Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Today we're going to talk about two topics:

First, allegations have emerged that Bell Canada is throttling traffic to DSL wholesalers. A group of enterprising folks on the DSL Reports forum have tracked this, and it's causing quite a stink.

Second, the New Yorker has published an extensive piece on the death of the newspaper. To discuss this, I've invited former National Post columnist Mark Evans to join us. I hope to see some other journalists join us as well.

See you at 11 AM on the SquawkBox

A friend of mine pointed out the Canadian Innovation Exchange event happening in Toronto to myself and another entrepreneur and suggested we might consider attending.  There are some really good looking sessions there from some good VCs who are no doubt looking to increase deal flow a little.  For companies that are selected to present, you also get a 10 minute pitch and a 3 minute one on one meeting with each of the investors afterward.  

What's not to like, right? 

A lot.  The model for this conference is that the VC community builds deal flow by holding a beauty contest and charging entrepreneurs to pitch.   It's a dutch date with a miser, which is a bad basis for a relationship.  

To my friends in the Canadian VC community, for whom this conference and others like it have been a fixture for many years, I say this: In any other business, prospecting isn't a profit center. The model wherein aspiring entrepreneurs pay for the right to talk with you is one you probably ought to consign to the trash heap of history as you think about reforming your business.  And yeah, I know you've dropped the price to $495 for "early bird" registrants this year, but why not just abolish the practice altogether?  

To aspiring entrepreneurs who want to talk with any of these investors: pick up the phone and call them. Investors will take your call without asking you to pay for the privilege.  If your idea is any good, you'll get a meeting. The same 10 minute pitch you were going to give on stage at the CIX can be delivered in person, and the bonus is that you'll get more than 3 minutes of feedback.  

Want to know what it will take to get a VC interested in your company? Everybody's favorite Canadian VC Rick Segal is coming to Ottawa on April 16 for the Ottawa edition of the VC Round Table and he wants to talk to you.  Here's your chance to informally interact with VCs, learn about what it is exactly that they do and how the funding process works. This is a small (and free!) get together across Canada's major cities where Rick Segal, JLA Ventures Partner and VC blogger (http://ricksegal.typepad.com) will walk through what getting involved with VCs is all about. Rick Segal will be hosting the Ottawa edition of the VC travelling roundtable on April 16th from 11am to 1pm at everyone’s favourite pub TheClockTower at 575 Bank Street. If you would like to attend sign up on the link below. 

There's only room for 25 people, though.  So if you're interested, click here to sign up. 

This morning's Squawk Box recording quality is a little poor, which I apologize for.  We have some noisy background coming from one of the lines and it was impossible to remove.  Still, we had a good call talking about:

The winners of the 700Mhz auction in the US last week.  Verizon appeared to be the big winner picking up a huge chunk of the 700Mhz "C" block, while AT&T won 227 licenses in the B block. What many people didn't realize was that on February 8th, the FCC also approved the sale of Aloha Communications to AT&T, which was the big winner in 700Mhz auctions in 2001 and 2003.  Neither Sprint nor T-Mobile participated in the auction, but T-Mobile was the winner of a nationwide license in the 2006 AWS spectrum auction.  Google didn't win any spectrum, despite their noisy entry into the auction. Did Google want to win anything?  What does it mean for Sprint in the 3G world?  Will Canadian regulators be following this as we prepare for our own auction here?

This morning Michael Arrington is calling out the big market players who have committed to openID, but are simply providing identities to their users.  Microsoft and Yahoo, for example, allow people to use identities created by them on other openID supporting systems.  They don't accept openID's in return.  Arrington says that these ompanies are exploiting openID for PR benefit, but not actually committing to it.  Is he right?

And stupid marketing blunders. The one I held up us an example was last week's announcement by Sony of a program called Fresh Start.  Everyone is familiar with the mountains of trial software that you get on every new PC.  The stuff we all call bloatware, or craplets… Last week Sony announced a new program called Fresh Start where… for a fee of just $50… they would send you your PC without all that garbage.  Clean, fresh…  naturally there was an uproar, and Sony quickly backpedalled and took the fee away.  Companies pay to be on the desktops of these PCs, and for the PC manufacturers this is a revenue stream.  Sony apparently decided that they would try to get the consumer to pay this premium directly, and is now faced with all their customers potentially saying "just ship it to me clean". We discussed how Sony might have handled this differently.  

 

 Squawk Box March 24 [26:54m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

It's Easter, and I won't make any attempt to hide the fact that I was brought up and am a practicing (albeit infrequently) Christian. 

Easter is the celebration in the Christian mythos where Jesus dies and is resurrected in order to absolve us all from the Sins we have committed in our lives.  It's an opportunity to repent for the evils we've done, and to invite our neighbours and friends to share in our lives.

Whether you believe the Christian biblical narration or not, Easter is a holiday which reminds us to treat our neighbors well — as we would wish to be treated ourselves.  It's a holiday which encourages us to reach out to others and help them to live the lives which they have wanted to lead, or are capable of leading.  It's a holiday which reminds us all that we can make mistakes and still live as fulfilled human beings.  

Happy "find yourself and be what you're capable of" day.  Happy "recognize, understand and address the wrongs you have committed". Christian or not, it's only through the recognition that we are human that we are able to transcend the petty behaviors that we are all susceptible to. 

Happy Easter.