The Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is postponing new area codes in Ottawa and Montreal. The Commission in February said Ottawa’s “613” and “819” regions would exhaust their supply of phone numbers later than expected. As a result, a new area code will not come until near the year 2014. Montreal (“514”) was supposed to receive a new area code in 2004, but the CRTC said the city would receive the adjunct designation in 2005. The Commission said local phone service has not grown as quickly as expected.
SIP takes a hit
The CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University last month said devices that use the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) are vulnerable to denial of service attacks and other more sophisticated strikes. The researchers said the Oulu University Secure Programming Group at the University of Oulu in Finland discovered the problems, which affect few devices today. SIP is an emerging signalling protocol used only by a handful of manufacturers. One of them, Cisco Systems Inc. said it has released an advisory about the problem. For more info visit www.cisco.com.
Wireless for the wealthy?
Canadians travelling in Europe might get sticker shock when they try to connect to the Web via wireless LAN (WLAN) access points. BroadGroup, a London, England-based research firm, in February said Europe is the most expensive region for wireless access, with average monthly subscriptions priced near Cdn$90. By comparison, Vancouver-based WLAN service provider FatPort Corp. charges $40 per month in Canada. BroadGroup said the market is immature, and pointed out that as WLANs grow in popularity, prices will become more uniform. For more information visit www.broad-group.com.