Yule Heibel’s Post Studio © 2003-2008

Hey, Canada (and Canadian telcoms), get your head around this: How Mobile Boosts Productivity

PSFK’s Piers Fawkes points to a great link in this short blog post, How Mobile Boosts Productivity | PSFK - Trends, Ideas & Inspiration.  He writes:

Tech consultancy Ovum has produced a report that looks at the wireless industry’s impact on American productivity They say that by 2016 the value of the combined mobile wireless voice and broadband productivity gains to the US economy will equal $427 billion per year - a figure that would exceed productivity from today’s motor vehicle manufacturing and pharmaceutical industries combined.

Big winners will be healthcare and small business. The report has several case-studies about how mobile technology has improved productivity form companies like BMW and GE.

The report he’s referring to is a PDF called The Increasingly Important Impact of Wireless Broadband Technology and Services on the U.S. Economy, which covers a lot of ground with hard data, securing the case that wireless technology boosts productivity and is great for the economy.  The document deals with the U.S. economy, but obviously has implications for Canada — and obviously Canada should learn from this.

In particular, take a look at sections 1.2, 2.1, and 2.3.  Given how much of our economy depends on small businesses, it’s especially crucial that service plans in this country smarten up and start offering much more competitive rates.

If they don’t, it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that Canadian telcoms are actually hurting this country.

Diigo Bookmarks 07/09/2008 (p.m.)

• Looming Debate, by Veronique Vienne (Metropolis Magazine) - Annotated

  Interesting article (with some inaccuracies, too), focused chiefly on Bertrand Delanoe, the “Situationist”-inspired left-leaning, assassination attempt survivor and openly gay mayor of Paris, who gets blind-sided by Nikolas Sarkozy, the pro-business president of France, who wants Paris to be a bit more get-go-ish. Delanoe is on the side of the human-scale advocates who want to preserve its “charms,” whereas Sarkozy doesn’t mind a tall building or two. The article is interesting because it’s one of the clearest outlines I’ve seen so far on making political linkages between certain attitudes toward modernization and height in Paris, vs preservation (and rejuvenation) of what that city’s status quo as well as historical “essence” (at least mid-19th century onward) is.

  tags: paris, metropolis_magazine, high_rise, urbanism, urbanplanning, bertrand_delanoe