Alec Saunders SquawkBox

We went to the Ottawa Senators vs  the NY Islanders last night at the Corel Center.  The Senators came back from being down 3-1 to win the game 4-3.  It was a remarkable display of teamwork, made all the more so by team Captain Daniel Alfredsson.  In the middle of the second period he took a slapshot from team mate Zdeno Chara in the ribs.  Chara has a powerful shot, and Alfredsson left the game winded, and with a bruised and cracked rib. 

This year’s Senators have grit.  Rather than let the loss of their captain affect their game negatively, they rallied and turned around a losing game.  This without Alfredsson, star center Spezza, and winger’s Havlat and Bochenski, all of whom are out with injuries. 

Alfredsson has always led by example.  Without him there, players like Shaefer, Fisher, and Neil stepped up and played a fabulous game. Afterward, following a trip to hospital confirming his cracked rib, Alfredsson had only this to say:

”That’s the way it goes,” said Alfredsson. ”Hopefully, Spezza is coming back soon and the good thing is we have guys stepping up and tonight was another big case of that, so we’ll find ways to win games.”

Om Malik has published a prediction that in 2006, voice will be (nearly) free. As the likes of Yahoo, SipPhone, and Sun Rocket battle it out to be the low (or no?) cost leader, metered long distance and local calling will go the way of the dodo. That’s been my view for a long time. Andy echoes with "of course, nothing is free", which is absolutely true. We’re seeing a commoditization of basic voice, which necessitates the introduction of new models — both economic and technology models.

I’ll add a prediction of my own: 2006 will see the failure of multiple "telephony on IP" plays — the companies that simply replicated the PSTN on broadband. To survive in this new market you are going to have do do more than sell a near-zero commodity at a "better" price.

Two days ago Jon Arnold published some great data on the state IP telephony in Canada. This was part of a conversation he had with UBS analyst Jeff Fan. Standout data point: Videotron is adding 4,000 subscribers per week at the moment. I think this is a nationwide trend. Some months ago I had a conversation with a senior guy at one of the incumbent telco’s here, and asked if they were seeing similar trends to the US where landline attrition has reportedly reached 10,000 lines per day. His response: “well, if Canada is about 10% of the US market and we’re x% of the Canadian Market, then that sounds about right.”

2006 will be interesting. One thing is for certain: the pressure on incumbents that IP has threatened for so long will finally be felt.

Paul Jardine his written a lovely anti-IMS rant this morning. He says:

It seems that IMS is another stab at providing a sandpit for the IP kids to play in. But it is similarly doomed. (Hands up those of us who would willingly let our parents organise a party for us when we were 21?)

Here here!

Om Malik reports that unknown Rates Technology Inc is suing Google for patent infringement related to Google Talk. Om points to the suit, which includes the two patents Google is alleged to have infringed. One patent is for a least cost routing appliance, while the other is for the database technology required to implement a least cost routing scheme.

Call me stupid, but I don’t see it. This looks like nothing more than another spurious patent suit. Google doesn’t make VolP hardware, nor do they perform least cost routing.