Nortel Won't Be Licensing Patents

The cloud of confidentiality that surrounds the Nortel wireless auction is leading to a great deal of speculation over just what the bankruptcy trustees are selling and Ericsson is buying. One particularly contentious issue is that of their patents.

First, are these patents core to the wireless business's success (and value) and, if so, which of those patents are the truly important ones? Certainly they do not all have equal value. One article that lays it out fairly clearly is this one by Mark McQueen. Second, even though there is a value differential across the patent portfolio, does it make sense that they be prioritized in this particularly cut-and-dried way?

In my previous article, I stated that the patents will be allocated to and sold as part of the business-unit lots by the trustees. Is it instead possible that the patents will be retained by Nortel and instead licensed to the purchasers of the business units? I am very skeptical about the possibility of this outcome, and that is the subject of this article.

Once the wireless, MEN and enterprise businesses are sold, what will be left? Will there be a much-smaller Nortel that eventually comes out of bankruptcy with a viable business that is either free of its creditor obligations or in a position to deal with whatever debt load they are left to repay? More to the point, will Nortel become a patent licensing, non-operating company like (to pick other domestic examples) Mosaid and Wi-Lan?

If this were to occur, I would expect that the bankruptcy trustees, due to their first allegiance to making the company's creditors as near to whole as possible, would need a solid assurance that there is a safe, profitable way to license the intellectual property it would continue to own. They are not venture capitalists that are prepared to take a risk on an unproven royalty-based business model for those LTE patents. They are essentially bankers, and so they will (as they ought) take the certain and definitive path of a firm price in the present time frame. That is what the creditors will assuredly demand.

Then there is the matter of assigning value to each patent in the portfolio. This, too, is an uncertain process. There are patents that all will agree are either critical or of little value, but what of the majority between these extremes? One of the things I learned (I played a small role in one cross-licensing negotiation while at Nortel) is that there is bankable value in having a large stable of patents since, because the value of each is not always known in the present, numbers matter. Other large companies are in the same situation and are therefore more likely to enter into all-encompassing cross-licensing agreements to protect themselves without the dubious and expensive exercise of trying to quantify the future value of thousands of individual patents. Ericsson knows this.

I maintain my view that the patents will be sold along with the business units. That is the one path that makes the most sense to the sellers and the buyers. I do not expect a patent-licensing Nortel business to emerge from bankruptcy. Waving the flag will not change this.

Selling Nortel's Patents

Nortel appears to be the company that just refuses to disappear. Now it's RIM jumping in to muddy the waters on the sale of Nortel's wireless division, which Ericsson recently won in a private asset auction. The Ericsson bid is problematic in itself, but let's look at RIM's interests first.

Nortel's wireless division is in the network infrastructure business. RIM is in the software, services and personal wireless device businesses. The overlap is, to be generous, minimal. This makes the fit very questionable. However I think the following quote from a Reuters news report sheds some light on what RIM wants:

By trying to buy the LTE patents still held by Nortel, RIM is aiming to future-proof its business and avoid having to license the technology later from another company, said Research Capital analyst Nick Agostino.

That is, RIM wants Nortel's patents, not the equipment business. This is far more believable, especially in light of the massive patent litigation RIM has suffered, and continues to suffer. If the patents go to Ericsson or Nokia-Siemens, not only does RIM lose the defensive measure of having more patents in its portfolio, it will have to achieve patent cross-licensing deals with the winner of the auction, which is far from assured.

Considering Ericsson's winning bid of well over $1B, this may seems like an expensive way for RIM to acquire a patent portfolio. However, recall the nearly $1B payout it had to make to NTP alone after losing in court. NTP's patents are now almost completely invalidated, yet the money is gone for good. And that case was not the end of RIM's woes. No matter what you think of the patent legal "industry", if the Nortel patents give it some measure of protection, even for a billion dollars, perhaps it is worth it to them. You can bet that Nortel's patents would stand up to scrutiny far better than those of NTP.

However it is not that easy for RIM to buy only the pieces of Nortel they want. First, the patents themselves are assigned to Nortel Networks, not any one division of the corporation. In the cataloguing of assets, the thousands of patents Nortel has in its portfolio would have had to be apportioned to the separate asset lots for sale through the bankruptcy process. Those lots cannot be broken down to be bid on piecemeal by RIM or anyone else. My guess (and it is only a guess) is that's where RIM ran into trouble with the auction process: they could not get at the patents they wanted without the burden of also taking the infrastructure business. If my surmise is correct, the trustees are right to have done things as they have. The value of the business is critically harmed if it does not include the patents that are encapsulated within the current and planned products of that business; separating out the patents, even if only those of interest to RIM, would reduce the proceeds of the sale, or scuttle it entirely.

