Spark it up

Hey.

In case you don't listen, Amber Mac is on CBC's Spark this week, talking about a subject that is near and dear to my heart: Howcum we can watch American TV and Movies on TV and in the theatre, but not online?

Is T-Mobile behind Niagara Networks

Okay. 

So I've mentioned before that there's rumours of T-Mobile making a bid for some of that sweet Canadian Spectrum. Trouble is, the auction rules state that the company doing the bidding has to be Canadian. 

We've also mentioned that Niagara Networks Inc. has come out of the blue to bid on a huge swatch of that spectrum.

CBC has put two and two together, and come up with a question: Is there a bigger Telecom backing Niagara? They mention both T-Mobile and AT&T as possible backers, but the official word is "No comment."

My money is on T-Mobile, just because that's the way I read the T-leaves. But I could be completely wrong. 

Any way you shake it, a new player in the Canadian market would hopefully generate a bit of competition, and rates might come down. 

The fact that both T-Mobile and AT&T have iPhone contracts in their respective countries has no bearing on my interest in this story. Honest. 

What I think'd be even more interesting would be if Apple were found to be backing a play for some spectrum. That would go a long way to helping me with my current theory that Apple doesn't really care about the Canadian Market. 

Sigh

You know, back when I started thinking about writing about Apple, it was motivated by the fact that there wasn't much out there about Apple. 

And I still remember the bad old days, and it is hard to wrap my mind around how much has changed. But when you see things like this, you know, Apple is no longer the company I remember. 

I wouldn't have it any other way. But still, it is sometimes hard to wrap my head around Apple news on CBC. 

(See, I told you I liked CBC; they're one of my main news feeds...)

Tora, tora torrent

Hey, all you Bit Torrent fans out there:

CBC is considering (according to Michael Geist) releasing Canada's Next Great Prime Minister as a bit torrent the day after it's released. 

While it would be a watershed moment (the first North American broadcaster to release a show via BitTorrent), colour me unimpressed. Canada's Next Great Prime Minister? They couldn't come up with something more...interesting to release?

I am already calling foul. "According to our research, only ten people downloaded this show, meaning that BitTorrent is not a viable means of distribution."

Well, duh, nobody downloaded the show, but nobody *watched* the show, either. 

Alright, alright. Maybe a few people are watching the show. But I suspect that the BitTorrent crowd is not their target demographic. I hope to be proved wrong, but I think it is an experiment designed to fail. Why don't they BitTorrent something that people would want to watch, like...um. Hang on. No, give me a minute, I'll come up with something. Um. Like, er...

Does CBC have anything worth going through the trouble of downloading?

(Whoops. It's now official.)

Note: I love our public broadcaster. Really I do. No, don't give me that. I didn't see you traveling 3000 km to protest the cutbacks back in the early 1990s. It's just that, for all the good it does, it still hasn't figured out Episodic TV. News? Brilliant. Comedy? Love it. Da Vinci's inquest? The exception that proves the rule.