The proposal for a Montréal Mobile developer meetup received an unexpected interest, and I have now nearly 20+ people interested in showing up.

I am excited to announce that we have now a venue, which is Station c, 5369 bvd St-Laurent, and a date, which is Friday 21st of March, at 5.30pm

Station C is Montréal’s new coworking space, and I arranged with Patrick Tanguay so that we can use exceptionally the place for this meetup. Thanks, Patrick!

The meetup is open to hackers, developers, user interface designers, or anyone interested in mobile applications and its usage. The format of the event will be barcamp’s — we will have an open schedule/live wiki, and anyone wishing to talk about a special topic can just write an entry. If you have been to RococoCamp, then we are heading to exactly the same format.

As always, be prepared to share, and also come with your mobile devices/laptops/tools.

Today is the final day for any company wishing to be a mobile carrier in the next few years. Industry Canada is receiving applications, both from legacy carriers, and potential new entrants, from a pool of 105mhz.

Industry Canada suprised everyone last fall whey they announced that 40mhz of the total pool would be reserved for new carriers — read MTS AllStream, from Manitoba, and Videotron Inc., from Québec.

Concerning applications, WirelessNorth reports that MTS AllStream has placed $340 million, for the bid, enough to buy all of the 40Mhz and become then a national carrier, coast-to-coast. On the other hand, Québecor already unveiled their intentions, and announced they are ready to invest up to $500 million to build a 3G UMTS network for Québec and also extend the service to other Canadian provinces. Also expect the 3 big telcos to pour in substantial amounts of cash to prevent entry of potential new competitors.

Now, the big question is, why should you care? First, it’s well-known that data rates and cell phone plans in Canada are scandalously high and prevents mass adoption of the technology or development of third-party applications and services. For instance, fact is that Rogers is the only GSM carrier in Canada (Fido also uses GSM, but they are owned by Rogers). This monopoly drives prices up, and discourages new cell phone makers like Apple to enter the market.

In this case, Videotron already announced they will be using GSM rather than CDMA for their wireless network, and hopefully, it’s possible to envision an unlimited data plan in Canada, which will pave the way for the iPhone.

Follow further development @ wirelessnorth.

I’ve raised the idea of having a Mobile Developer Meetup in Montreal.

If any of you is interested in developing for the iPhone SDK, or Google’s Android platform, or any other mobile device, leave a message. If we have more than 4/5 people interested, we will arrange something downtown — say next wednesday 19th around 6pm, or any other convenient day.

Things to talk about: geolocation, mobile commerce, mobile social networking, search, entertainement, web applications for mobile devices etc.

Vantrix, which specializes in video and content delivery for mobile phones, has announced a new product called Vantrix Store optimizer.

This so-called “store optimizer” allows a website to send personalized ringtones, wallpapers, and games to their visitor, without worrying about the specifics of the mobile phone or the format of the content. Sendmemobile.com, solow.com, and mbuzzy.com are one of Vantrix’s current customers for this new technology. In their case, they use Vantrix’s solution to send the latest tunes or the latest fashionable games to their members, or even’s a user’s own pictures and music, with the store optimizer converting and optimizing on-the-fly these files.

In case you are wondering what’s the big deal, this could in theory work with the hundreds of “web2.0″ websites on the Net, and allow the website’s owners to offer more personalized and unique services, up to the user’s cell phone. If there is a thing I learned recently, it’s that people are ready to pay a high price to customize what they have and show how unique they are.

This is also Vantrix’s first venture in the consumer market, as they offered previously their technology to mobile carriers or media powerhouses, like Orange, ABC, or T-Mobile. For me, this is a wise move for Vantrix. In this age, content gets olds very quickly and one way to make sure your services are always relevant is allowing your members to customize/design themselves their mobile phone.

Roberto Rocha reports at the Gazette about Concordia University’s new wifi network, making them the first Canadian University to implement a 802.11n system.

802.11n

This is not a simple technical update. Of course, they get now more coverage thanks to longer range, better throughput, and also better data rate, but what was interesting is that the new network comes with a whole range of services. The university is planning to offer outdoor Internet access through a subscription of 9$/month. The service would be accessible to the general public, making them an Internet provider company. Also, Concordia will offer students the option to offload calls from their mobile provider’s network and use instead the Wifi network to receive AND make telephone calls, making the university a VOIP and telecom company. This is done seamlessly, with devices switching to “traditional” telecommunication infrastructure when outside Concordia’s range.

The initiative is significant, as they cater to a 40.000+ population, and have 2 campuses in Montreal. It also gives a glimpse on the future, where we wouldn’t have any distinction between IP and PSTN networks. If universities, companies, and public organizations follow the lead, it would be possible in theory to have a city-wide 802.11n network in Montreal, and citizens could then have ubiquitous Internet and voip access.

