LM Ericsson’s purchase of Nortel Networks Corp. carrier wireless unit for $1.1 billion was approved in July, but concern expressed by Research in Motion Ltd. led to an emergency hearing in Canadian parliament. Foreign aspects of the sale and Nortel’s Long Term Evolution (LTE) patents went under scrutiny.
Canada became recognized as the first country in the world to issue legally binding recommendations to Facebook Inc. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner released a 113-page report following a 14-month investigation into Facebook’s compliance with Canadian federal privacy law. The two sides reached an agreement after Facebook indicated it would adapt its privacy policies and practices over the next 12 months.
Palm Inc.’s Palm Pre smartphone, rumoured to be the main competitor to the iPhone, was officially released in Canada through Bell Mobility. Bell also made the news following a ruling by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), which favoured Bell and upset ISPs.
Microsoft entered an alliance with Nokia to build a mobile version of Office for the Symbian operating system and unveiled its future roadmap for Office, including plans to release Outlook for Mac in 2010.
Microsoft also released technology previews of SQL Azure (the database for its Azure cloud infrastructure platform), SQL Server StreamInsight and a SQL Server driver that provides Azure support for PHP.
Snow Leopard, Apple Inc.¹s new Mac OS X operating system with built-in support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, started shipping at the end of the month.