping of Neil Young, Bryan Adams and Celine Dion, must be provided. According to Solutions Research Group, there will be 1M satellite-radio subscribers in Canada by 2007. Personally, I'll subscribe when XM or Sirius starts offering a Wilco/Lyle Lovett/Jayhawks-type channel. Until then, I'll try to avoid commercial radio as much as possible.

I had an interesting conversation yesterday with Bob Gleichauf, chief technology officer with Cisco's security technology group. With corporations becoming more aware and more pro-active about protecting their networks from hacker attacks and viruses, Gleichauf said Cisco expects strong growth from its security business, which became the first of the company's advanced technology units to surpass $1-billion in annual sales. Within the next four to five years, he said Cisco expects security sales to be $5-billion to $7-billion. This forecast is obviously based on two assumptions: the overall market will grow and Cisco will be able to win market share. There is no doubt security has become one of the hot markets as companies look for security solutions and lean toward a single supplier. This has led to a flurry of M&A deals, highlighted by Juniper's $4-billion acquisition of NetScreen. Cisco made a small move last December by purchasing Protego for $65-million. Gleichauf expects more deals as the industry consolidates and customers look for "solutions" rather than cobbling together best of breed applications. It was interesting to hear that he has not seen much of Nortel in the security market given Nortel CEO Bill Owens repeatedly talks about security being one of the company's growth pillars.

There are a couple ways to read the complete silence surrounding Rogers Communications' launch of a cable telephony service. Either everything is on track for the July 1 target date set by CEO Ted Rogers, or there's still lots of work to be done and Rogers has gone into radio silence until it resolves these issues. According to a Rogers PR person everything's on track for a mid-summer launch, and trials are underway. Still, July 1 (the 20th anniversary of Rogers Wireless) is only two weeks away. One of the big issues Rogers needs to tackle is pricing. The company needs to decide whether it wants to go the Videotron route with low prices so it can quickly win market share; follow Shaw's lead and sell cable telephony as a premium service; or take the middle ground and sell it at attractive prices to customers who already buy other services. From what Ted Rogers has said, he has no plans to follow Videotron's lead. What will be as interesting is Bell's strategic and marketing response. How does an ILEC protect its turf while having little flexibility on price due to regulatory issues? Bell can market its traditional local phone service as high-quality, reliable and inexpensive, or it can roll out its own VOIP service - or it can do both. Either way, Bell needs to respond because Rogers will have plenty of momentum and goodwill as the new kid on the block.