Here is some good news from Canada:

“Ottawa announced it will hold an auction of the wireless spectrum in May 2008, which could mean more competition and lower cellphone rates for Canadians next year.

“Industry Minister Jim Prentice told a press conference in Toronto on Wednesday that about 105 megahertz of spectrum will be sold to bidders. Forty megahertz will be set aside for newcomers to the industry.

“’The introduction of new service providers will help to make Canada’s wireless market more dynamic, more competitive, and more innovative so as to meet the needs of Canadians,’ Prentice said.”

If that is not good news, then I certainly do not know what it is. The report mentioned a few reasons why the Canadian government set aside the 40MHz for the mobile service newbies. The biggest reason is that there are fewer Canadians than Americans who avail of mobile phone services and other wireless services because they have to shell out more cash every month to keep enjoying those services.

Of course, this move by the Canadian government had an unpleasant side effect – the bigwigs of the Canadian wireless networks crying foul for this so-called display of the government’s preferential treatment. One of them is none other than Telus.

To quote Janet Yale, Telus’ executive vice president:

“We thought this was a government that believed in market forces, that believed in not trying to create special concessions to help new entrants, and at the end of the day we believe this is not the best interest of consumers or telecom industry overall.”

Yeah, right. I am no economics major and I certainly do not know exactly how market forces work, but I sure know that the more players there are in the market, the better the pickings will be for us consumers.

Engadget.com’s Holiday Gift Guide: For Him is already out, and it certainly got my gears going. If I can afford it, or if someone I know would be sweet enough to give it to me, here are the gadgets I want to get for Christmas:

1. Logitech Orbit AF robo-webcam. Whenever I go videoconferencing, I am certainly not afraid to show people my homely face in full, glorious VGA mode. And I certainly want to see all the freckles on the face of the person on the other end.
2. Erector Spyke WiFi Robot. Do I want to know what my roommate is up to, or if he’s messing with my stuff while I am in the other room? An Erector Spyke WiFi Robot will do the trick. It can annoy my roommate to death and send me a wireless video stream of how it is doing it.
3. HP MediaSmart Home Server. Data storage is always a pain. I can never have enough space for all the music and the movies that I keep downloading almost compulsively. That thing lugs 1TB around? Sweet.
4. Samsung BD-UP5000. Which one is better, HD DVD or Blu-ray? I seriously don’t care; I just want my videos pretty. This gadget is great because with it, I really don’t have to choose.
5. Garmin nuvi 760. I hate getting lost, I hate getting lost in traffic, and I hate losing my car in the parking lot. How do I get over that? By getting myself a GPS gadget, and Garmin nuvi 760 is it. With it, I will never be lost again, and I get to play some music on it, too.
6. HP Blackbird 002. I want a PC that will not conk on me when I beat it hard with my serious games. I heard HP Blackbird 002 is the magic for my gaming needs.

Father Christmas, I’ve been very good this past year. Please give me one of these.

Serious web surfers love their connections fast. That does not require any explanation; who would want to download a 1.2 GB DVD video on a slow dialup connection? That download can take days to complete.

More and more people are becoming very reliant on the Internet for their data, whatever form it takes. We have e-books, music files, videos, PDFs, software and all kinds of stuff available on the Internet, downloadable for whoever wants them. But can you imagine a day when the Internet finally melts down because of all this data traveling through cyberspace and everything just slows down? According Nemertes Research, which is a US-based analyst firm, that day when the Internet melts down, is due to happen on 2010.

Oh, yeah. The Internet will be incapable of accommodating consumer demand for bandwidth by the year 2010, says Nemertes Research. As BBC reported here, Nemertes Research forecasts that this Internet meltdown will cause people to lose the speed and convenience that they are now perhaps taking for granted when doing their online transactions. Online purchases will need to be verified at least twice, and downloading videos from YouTube will take twice as slow.

But that is not all the bad news that Nemertes Research has up its sleeve. The analyst firm says that this Internet meltdown will prevent companies that would like to emulate Google and YouTube to successfully take off, unless they have the money for the necessary infrastructure. So we would be stuck with monoliths like Google and YouTube, and innovation would be on a bare minimum.

What is the solution that will prevent this Internet meltdown? Nemertes Research says that broadband networks all over the world will need to upgrade their systems. This endeavor will cost the industry some US$137B.

So, do we like our Internet connection fast? Maybe we should enjoy it while we can.

When was the last time you religiously followed a series on television? And when I say religiously, I mean that you get in front of the boob tube at least five minutes before the show starts. And if you cannot watch it, then you set your VHS recorder up so it would turn on and record the show while you are away. That is, assuming that you still have one of those old VHS recorders around.

The older people, probably those belonging to what the media fondly called the Generation X and the Generation Y, would still be exhibiting that kind of TV-viewing behavior. But that is definitely not the same for today’s young people. The teenagers and the “tweeners” of today would rather spend time messing with their Facebook, MySpace or Friendster accounts, downloading music and watching videos on YouTube and other video websites. Oh, of course, there are still some who do spend time in front of the boob tube, but people who still watch TV religiously, in the old sense of the word, are becoming exceedingly rare.

So, is TV dying? This was the subject of Anna Lagerkvist’s article in Tech.co.uk last week. Is TV becoming a redundant medium in this age that is dominated by the Internet and its related technologies?

The conclusion that Ms. Lagerkvist came up with in her article is that television will remain a relevant part of our lives. However, TV companies must learn to adapt and change with the changing habits of TV viewers.

TV viewers, it is said in the article, will no longer be happy with just the usual linear fare that TV offers. They would want content that is interactive and available whenever they want it. While TV companies can still come up with mainstream programs that they can show on air, it is now important for them to produce niche programming that will cater to the needs and tastes of people who get their TV from the Internet.

