woman sues rogers for exposing affair to husband

Can mobile carriers be liable for divorce? I guess we’ll find out soon enough. There was a story in the Toronto Star this morning that told of a woman who is suing Rogers for $600,000 because her husband left her. She alleges this was caused by Rogers taking the liberty of sending her husband a consolidated bill when he signed up for internet and home phone. They apparently then lumped in her cell phone bill, which she alleges she did not request. When the husband saw the bill and noticed a series of long phone calls, he called the number and apparently found out about his wife’s affair.

Needless to say, Rogers is asserting that it is not liable, primarily it seems on the basis of lack of causality – i.e. it was the affair that led to the break-up, not the disclosure of personal information. Of course the wife will argue that the break-up would not have happened but for Rogers disclosure, which is likely alleged to be in contravention of her agreement with Rogers or the Canadian Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.

Interestingly, on the latter front, she apparently did not choose to make a complaint to the federal privacy commissioner, instead deciding to proceed by way of a statement of claim in the Ontario Superior Court.

I have my doubts as to the likelihood of her success. Despite the unfortunate circumstance she and her two young children now find themselves, I don’t think the courts will have much sympathy for her claim. Even if there were a breach by Rogers, I’m not sure how much in the way of damages she would be awarded. The question here would be whether the court believes the damages would have been foreseeable by Rogers. I think that would be unlikely. But who knows. In any event, I’m sure this is a case that The Ashley Madison Agency will be following very closely.

wired survey on iphone 3g speeds worldwide (including canada)

As the title suggests, Wired has published an article on iPhone 3G speeds worldwide. Us Canucks seemed to have fared relatively well:

# Canadian carriers Rogers and Fido tied for second fastest with an average download speed of about 1,330 Kbps on average.

That’s second worldwide by carrier. T-Mobile in Europe won the prize with average speed of 1,822 Kbps while AT&T in the US averaged a somewhat sad 990.

That being said, even the slow, slow bandwidth in ths US is a wee bit faster than the turtle-like (comparatively speaking) max 120 Kbps that Rogers’ EDGE provides.

Time to go get an iphone. Or maybe a Bold.

net neutrality – fcc order against comcast released

As most of you probably know, the US FCC and its members released a series of press releases at the beginning of August announcing its order against Comcast in respect of its “network management” activities in relation to P2P networks, but not releasing the order.

Well, apparently the order (PDF) has now been released. Haven’t had a chance to read it yet. Should be interesting, particularly given the same or similar developments with Bell and Rogers up here in Canada.

Noticed first on Lessig’s blog and of course in the time I’ve written a tiny little entry he has already churned out a five page letter thanking the FCC

I have a number of half finished posts on the question of net neutrality that haven’t been made public – mostly because they get unbearably long but still don’t do the topic justice. There are other reasons as well but perhaps I will get into it more if and when I decide to finally post something. Suffice it to say that I honestly don’t think the issue is black and white (and hopefully will not be caught in the “if you’re not for us, you’re against us” mentality).