YEAR IN REVIEW: October 2009

The CRTC just couldn’t seem to make anyone happy in October, except possibly BCE Inc. (TSE:BCE) and Rogers Communications Inc. (TSE:RCI.B).

First came the commission’s decision on the long-standing argument over traffic-throttling of wholesale ISP traffic. The Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP) argued that throttling the service its members deliver to their customers by Bell and Rogers is an anticompetitive practice. The CRTC disagreed, allowing the majors to continue limiting the bandwidth of traffic using certain applications at particular times.

Then came the CRTC decision that Globalive Wireless, a cellular startup that earned wireless spectrum in the summer AWS auction, wasn’t sufficiently Canadian-owned to operate in Canada, leading to howls of outrage from telecom experts demanding changes to foreign ownership restrictions and a call for protests in the street from Globalive president Anthony Lacavera.

Nor was the CRTC the only government arms-length operation to land in hot water, technology-wise, in October. Ontario’s auditor general Jim McCarter released a scathing report on waste at eHealth Ontario, the agency charged with building an electronic health records system for the province. While the mainstream media decried what they called a $1-billion boondoggle, McCarter noted, in an exclusive interview with ComputerWorld Canada, that they had overlooked the fact that the megaproject, while certainly not cost-efficient, had indeed provided at least the infrastructure on which to build the EHR system.

In the wake of Oracle Corp.’s (NASDAQ:ORCL) deal to take over Sun Microsystems Inc. (NASDAQ:JAVA), the creator of open source database MySQL – which had, itself, been swallowed up by Sun earlier in the year – argued that Oracle ought to sell off the database. The European Commission seemed to concur, holding up the Oracle-Sun deal with an investigation into the competitive ramifications of the purchase.

Meanwhile, Microsoft Corp.’s long-awaited Windows 7 operating system was finally made available, and CEO Steve Ballmer made a rare Toronto appearance to talk up the OS. Naturally, snafus ensued. Downloads of the educational upgrade failed, and some systems suffered endless rebooting loops.

The U.S. seemed to be down on Canadian tech in October, with Harvard University publishing a report that called Canada a laggard on broadband, and the U.S. government smearing Canada as a haven for online piracy.

And one year after it popped up on the security radar, our old friend Conficker was still infecting seven million computers, researchers at the volunteer-run Shadowserver Foundation said.

Would you recommend this article?

Share

Thanks for taking the time to let us know what you think of this article!
We'd love to hear your opinion about this or any other story you read in our publication.


Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

Featured Download

Dave Webb
Dave Webb
Dave Webb is a freelance editor and writer. A veteran journalist of more than 20 years' experience (15 of them in technology), he has held senior editorial positions with a number of technology publications. He was honoured with an Andersen Consulting Award for Excellence in Business Journalism in 2000, and several Canadian Online Publishing Awards as part of the ComputerWorld Canada team.

Featured Articles

Cybersecurity in 2024: Priorities and challenges for Canadian organizations 

By Derek Manky As predictions for 2024 point to the continued expansion...

Survey shows generative AI is a top priority for Canadian corporate leaders.

Leaders are devoting significant budget to generative AI for 2024 Canadian corporate...

Related Tech News

Tech Jobs

Our experienced team of journalists and bloggers bring you engaging in-depth interviews, videos and content targeted to IT professionals and line-of-business executives.

Tech Companies Hiring Right Now