The Canadian Angle

Since the launch of its own brand of phones in 2006, Taiwan based HTC Corp has managed to become the 5th biggest smartphone manufacturer in the world by volume. Previously the company contract manufactured mobile phones for other brands. With the aim of increasing its market share and improving its patent profile, over the past year the company has spent over $700 million on acquiring small firms. In spite of the expenditure, the company remains keen on buying.

Reports from Gartner Inc. Continue Reading...

That annoying pain, that irritating kink, those tight muscles, your neck is trying to tell you something… it’s time to get a headset.

Over the past year here at Digitcom we have seen an exponential increase in the number of headset inquiries, and being the curious sort that I am, I’ve tried to figure out why. Perhaps it’s some sort of widespread epiphany that using a headset at works frees up both hands; enabling people to type, write, open files, and do other things more easily while on the phone, increasing overall productivity by streamlining the communications process.

Or perhaps the increase in headset sales is health related, as people, especially those who use the phone frequently, have come to realize that holding your head and neck at an angle as you nestle the handset between your shoulder and ear for extended periods of time simply isn’t good for you, resulting in those irritating kinks and tight muscles that continue to plague you long after the work day is over.

Or perhaps it has nothing to do with the office or with your health at all, but with that exorbitantly expensive ticket you’re holding in your hand after being caught talking or texting while driving, bringing you to the realization that it’s not only dangerous and illegal to talk and drive, but more costly than a headset as well.

Whatever the reasons may be, Digitcom has responded to this increased demand, taking the opportunity to improve our stock, the breadth of our offerings, and to open a new website dedicated exclusively to headsets and conference phones.

HeadsetsDepot.com was launched several weeks ago, and since that time our customers and staff have commented on how much easier it is to buy and sell headsets. With only a quick visit (click here) you will find a streamlined website that is easy to navigate with a clear design, plenty of choices, great prices, and informative video explanations. For ease of use we’ve broken the site down into a few key subsections: Wired Headsets, wireless Headsets, cell, PC headsets, and conference phones, with each section offering a wide variety of quality choices that are sure to meet your needs.

My personal favourite for the budget conscious consumer looking for amazing durability (you can actually twist the headset band), quality, sound, and price is either the Sennheiser SH230 (single ear), or SH250 (two ear). Continue Reading...

It’s the week that everyone waits for, when American tech and telecommunications companies post their Q3 results. Who am I kidding? No one waits for this. But as expected, in a fiscal quarter—ending September 24^th—that saw no new iPhone release and no significant other new smartphone options, AT&T’s revenues took a hit, dropping from $12.3 billion in Q3 2010, to $3.6 billion in this quarter (Verizon’s fiscal report will be released today).

To be fair, last year’s Q3 results were buoyed by a large tax settlement and the sale of one of its business divisions, but nevertheless AT&T’s revenues this quarter still fell short of Wall Street’s estimates.

Despite this drop in revenue, AT&T executives certainly aren’t worried, as it doesn’t take a financial analyst to see that big things are coming for the telecommunications giant  in Q4. With iPhone 4S sales breaking mobile market sales records, AT&T is looking forward to an “unbelievable” Q4, confident that Santa will bring the company everything on its wish list, and not a lump of coal.

Let’s be honest here, fiscal reports aren’t the most gripping news to end the week on, but such revenue reports and financial projections provide a tantalizing glimpse into the direction of a company in the months ahead. Continue Reading...

While other companies continue to work hard on producing enterprise specific tablet hardware, unified communications company Polycom has decided to take another route, turning your iPad or Android tablet into an enterprise ready device. Earlier this week the company unveiled its new videoconferencing application, RealPresence Mobile, which will allow users to turn their existing consumer tablet devices into business ready communication platforms.

For Polycom’s closest competitors the answer to the enterprise tablet question has so far exclusively been hardware related, with Cisco developing the Cius business tablet, Avaya creating its entire Flare experience, and more recently Motorola Solutions developing the ET1 enterprise ready tablet.

With Polycom bringing many of those same enterprise-ready features to the very tablet many of us are holding in our hands, could we already be witnessing a shift away from enterprise specific devices towards products that unify both the enterprise and consumer markets?

To wit, until recently the smartphone market was clearly demarcated into two categories, consumer and enterprise, with Apple’s iPhone dominating the former and RIM’s Blackberry clearly dominating the latter. But eventually users had an epiphany, they could/should use one device for everything, and since then it has been nothing but headaches for RIM and IT departments across the continent.

Now truthfully, I would think it far too early to see a similar sort of transition in the tablet market, but with Polycom’s RealPresence Mobile bringing videoconferencing to the market’s most popular tablets, user interest is sure to follow.

Looking to expand its presence in the cash-laden mobile market, Polycom has branched out from its traditional niche of providing larger videoconferencing solutions and audio equipment to creating mobile unified communications applications that the company hopes will encourage substantially more videoconferencing.

