Chris Weber, executive vice president of sales and marketing for the Americas, Nokia
Close to 500 attended the 12th Canadian Telecom Summit to discuss this year’s theme, “Competition and Innovation: Celebrating Our Legacy, Developing the Future.” Over the course of day three, presenters at the event focused on how far the Canadian telecommunications industry has come, and on the progress it needs to make in order to stay competitive and relevant. The annual conference attracts leadership from the telecom, broadcast and IT industries in Canada.
The overriding theme of day three was innovation and how to be more innovative. Anthony Lacavera, chairman and CEO of
Globalive Holdings and
WIND Mobile kicked off the day with an address about WIND Mobile’s efforts to bring change to Canada’s telecom market. In spite of an unfriendly regulatory environment and the attempt of the “Big Three” telecoms to shut WIND out of the market, Lacavera’s company is flourishing. He pointed out that since WIND’s inception, the company has tripled its network capacity and it has secured an investment from VimpelCom, a Russian-based telecom service provider with operations in 20 countries.
Chris Weber,
Nokia’s executive vice president of sales and marketing for the Americas, described to the audience how Nokia is transforming itself, and its shift from the Symbian OS to Windows in particular. Weber presented Nokia’s Lumia model, which will be the company’s first product to run on a Windows operating platform. Nokia chose Windows over other operating systems because it had the biggest installed base, Weber said. “Microsoft brings scale and scope,” he added. Lumia customers will have access to many applications, a number of which were created by Canadian developers. In a bid to differentiate itself from Windows-based phone competition, Nokia has added cutting edge camera technology and augmented reality applications.
