There has been a lot of talk about usage-based billing (UBB) in Canada the past couple of weeks, starting when the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (the CRTC) announced that they were going to introduce caps on bandwidth and essentially force internet service providers (ISPs) to charge those who go over the caps.

Along with all the discussion, there’s been lots of road construction/traffic analogies that try to explain the decision in more ‘real world’ terms — this article even suggests that UBB will somehow allow ISPs to free up cash to invest in better infrastructure to support all of us driving “the Hummer versions of bandwidth vehicles” (according to the article). Unfortunately, reality is somewhat different.

What UBB really allows, is for ISPs (and in some cases, even forces ISPs that don’t want to) to charge Canadians more for something they already provide. What Bell has asked for is essentially the ability to charge more money for what they have (in most cases contractually) signed up to provide their customers. All with the nebulous promise from Bell that all this cash will be turned around and invested into infrastructure.While it’s easy to demonize Bell, I think that most companies would love to be allowed to charge more for something they already provide — I’m sure a car manufacturer would be happy to get double the current price for a car through a governmental policy change. However, it’s the CRTC’s job to ensure that Canadians are protected, and too often the CRTC’s interpretation of their mandate is that that should include Canadian corporations (a long standing idea in policy in Canada where the belief that handing money over to Canadian companies is going to benefit us all).

Michael Geist points out the importance of competition (or in this case, lack of competition) in the Canadian ISP market. Decades of strict foreign ownership rules have stifled innovation and kept prices artificially high in Canada, and now the few choices that Canadians have for alternatives from the big ISPs are being threatened. While these types of policy decisions seem difficult to comprehend to Canadians, they are part of an ongoing trend in this country. Little or nothing is done to protect new entrants (see this week’s reversal of the decision allowing foreign-owned WIND Mobile to operate in Canada) into telecommunications markets in Canada, yet policy moves like UBB are adopted to protect the larger companies that already provide over 90% of internet service in this country.

There have been some positive comments about foreign ownership in particular from those in the government — now what we really need is action. The Canadian telecommunications market is in dire need of reform, and the CRTC should be spreadheading that reform for Canadians — instead of pushing policy decisions that aim to protect the status quo.

I came across an interesting post a few days ago on how the Android operating system parallels (or even imitates) Windows. No, we’re not talking about from an interface perspective — but rather how the Android ecosystem is in a bit of mess, much like the Windows ecosystem and the complex relationships that Microsoft and Google have with hardware suppliers.

I’m not sure the parallel is entirely accurate — since with Windows, the hardware manufacturer is no providing a customized version of Windows (which is usually the hold up for delivering new Android versions — the hardware manufacturer needs to build their own UI into the updated Android version).

The article actually spends more time talking about Apple than about Windows — and how Apple is better at providing updates to their mobile software. The problem with Android however, isn’t so much with Google’s lack of updates (Google’s actually been pushing out updates on a fairly regular basis — although they never really like to provide dates or changelogs). The problem with Android is that the hardware manufacturers have been given so much flexibility (which the article does mention) with what they’re going to do with the OS. Personally, I’d rather stick with stock Android — but I doubt Android would’ve been able to gobble up market share without Google providing OEMs with the ability to customize Android to such an extent.

Today we’ve got a great guest post from David Sumner from twago. This article lists some tips and tricks on how to conduct a successful online marketing campaign through twitter, and tells you how to work around the 140 character limit of tweets. Thanks David for the great guest post!

A successful twitter marketing campaign in 140 characters?

Due to the large twittersphere population (approx. 200 million), and of the ability to enable instant communication, twitter has become an integral part of online marketing. However, the key to a successful and exciting online marketing campaign through twitter can be constrained by the 140 character limit posed by tweets. The key to success therefore lies with a number of tools and features which can aid your twitter marketing campaign regardless of the 140 character limit.

Creativity and expressiveness:

The goal of a tweet is to communicate interesting, unique content in the shortest way possible. However, it is vital that you can communicate important campaign information, offers, promotions etc to your customers on twitter without breaking the 140 character limit. So how can you do this?

• Short but sweet tweets. Whilst the character limit renders it difficult to detail the ins and outs of your marketing campaign to customers, it still allows for punchy advertising slogans to be tweeted to a large audience.  To save character space, use a URL shortener such as Bit.ly to add a link whilst saving character space.

• Twitzer. The Twitzer tool allows you to say more than the 140 character limit allows. Through creating a separate URL in your tweet, the customer who sees your tweet can access more detailed information on your marketing venture. This is a handy tool which provides a way for your customer to access the important legal information, terms & conditions and so forth of your marketing campaign.

• Twitpic. Any successful marketing campaign relies on eye-catching images that grab attention. But how can you show images through twitter? The answer is through Twitpic. This tool allows for you to upload marketing campaign images to twitter, which can be viewed by anyone within the twittersphere. This tool enables any company to express their campaign brand, company identity and artistic flair through twitter.

• Twitbadge. This tool creates a widget where you can embed your tweet onto other social media platforms. This tool in essence enables you to combine your different social media channels to meet the needs of one effective marketing campaign. With Twitbadge, re-post your marketing campaign tweet onto Facebook and other platforms, meaning you can quickly notify your customer market of your campaign in a variety of ways.

• Hashtag. It sounds simple, but don’t forget to give your campaign its own unique hashtag. This is a quick way to brand the campaign and tweeters will be able to spread knowledge of the campaign using this tag.

How to follow the buzz:

Hopefully, your marketing campaign will interest the customer market on twitter and you will receive thousands of new followers and customers. The best way to check the success of your campaign and to “follow the buzz” that your marketing campaign has created on twitter is to use these tools;

• Tweetdeck. This tool creates a dashboard where you can monitor your tweets and the tweets of followers/those you follow whilst also being able to simultaneously monitor any tweets that use your marketing campaign’s hashtag. Thus, with this tool you have one central place to monitor your entire twitter marketing campaign.

• Tweetscan. Enables you to search for any tweets on any subject (sort of like a twitter search engine), thus enabling you to see how many tweets are being posted by users with regards to your campaign.

• TwitterMeter. Allows you to scan the frequency in which certain search terms appear, – for example the name of your marketing campaign!

In short, there are many features of twitter which enable you to conduct a successful marketing campaign free from the 140 character restrictions placed upon your tweeting power. Remember, the instant communication enabled by twitter allows for you to respond to your customer’s concerns as soon as they are expressed. Learn to adapt your marketing strategy to meet the evolving needs of your customer market throughout the duration of your campaign.

Cogeco, a Canadian cable company, is attempting to sharpen the blunt instrument of TV advertising by providing demographic-based advertising to cable subscribers that can be split into different segments that can be shown to different audience. So while you might see one ad during a particular advertising time slot of a TV show, other people you know might be watching a completely different ad.

While this is probably a little creepy to most people, in that your cable company knows this much about you (although it should come as little surprise, given the amount of time and energy companies spend to learn how to get you to spend your money with them), this seems like a natural and necessary progression for TV advertising. TV ads are still the bread-and-butter for most companies that want to advertise, and they’re often wasting ad cash showing their ads to people who couldn’t care less about their products.

In many ways, this seems to be taking the contextual advertising that is standard fare on the web and moving it over to TV. Always interesting when you start to see what was once a ‘start-up’ ad space like the web start to influence the more mainstream ad spaces like TV.