The night of November 9, 2007 has come and gone. At 6.02pm that Friday night, the stores of Apple, O2 and Carphone Warehouse simultaneously opened its doors to allow the denizens of London and the rest of Britannia their first feel of the gadget of the year, none other than Apple’s much-hyped iPhone.

That Friday night has come and gone, but how was it? Did Apple exceed its expectations for establishing its foothold in the British market? Apparently, only sales figures for that night can say for sure, and naturally only Apple has this data. No one else in the blogosphere has it.

But while the iPhone launch last Friday did not reach the levels of mania that was seen in New York when the gadget of the year made its worldwide debut in June this year, what with around 600 people lining up some 100 hours prior to launch time, anyone can happily say that the British launch of the iPhone was more than fairly decent. There was an estimated 400 people crowding the doors of the Apple store in Regent Street in London that Friday night, and the atmosphere was certainly euphoric. It was a lot more quiet at the O2 store along Oxford Street and in the various Carphone Warehouse outlets all over London, but the excitement was definitely there.

Given that there is no available data regarding actual sales of the iPhone during launch day, judging from the 8,000 activation attempts that O2 claimed to have on the blogosphere grapevine, it seems that the sales of iPhone units, at least those sold by O2, were not so bad at all. In fact, it seemed quite a sunshiny deal that O2 landed on, especially since it is reported that two-thirds of O2 iPhone buyers are new subscribers.

It surely is sweet. I guess Apple really did good on the British launch day.

Joshua Topolsky of Engadget nailed it right on the head. If Google, this gigantic, multibillion name in the techie world, announces that it will be doing something, any competitor that it has in whatever plan that it has under its sleeve should at least have the sense to take Google a little more seriously, right? So why is Steve Ballmer, hallowed CEO of Microsoft, being so cocky when he said that Google’s move to get Android going “are just some words on paper right now”?

Okay, so Google does not have anything right now but a few announcements and the help of some friends, just some words on paper indeed. On the other hand, Microsoft’s very own Windows Mobile is licensed 150 different handset models and carried by some 100 different carriers. Windows Mobile will definitely be a hard nut to crack for Google’s Android.

But if Google can call the likes of T-Mobile, Sprint Nextel, Motorola, Samsung, LG and Intel friends who will give it a little help in this pet project, one can be certain that Android will not end up as just some words on paper right now, right? Something big has to come out soon, what with these big people gathered in one room together. Android is going to be big, and who knows? It just might give Windows Mobile a run for its money. And maybe give Symbian a little nudge, too.

This is so like Microsoft to be so ballsy, so arrogant about things like these. What did Steve Ballmer say about Google’s Android announcement? “Right now they have a press release, we have many, many millions of customers, great software, many hardware devices and they’re welcome in our world.”

But perhaps this is just how the game is played. Let us just see how it turns out.

Just last week, the blogosphere was agog with rumors of the mythical GPhone rearing its head soon. There were so many speculations as to what the GPhone would look like, who would manufacture the units, whether Google is designing the hardware or is just going to provide the platform, why Google is taking this challenge on, when the GPhone is expected to show up in the markets, and other stuff like that.

And then, just yesterday, Google made this big announcement: that on the second half of 2008, new phones will be available on the market manufactured by the likes of HTC, Samsung, Motorola and LG, all showcasing the new Linux-based Android platform developed by Google. This new phone will be carried by telecoms companies like NTT DoCoMo, China Mobile, Telefonica, Telecom Italia, KDDI, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile. The companies involved in this enterprise have called themselves the Open Handset Alliance. If you want the whole lowdown of this deal, read it here.

Is this the big dream that fuelled the rumors of last week regarding the mythical GPhone? Certainly not. Google is adamant for now that they will only be providing the operating system based on Android and that they will not be putting out mobile phones they themselves specifically designed. Rather than just one GPhone, Google said, there will be a thousand GPhones in the market by the latter-half of 2008, manufactured by their partners in OHA.

Will these so-called thousand GPhones include this one pictured above, named the HTC Omni but said to be referred to in Google’s inner circles as the Dream? This Forbes article reports that this gadget looks like the iPhone, with a touch-sensitive and a time-sensitive screen. Not only that, it has a virtual machine that allows for easy multi-tasking, and will have email, text docs and You-Tube available for easy access.

Sounds like a dream? Maybe we’ll wake up to it some time soon.

What is Google really up to these days? Do they have a new mobile phone in the works, something similar with what Apple did with iPhone and which bloggers all over the tech world have now dubbed GPhone? Or are they just developing a new operating system that can be used by most mobile phones, something that will give Microsoft’s Windows Mobile a run for its money?

No one really knows for sure, and the industry, not to mention the blogosphere, is rife with so many rumors about what Google has up in its sleeve. Some analysts have it that Google’s current pet project is not really a physical phone itself, but rather an OS that can be downloaded into most kinds of mobile phones and which will give Google a pretty chunk of advertising money. If this is the case, many analysts state that the major mobile carriers will not take this move by Google lightly, because it poses a threat to their own bid for ads revenue over mobile Internet. Google’s purported move may also undermine the major carriers’ tight control over their own networks. Of course they would not want that.

But then again, The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Google is ironing out plans with Verizon, Sprint Mobile and T-Mobile to launch new handsets that will run on software platforms to be developed by Google. How true this one is, nobody really knows and the insiders are keeping mum about it.

If anything is certain, if Google does try to push its way into the mobile industry, it is going to be a tough climb for them. The analysts have it right; Google does not have the experience to compete in the mobile industry. But then again, a major search engine has yet to make a solid name when it comes to mobile Internet, so why shouldn’t Google want to be the first to do so?

We will all find out soon enough, anyhow.

Image Source: The New York Times