The app itself–available on both the Android marketplace and Apple’s AppStore– runs on Polycom’s RealPresence platform, the standard for all the company’s videoconferencing technologies, and will allow tablets to communicate with entire videoconferencing rooms and vice versa, making enterprise video communication mobile and easy to use. Of course, Polycom’s strategy is not without risks, as security remains a vital concern on both Apple and Android devices

That said, while Polycom has certainly not reinvented the wheel with its videoconferencing tablet app, it has done two things very well: First, it has bypassed the difficult process of developing its own tablet, something that both Cisco and Avaya have come under fire for this past year. Continue Reading...

The CRTC has given Rogers until September 27^th to devise a plan to “address and resolve” the communication company’s throttling, either purposeful or accidental, of online video games like Call of Duty: Black Ops.

This controversy started late last month when the special interest group Canadian Gamers Organization (CGO) lodged a compliant against Rogers, claiming that the company slowed the network resources dedicated to online gaming, thereby contravening the CRTC’s own rules governing acceptable network management.

For its part, Rogers has admitted that it mistakenly misclassified online games as non-time sensitive applications, an error that may result in slow connectivity if other such classified peer-to-peer (P2P) applications are running. The bottom line though, mistake or not Rogers has to the end of the month to fix the problem.

According to CBC News, the CRTC letter to Rogers, signed by John Traversey, executive director of communications, “noted that the use of internet traffic management that causes ‘noticeable degradation’ of time-sensitive internet traffic amounts to controlling the content, and therefore requires ‘prior Commission approval.’”

As Rogers’ representatives have explained to us, the company does not throttle its network resources except as they pertain to “P2P file sharing above 80 kbps and there are no limits on download speed for any application or protocol.” The latter is done, the company explains, to ensure network resources are not hogged by such data intensive transfers, which would result in a diminished network experience for all.

The issue here, however, is that online games have been lumped into this P2P category, which has subsequently led to gamers experiencing unacceptably–and not to mention suspiciously–low network speeds. It was back in August when the CGO initially complained about this issue, and in a rare case of government bureaucracy in action, the CRTC has listened, investigated, and is now demanding a solution.

Before everyone gets up in arms against Rogers though, this does in fact seem to be a case of inadvertent network throttling, a mistake caused by the misclassification of online games as a P2P application.

Both Rogers and the CRTC have acknowledged the mistake, and the CRTC has given Rogers till Sept. 27^th to develop a solution to the problem and submit a detailed plan to ensure that online gaming traffic cannot be misclassified in this same way in the future, a plan that should include what specific steps the company will take and a timeline for when it plans to take them.

In the end, whether or not you actually care about online gaming and network management, this story is compelling evidence that in some cases at least, federal regulations actually work.

Are you looking for a new Business Phone System? Check out the Avaya IP Office or NEC from Digitcom. Continue Reading...

Originally posted on TheTelecomBlog.com

It will be more than a year from its initial unveiling when the enterprise ready Cisco Cius tablet hits store shelves at the end of July (cost: $750), a lengthy wait that has seen the steady rise of enterprise adoption of Apple’s consumer oriented iPad as well as the release of several enterprise specific devices/platforms.

But that doesn’t seem to matter to Cisco, a company that has seen its profits wane these past few months, as the telecommunications giant plans to offer the enterprise sector things its never seen before, unprecedented customization qualities and unrivalled IT control.

To that end, Cisco unveiled its own unique application ecosystem yesterday, dubbed AppHQ, a platform that will allow companies to build their own apps, mange their own app stores, manage the devices in use, and one that will, of course, usher in the next generation of portable video, telepresence, and teleconferencing technologies that will run on the Cius.

Cisco’s AppHQ is similar to Avaya’s Flare Experience, in that both are unique communications platforms designed around full integration with each company’s respective communication solutions. But clearly Cisco is taking a different approach with its AppHQ, choosing an application-centric focus that allows companies to create and test apps that work specifically for them.

Simply put, unlike the open source consumer app-focused Android Marketplace, Cisco’s AppHQ will centre primarily around both general enterprise specific applications and specific professional use cases. For example, Cisco’s AppHQ will allow the IT department of a high powered finance company to create specific applications useful for its corporate executives, or allow the medical services field to develop communication and diagnostic apps that would be useful for doctors…its just that versatile.

The bottom line is, rather than telling companies what apps they can use—although many general collaboration and communication apps will be available—the application platform will simply empower companies to address their own specific needs, with Cisco’s guidance along the way of course.

But it doesn’t stop there, as the Cisco press release states. “Additionally, companies can create private, custom-branded application storefronts for their organizations where employees can find, publish and procure applications that complement their business environments.”

Aside from allowing companies to create user specific apps and app stores, aside from whatever actual sales figures Cisco hits with the Cius, in my mind the real upside to Cisco’s tablet is how it fosters creativity from the enterprise sector, allowing IT departments and other interested parties to really sink their teeth into app development and create things that will likely advance the entire mobile communications market. Continue Reading...

