Industry Watch

  • East of Sweden

    My best friend and I have a running gag about our affinity for all things Swedish. We spend far too much time at Ikea without a trace of irony; I declared myself an honorary Swede for the purposes of the recent UEFA Euro Cup and mourned the team's early...
  • Canada's 'cozy oligarchy'; Bell slewfoots iRogers

    I often suffer from that peculiar Canadian condition: While we pretend we don't care, we're secretly insecure about whether or not anybody south of the border pays any attention to us, our culture and our industry. So it was refreshing to read American...
  • Petition won't budge Rogers on data rates

    As I write this column, almost 8,400 people had signed a petition in an effort to pressure Rogers Wireless to lower data access charges for iPhone users. (The petition also asks that Rogers lift the 25 MB cap on its ludicrously named Unlimited data plan...
  • Symbian shift and Android's future

    By Howard Solomon Assistant editor, Network World Canada Today’s announcement that Nokia will buy the rest of the shares of mobile operating system maker Symbian that it doesn’t already own and release the code to open source shows how influential Linux...
  • Memo to spectrum bidders: Please stop

    Dear Wireless Spectrum Auction Participants: First of all, my sincere thanks for giving us such an exciting, compelling narrative to follow over the last three weeks. It's had all the thrills, spills, disappointments and triumphs of the Euro 2008 FIFA...
  • Friday's spectrum auction

    By Howard Solomon Assistant Editor, Network World Canada You'd think that with the AWS spectrum auction having been under increasingly tighter rules for the past three days, the 19 remaining spenders would have figured Friday at 5 p.m. would be a great...
  • Who's winning in F1?

    By Howard Solomon Assistant Editor, Network World Canada After two-and-a-half years of Formula One sponsorship, Intel and Dell have finally backed a winning car. Sunday’s victory in Montreal by BMW’s Robert Kubica was the first time an Intel-backed car...
  • Do I look fat in this codec?

    Finally, a year after Cisco unveiled its TelePresence 3000 suite, I had the telepresence experience, conferencing with Cisco spokespeople in San Jose over a set of announcements that'll be made public tomorrow. And while you're never going to have the...
  • Communicating at the speed of F1

    By Howard Solomon Assistant Editor, Network World Canada It’s Formula One week in Montreal again, which means IT companies have been urging industry reporters to come to the track and see how they support some of the world’s leading-edge racing cars....
  • Peter Gabriel, UnFiltered

    Back in the day, I was a rabid Peter Gabriel fan. Through his Genesis days and his first five solo albums, he ruled; his concerts were a transcendent experience. His music tailed off after that, as did my interest, though his Oscar-nominated collaboration...
  • The semantics of privacy

    Bell and the Canadian Association of Internet Providers made submissions to the CRTC in answer to questions the regulator had over their respective cases in the traffic-throttling controversy. (Long story short, if you missed it: Bell is choking off P2P...
  • FCC ponders free wireless provision

    The FCC is considering a provision in an upcoming auction for spectrum in the U.S. that would demand that the winner set aside some of the 25 MHz for free wireless Internet services . I don't picture this as being blazing-fast Internet services. There...
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    By Howard Solomon Assistant Editor, NetworkWorld Canada Tributes are pouring in for outgoing Vodaphone CEO Arun Sarin, who will leave the company at the end of next month. As Jeremy Green, mobile director at British IT research company Ovum notes, Sarin...
  • Incest and IT

    By Howard Solomon Assistant Editor, NetworkWorld Canada IT research companies have a somewhat incestuous relationship with their customers, the vendors and businesses that hire them for independent advice. One of the latest incidents took place earlier...