Now hiring: President of Allstream
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Loading ...MTS Allstream has announced the president of its enterprise solutions division, John MacDonald, will retire Dec. 1.
MacDonald, a former president of Bell Canada, joined AT&T Canada in 2002. AT&T Canada, which emerged from bankruptcy protection as Allstream in 2003, later merged with Manitoba Telecom Services to form MTS Allstream.
Allstream was the moniker adopted by AT&T Canada to reflect that fact that it was no longer controlled by AT&T Corp. and was completely separate from AT&T global services in Canada.
MacDonald, who got engineering degrees from both Dalhousie University and the Technical University of Nova Scotia, started his career at NBTel. After leaving Bell in 1999, he headed Leitch Technology.
He was hired by AT&T Canada in 2002, which had earlier been formed from a merger of: MetroNet Communications Corp., a competitive local exchange carrier; Netcom, an Internet Service provider; AT&T Canada Long Distance Co.
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The temptations of Sony’s eBook
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...By Howard Solomon
Assistant editor, Network World Canada
For the first time that I can remember, technology made a bold appearance at the annual Word On The Street book and magazine festival Sunday in Toronto. At the event, which took place also in Vancouver, Kitchener and Halifax, Sony was hawking its $299 Reader Digital Book. This slim, paperback sized device has been on the market for a couple of years but hasn’t made a significant dent in the personal electronics market. But its appearance made me think about the future of print in an increasingly electronic world. Read the rest of this entry »
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Cogetating Cogeco
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Telecom consultant Iain Grant and his colleagues at the SeaBoard Group still believe a partnership of interests — a so-called “rebel alliance” — could come together to create a stronger new spectrum owner than the licence winners from the recent AWS auction. SeaBoard’s latest musing includes a name not mentioned yet: Montreal-based Cogeco Cable. Read the rest of this entry »
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McAfee to buy Secure Computing
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...In an effort to expand its cloud computing offerings, McAfee Inc. has agreed to acquire Secure Computing Corp. of San Jose, Calif. for US$465 million.
McAfee said it “expects” with the acquisition, it could offer data life cycle management, including detection, filtering, encryption, blocking, archiving, reporting and compliance.
Secure Computing’s hardware line includes firewalls and web filtering tools. The vendor makes Trusted Source, an Internet reputation intelligence system that analyses Web traffic, including IP addresses, messages, images, attachments, URLs and domain names. It analyzes them by calculating how often an IP sends mail, how their sending pattern matches the “norm” and other criteria.
Trusted Source is used in Secure Computing’s SecureMail appliances, which are targeted at corporations and include anti-spam, anti-malware and encryption features.
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Ottawa company provides service control to Russian WiMAX network
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Ottawa-based Bridgewater Systems is providing its WiMAX service control technology to help mobile service provider Scartel LLC support IP services offered over a mobile WiMAX network in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
The partnership will enable Scartel to support high performance subscriber management functions like authentication, authorization and accounting services, and provide a common platform to accelerate the launch of data services over the company’s WiMAX network.
The technology by Bridgewater is an advanced WiMAX service control that includes a common subscriber data management capability to allow for a unified view of subscribers, and accelerate time to market for new services. Also, it has a policy and profile engine that lets Scartel control and manage subscriber access to advanced and differentiated services on a per-subscriber basis.
“Russia is the leading WiMAX market in Europe and Scartel is in a unique
position as it already holds a large number of WiMAX licenses across Russia
and is the first operator in the region to go to market with a Mobile WiMAX
solution,” said Ihsen Fekih, Bridgewater’s managing director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
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What’s really going on?
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...By Howard Solomon
Assistant editor, Network World Canada
As I write this on Friday morning, global markets are in a semi-state of europhoria on the expectation that the U.S. government is going to take dramatic action to save the American financial industry. The state of the world economy, of course, has an impact on the budgets IT managers have to spend. How bad its it out there? Read the rest of this entry »
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Microsoft unveils IPTV migration program
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Microsoft Corp. is launching a new program that will help Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) providers upgrade their IPTV platforms with the Redmond, Wash. software giant.
The Microsoft Mediaroom Migration Program will assess and provide tools for service providers looking to migrate. This includes business and technical workshops to review set-top-box portability, risk-benefit tools to compare lifetime customer value, and network compatibility and audio-visual head-end interoperability.
“As the IPTV market matures, we’re seeing interest from operators on first-generation platforms and homegrown solutions to migrate to Microsoft Mediaroom,” Ben Huang, director of product management for Microsoft Mediaroom, said in a release. “These service providers need to add high-definition and advanced digital video recording (DVR) and video-on-demand features that are now fundamental to any competitive TV offering, and they want to remain competitive by being able to easily deploy advanced interactive applications.”
The company unveiled the new migration strategy at this week’s IBC2008 conference in the Netherlands.
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Toronto East General Hospital introduces state-of-the-art mobile communications network
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Toronto East General Hospital (TEGH) is taking advantage of IBM’s Enterprise Mobility Services for the healthcare industry in a project that will connect roughly 800 critical care staff in the ER and Complex Continuing Care departments.
Using wireless communicators, staff will be in continuous contact with each other and have real-time access to patient records and critical information.
TEGH’s new mobile communications network is based on a wireless network infrastructure engineered to support voice and facilitate integration with various systems.
The solution included a combination of Cisco wireless network, wireless communication devices from Vocera and real-time event drive notification software from GlobeStar Systems, said IBM.
IBM’s new mobile services for healthcare aim to reduce costs and redundancies by integrating multiple wireless and voice networks.
“These new services deliver a communication platform with instant wireless communications and real time location and event-driven, intelligent notification to help healthcare organizations improve clinical effectiveness, productivity and risk management while increasing patient care,” said Laurence Guihard-Joly, VP Integrated Communications Services, IBM Global Technology Services, in a company press release.
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Telus gets $7-million City of Vancouver contract
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...The City of Vancouver has awarded a contract to Telus Corp. to provide a new IP telephony system and contact centre suite.
The $7 million deal will see the telecommunications provider supply, install and support the new platform, which in turn, will support 200 City sites including City Hall, the Vancouver Police Department, the Vancouver Fire and Rescue Department, the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation and the Vancouver Public Library.
The contact centre technology will route calls for the City’s new 311 Contact Centre, due to launch in mid 2009, which will provide citizens a single enquiry contact number for non-emergency services.
The new system is based on the Cisco Unified Contact Center technology and 6,500 Cisco Unified IP Phones. Implementation is expected to be complete in 2011.
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Smoke signals
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...By Howard Solomon, Assistant Editor, Network World Canada
There were plenty of signals being sent this week at the BMO Nesbit Burns telecom conference for investors, and they weren’t all in smoke. Execs from new wireless entrants Quebecor and Globalive Wireless made pitches, while the CFO of incubant Telus moaned about the “dysfunctional result” of rules that pushed licenced values up. We can’t tell you what Globalive wireless head Anthony Lacavera said because his comments weren’t Webcast (BMO apparently didn’t want to waste the bandwidth on a private company). But we can try to parse the smoke signals from Quebecor prexy Pierre Karl Peladeau and Telus’ Robert McFarlane.
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