The federal government unveiled yesterday the final rules for next year’s May auctions, which are largely in favour of new companies in the wireless industry. 40% of the new 105Mhz wireless spectrum will be reserved for new entrants, and existing telecommunications companies are to share their existing infrastructure with these new players.

This might just be the week’s biggest news; and certainly a big win for Canadians, one that will change their practices and how they will use their cell phones. More competition means plans (especially data plans) will be more affordable, and more Canadians will be able to use mobile services. It’s also a big sign for technology entrepreneurs and mobile software developers who can (finally) reach a local market.

Previously, it was nearly impossible to launch a mobile carrier in Canada due to costs and regulations which required any mobile carrier to cover most populated regions on Canada. This had the consequence of raising fixed costs for carriers, and thus raised prices of plans and services offered to subscribers.

On the telcos front, Bell Canada, Telus and Rogers are officially scandalized, while Videotron and regional players praised the federal governement for the move. They should understand though that if prices are going down, we will get a more flexible market, much more active users, and this will be good for everyone, for Canadians and telecom companies alike.

StartupNorth has also an enthusiastic post by Thomas Purve and comments about the news.

La Presse had a story yesterday about the Ville de Montréal and Ile-Sans-Fil in talks to install and deliver free, public WiFi in public parks and busy places in Montréal. The City would give the non-profit organization $200 000 each year to manage and monitor the hardware and pay for the Internet fees. 

This would bring WiFi to a next level in Montréal, where there are actually more than 200 free, public hotspots. It’s now common to come into a coffee shop and discover at least 10 or more people working on their laptops. Having WiFi in public parks and spaces would increase the technology’s rate of adoption; although we certainly won’t have Montréalers working on laptops, but most probably devices like the iPod or wifi-enabled cell phones. 

For instance, the Skype Phone is WiFi-enabled and would enable Montréalers to use Skype thanks to Ile-Sans-Fil’s network.

I still have open questions though. The city of Paris in France had a similar project but it was attacked by France Télécom this summer as illegal as they were also selling a subscription service to Parisians who wanted mobile WiFi. Here, Montréalers who live near parks and public spaces could get in theory free Internet access, and I don’t see Bell, Telus or Rogers seeing idly their customers going away. 

5 days after Google launched the Android SDK, Fred Brunel finished TwitterDroid, an Android application that updates Twitter on your Android-enabled cell phone. 

 This is a proof how easy it is to make an Android-based application. Even if I know Fred Brunel is not your ordinary developer (he made TwitterCal, a Ruby on Rails application in one weekend), he also has a full-time job. I know have to add Android to my list of technologies to build upon. mmm oh wait, there was already facebook apps on that list…. and iPhone user interfaces too … and jRuby … and Adobe AIR etc. who also thinks technology is getting faster these days?

Tech blogs in North America hailed yesterday Bell Canada as the first North America carrier to offer the HTC Touch with an unlimited internet and email data plan at $7, which if found true, would be a dramatic price plunge from their previous offers. See this advertisement from Bell:

image from engadget’s post

In the U.S., the most competitive unlimited data plan comes at $60, from AT&T’s offer for the iPhone. Given that Canadian mobile carriers are known to be more expensive than their american counterpart, I am not sure what to think about this new “unlimited data” plan. I went through Bell mobility online’s store, and there is an option to have the “unlimited mobile browser”, and it specifies:

Check e-mail, play games, send instant messages, browse the latest ringtones and screensavers, and more, for $7.00/month

If you have been around the mobile business in Canada, you know this is in fact an option to surf pre-selected websites from Bell Canada. You will get to use MSN Messenger, go to sympatico and 300 other websites, etc. but as soon as you submit an URL, you will be charged per page. Don’t expect to use Skype, go to your favourite blogs, use RSS readers, or any other online applications. In fact, after a few checks, this plan is offered to most cell phones sold by Bell Canada.

Of course, the $7 plan by Bell Canada is still very competitive, especially on a phone like the HTC Touch, where instant messenging and access to emails are built-in, and made “pleasurable” by the touchscreen.

I forgive engadget to spread false rumours, because they have no knowledge of the local market, but seeing this on Branchez-vous or Radio-Canada is surprising. Bell Canada has indeed great PR agents.

Kakiloc, started by Martin Dufort and then Alain Lavoie, was to offer a mobile presence service. You could for instance know via your cell phone if you had friends nearby. Now, Martin Dufort has “closed the experiment”, although he will continue to blog at location-based.blogspot.com. He also plans to reuse the location-based technology for future applications in vertical markets.

This is sad, because they were working on the project since I first met them, 9 months ago.

I think though that the market is not ready yet to use geo-localized services. This is a marketer’s and an entrepreneur’s dream come true, but it’s slowed down in Canada by data rates, and also by the capabilities of devices currently avalaible. Furthermore, Kakiloc users had to get their friends to use the service to make it useful, making the adoption even more difficult. Google’s android might ease things, but this is not even something I would bet on.