Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Yesterday YouTube doubled the upload limit available to users in response the increasing number of high definition videos that are being sent to the site.  Now you can upload a 2G file, instead of a 1G file.   YouTube has made it easier to upload a high definition file as well. According to Liz Gannes at NewTeeVee.com, YouTube has done this because “HD videos are now becoming a significant part of the YouTube library”.

They look gorgeous, no doubt.  Check out this trailer from Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.  Click the full screen button to see the full impact.  It’s really darned impressive.

Don’t expect to see a lot of Canadian high definition content, however.   Not that there aren’t people in this country shooting high definition video, who might have a strong desire to share that video.  It’s simply a matter of bandwidth and usage caps. All broadband providers in Canada, excepting a few small outfits in Vancouver, cap usage at between 50 and 150G of transfer per month, and restrict upload speeds to under 1 megabit per second, except Shaw who have raised their upload limit to a meagre 2 megabits.  We’d be in our graves before YouTube received our videos at these speeds.

Pathetic, no? Even worse, most of the small business offerings from these providers consist of repackaged residential service, with a better service agreement and a higher price.

Does it matter if a few people can’t upload video?  Perhaps not, unless you’re a Canadian culture supporter or Heritage Minister James Moore.  But what about the other impacts of capped usage and restricted upload bandwidth – the economic and environmental impacts?  Applications like VPN, remote desktop, and VoIP are the cornerstones of telecommuting strategies.  Those applications are dependent on high speed upload as well as download.  When telecommuting is impaired, it has an economic impact to business, and an environmental impact on society.  We should all care about that!

So how about it Rogers, Bell, Telus, Shaw and Videotron?  Download speeds have increased steadily over the last decade, but we’ve had upload speeds of under 1Mbs since the dawn of broadband.  Shouldn’t we have better?

Late Friday afternoon, “Mookie” from Rogers called to talk about our phone service.  Rogers is pushing to convert as many of their customers from the incumbent Bell Canada over to Rogers Home Phone.  Rogers has a plan for $30.95 per month which gives you 5 calling features, and 1,000 minutes of long distance in North America.  But it’s actually not $30.95, after you add in the system access fee of $5.95 and other miscellaneous fees, the bill is closer to $40. 

We’re probably paying more on Bell, but I don’t really know how much more.  With Bell we’re paying $25 per month to get unlimited long distance (yeah – over 40,000 minutes), and we’re paying for some additional features.  Mookie argued that hardly anybody ever uses more than 1,000 minutes per month.  1,000 minutes is nearly 17 hours of calling.  He’s probably right that we would never use more than 1,000 minutes, especially considering that I already spend $5/month with my mobile plan to get 1,000 minutes long distance on that phone.  Woe betide you if you use more than the 1,000 minutes however – Uncle Ted’s rate on overage is a steep $.12/minute.

I didn’t take him up on his offer. 

“Mookie”, I said “my home phone bill just isn’t painful enough for me to switch.  Now, if you could do something about my outrageous monthly mobile bill, or the ridiculous price I pay for substandard broadband, then we’d be in business.”  Mookie demurred, saying that he only represented the home phone service. 

The hassles associated with porting our number, the equipment installation, and the things I’ve heard about Rogers Home Phone incompatibilities with security systems were enough to dissuade me.  If Google Voice ever comes to Canada with number portability, we might reconsider.  For now, however, we’ll pay a couple bucks extra per month and stick with the Bell system.

I suspect that there are a lot of people like us out there.  When Vonage came to Canada people flocked to sign up, us included.  Bell responded some months later with the current $25 all you can eat plan, which stemmed that tide.  Rogers is going to have to do something equally dramatic in order to win market share.  How about home phone on cable with unlimited long distance across North America for $10/month, no system access fee, and features that Bell not only doesn’t have but probably can’t easily provide? $40/month, however, is just too little, too late.

What do you think?  Would you switch?  Or does Rogers have to do more to win your business?

That’s how the MC for this afternoon’s joust at the Upper Canada Village Medieval Festival described what they were about to do.  It was certainly thrilling. Four “knights” in authentic armor charged at each other through the lists with enormous Douglas Fir lances, bent on unhorsing the other.  Points were awarded for a touch, a shattered lance and an “unhorsing”.

In this sequence, two knights charge at each other.  On contact, the blue knight’s lance is shattered in his hand, and the remains of the lance are seen in the next photograph, as the knight mounted on the white horse rides past the broken lance.

In this sequence, the knight on the white horse has struck the blue knight in the helmet with this lance.  You can see the shattered handle in his hands, as well as the wood flexing as the lance glances off the helmet of the blue knight, and the shattered pieces fly away.

And in this short video shot from my iPhone using QiK, both knights are unhorsed.

The Medieval Festival continues tomorrow at Upper Canada Village.  It’s a cheap and thrilling way to spend a family afternoon. Jousts, hand to hand combat, trebuchets, and more. Highly recommended.

Recently one has the impression that the Canadian tech sector is willing itself back to life.  After the meltdown last fall, there have been numerous events in recent weeks that seem to be indicators pointing in the right direction.  For example:

May 19, the Canadian Advanced Technology Association held its annual award dinner.  Held at the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa, this $200/seat event was well attended.  More importantly, although I thought I knew of most of the players in the Canadian tech space, 75% of the awards went to groups that I had never heard of.

May 20, the Ottawa Network held its second Founders and Funders dinner happened downtown at the Velvet Room. This mixer is designed to put entrepreneurs and VC’s together over drinks and dinner for an evening of networking. There were a lot of new startups.  More importantly, 8 VC’s were present, and 7 of them were from outside Ottawa.  Although the local venture community has disappeared, Waterloo, Montreal and Toronto are moving in to fill the gap.

May 22, the National Angel Capital Organization is holding its Spring 2009 Co-Investment Summit in Toronto.  This fabulous event brings together individual angel investors, angel investment groups, and entrepreneurs for a day of networking and pitching.  Look for Calliflower at that event.  Our presentation will be in the afternoon.

Ottawa tech folks know Tony Patterson’s SCAN as the news source for the local technology industry.  Since last fall, Tony has been chatting with a few of us, myself included, about how to broaden the appeal of SCAN.  Last week he unveiled a new SCAN focused on the Ontario Technology Corridor, from Ottawa through Windsor. With 6,000 companies and 250,000 workers in the Ontario tech industry, he plans to cover everything form bio-tech to software and the communications industry.  The format of the site is easily digestible, with quick single paragraph stories and longer pieces from invited bloggers and tech executives.   

If you have an interest in Canadian tech businesses, visit the new SCAN and let Tony know what you think.