The auction is scheduled to take place in June, so Google’s bid sets the lower limit while other buyers are free to set their offers.

The auction of the patent profile represents the last of Nortel’s assets to be moved, marking the formal end of an era in Canadian technology history. Continue Reading...

Attorney General Chris Bentley says that responsibility has to start with the judiciary and needs to include dialogue about how much information is made available outside of the courtroom. With Facebook and Twitter, information that would normally be protected can spread quickly.

Many provinces are currently trying to decipher just how they can keep their courtrooms as open environments without compromising security or the integrity of the particular case.

“That’s a very important discussion and one we have to get right,” Bentley said of the role of social media. “Because if we allow social media in for different reasons and then the limits placed on it are not respected, we can’t protect the interests that need to be protected. Continue Reading...

The story was perplexing. Here was a little-known committee of Parliament, the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations, poking around with the delicate wording of a regulation upheld by the CRTC. According to the Standing Joint Committee, the wording of the regulation that prohibits the broadcasting of “false or misleading news” in Canada “contravenes the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

The Standing Joint Committee had actually been pressing the CRTC for about a decade and brought the issue up again with the help of Andrew Kania, a rookie MP heading the department. Continue Reading...

Betrand told The Canadian Press that she found the reversal “disturbing.” She says she’s an advocate of the “independence” of the CRTC and, as such, felt “compelled to speak out.”

“The CRTC’s great advantage was it was giving the possibility for the government to have an institution at arm’s length,” she said. ”It was not a political decision. It wasn’t, ‘I like your face, I don’t like your face.’ It’s not based on an upcoming election. It was based on due process.”

Bertrand added that the government’s actions in this case have been motivated by that greatest of democratic evils: “pleasing voters.” Of course, we all know that we don’t elect government officials to do silly things like that. Continue Reading...

That is why in response to feedback from its sales Associates and its customers, NEC Canada has announced the availability of its best UC value to date–InUCB for the UNIVERGE® SV8100 and Sv8300.

Simply put, with InUCB NEC has managed to bring high quality enterprise-grade Unified Communications features and technologies to small and medium-sized businesses, reducing the overall size and cost of the UC technology by including it as a blade on its popular UNIVERGE SV8100 and SV8300 communications servers, but still offering the same great features and services of larger more expensive UC solutions.

Before the addition of InUCB, UNIVERGE SV8100 communications server was already a much coveted communications solution. As a NEC distributor, Digitcom.ca proudly recognized both the SV8100 and SV8300 as among its best communications solutions available, some of the few systems on the market that were able to make Unified Communication a reality at competitive and affordable price points.

But if the SV8100 was good before, it’s positively amazing now. Continue Reading...

But before looking forward into the future, it’s necessary to look back on what has undoubtedly been one of the telecom news intensive years in recent memory. This past year was particularly interesting because of Nortel’s well publicized 2009 demise, as Nortel’s chief competitors spent considerable money and efforts attacking Nortel’s customer base very aggressively, with the likes of Cisco, Microsoft, Mitel, ShoreTel, NEC, and Toshiba all vying for a piece of Nortel’s expansive market share.

All the while, Avaya, the company that bought Nortel’s assets, spent considerable resources—in both development and marketing dollars—simply trying to hang on to both the Nortel dealer and customer base. With Avaya’s ongoing strategy to produce a product wherein 1 + 1 would equal more than 2 for both the company and its customers, its seems that Avaya has managed to contain the initial losses from its Nortel acquisition and effectively transition some of the former Nortel customer base to Avaya’s own hardware.

In early 2010 Avaya announced a new direction for the company, laying out a product road map that saw the impending discontinuation of the Norstar and Avaya Partner in the SME channel, with eventual product consolidation into the Avaya IP Office family of products. Continue Reading...

For me the conference was an invaluable resource, not only for the telecom information it delivered, but even more so for the glimpse it provided into what has happened with Avaya since the Nortel acquisition and, more importantly, where Avaya is headed in the future.

With much of the heavy lifting involved with the acquisition of Nortel now complete and the once seemingly insurmountable task of integrating Nortel into Avaya's business model now a distant memory, Avaya President and CEO Kevin Kennedy let us know in no uncertain terms that Avaya has it sights clearly set on the future, with business plans in place for 2011, 2012 and beyond.

But before I continue, some background on us: Our company, Digitcom, has been an Avaya dealer for almost six (6) years now. Continue Reading...

To be considered for the prestigious Business Partner of the Year award, eligible companies must achieve sterling 90 percent customer satisfaction rating, demonstrate industry leadership and outperform key strategic goals.

The award was presented to Jeff Wiener, President of Digitcom.ca, in front of almost two thousand conference attendees comprised of other Business Partners and Avaya Associates.

"I am extremely proud of the accomplishments of our organization," said Digitcom President Jeff Wiener. Continue Reading...