Greg Meckbach

Canada's telecommunications regulator today issued a ruling upholding the right of major telcos and cable providers to manage the traffic of its Internet customers, but requiring the wholesale providers to give wholesale customers 60 days notice and forbidding them from throttling video conferencing without the government's permission.

The decision resulted from hearings held last July. At the time, small Internet service providers such as TekSavvy Solutions Inc. and the SaveOurNet.ca coalition, had protested traffic management techniques in favour of what they call net neutrality.

As Barack Obama prepares to take the reins of the Executive Branch of the U.S. government from President George W. Bush, a lobbyist suggests the economic crisis may make it difficult for Obama to fulfill a key campaign pledge.

In order to bring broadband service to every American community, the government will need to fund wireless buildup, said Pete Leon, vice-president of Dow Lohnes Government Strategies LLC, a Washington, D.C.-based lobby firm.

VMware Inc.'s vClient initiative may be compelling but one industry analyst wonders how many users will require their desktop environment on portable devices.

The vClient initiative, announced this week at the 10th annual VMWorld conference, is designed to give users one view of all their data and applications on different devices, and is endorsed by major hardware vendors like Fujitsu-Siemens, HP and NEC.

Companies may be expecting too much from cloud computing, but other technologies such as video conferencing are starting to live up to their promises, according to a study released last week.

Gartner Inc. of Stamford, Conn. has published Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies 2008, which discusses a wide range of technologies and separates the gee-whiz factor from the reality. The report includes an analysis of cloud computing, social networking, green IT, microblogging and telepresence.