In response to their failure to skew the process to their advantage, RIM jumps up and down, waving the flag. This gets the politicians alarmed and wondering how to respond. While there is no shortage of advice, I expect that in the end the government will sensibly stay out of the fray except as they are required to by law. The $300M financing promised by the government stirs a degree of public outrage, even without knowing what conditions the government would impose on Ericsson. Perhaps it's to guarantee that jobs stay in Canada? It isn't likely they'd disappear anyway because, first, the core of the wireless business is the skilled workforce, not the extant hardware and software products, and, second, they already have a long-standing presence in this country (Montreal). What would kill the deal for Ericsson is if the patent portfolio is pulled from the package.

I expect that those patents will stay right where they belong, part and parcel with the wireless business. If RIM's objective is to cherry pick what they want, they'll lose. Until then, expect more political noise that will fail to enlighten.

Madoff vs. Jones: Differences and Similarities

The fraudulent investment schemes by Madoff and Jones may be found to be similar in many ways, but there is one way in which they differ: the difference in wealth of the victims. This is apparent from the the 1000-to-1 ratio of Madoff's take ($65B) to that of Jones ($50-100M), and from the stories of the victims. It is therefore understandable that sentiment toward the victims, while generally well-meaning in both cases, seems more positive toward Jones' victims. Since they are closer in wealth and situation to most people, it is easier to identify with them. Like them, we similarly feel a sense of confusion when it comes to barely-comprehensible financial instrument in which we are directed toward by banks and financial advisors.

Yet when it comes to Madoff's victims the general sense is that, since they are mostly wealthy individuals, we imagine they would be more savvy when it comes to investing. There is an undercurrent in the media stories and in casual conversations that they should have known better. This is what I'd like to look at in this post: do the wealthy know more than about making good investing decisions than the general population?

Let's start with a hypothetical situation... Congratulations! You've just won $5,000,000 in the lottery. Well that's wonderful news and oh so fortunate for you. After the back slaps and hubbub die down you have to decide what to do with all that money. You could just dump it into a savings account and withdraw from it as needed. Then apart from rewriting your will and some other necessary steps you can be done with it and go on with your now more-comfortable life.

Except this is not what you will do. You will be encouraged by those around you to invest the money, to put it to work and make even more money. This all sounds reasonable since, after all, interest rates are pathetically low. There is also in most of us a seed of benign greed; no matter how much we have, most people will always want more. Getting into the investing game is therefore a near certainty despite your ability to live your life to the fullest by simply drawing on that initial capital windfall. It should also be said that you will be gently nagged by those closest to you to grow the wealth since they hope to benefit from it in various ways. The advice will be well-meaning, yet the pressure will build on you invest the money to best effect.

What will you do? You've never had a need to do more than buy into GICs or mutual funds for your RRSP. That seemed sufficient for your long-term objectives, and also provided the perspective to ride out some brutal market volatility like what we're currently experiencing. However you can't put $5M in your RRSP, so you will have to deal with capital gains and losses, equities and other cash investments. You are beginning to wake up to the possibilities of new ways to invest. You will also recognize that you need help.

Like most people you will ask those around you for recommendations on trustworthy and competent financial advisors. You are likely to trust those whom you are directed by those you already trust. They will tell you of the great results they've had and their advisor's qualities as a person, or even as a family friend. You arrange to meet that person and you are impressed. Few of the investment instruments he mentions are comprehensible to one unschooled in these arcane financial matters, but you like the guy and your relatives and closest friends have nothing but good to say about him. So you give him your money and let him take care of things after some discussion of your personal and family needs. He will even connect you with other professionals, including accountants and lawyers, so that makes things even easier. With that one step all the unfamiliar worries of great wealth are taken care of; you can breathe easier.

In the unfortunate case that the advisor's name is Madoff or Jones, you are lost. As lost as are all those who honestly and passionately made that recommendations to you. You are the victim of a classic con game, albeit on a grander stage and of an unusually long duration.

It may not be too surprising that the average person could fall into Jones' clutches, but surely not those that fall within Madoff's sphere! Yet it is the same. My point is that having money does not magically confer insights into all matters financial. It is much like driving a car and having only the vaguest notion of what electronic fuel injection does. My hypothetical example was meant to illustrate this - many wealthy people are just like you and me, and are susceptible to the same ploy. Except for the few who have been raised within wealthy families or made their wealth in the financial industry, wealthy people are little better prepared to make serious investment decisions than a lottery winner. They go through the same process of soliciting recommendations on who to entrust with their money.

Madoff's scheme differed from Jones' to cater to the targeted victims. The financial instruments were purported to only work for large sums in aggregate; a network of accomplices, both innocent and complicit, provided the reach to a larger network of the wealthy, and; an air of exclusivity was constructed by advertising a false scarcity - that it was difficult to be approved to invest in Madoff's funds. Beyond that the ploy was much the same: draw in the financially-unsophisticated with a carefully-constructed network of trust.

Their Ponzi schemes were bound to fail, as all must fail eventually, so it is hard to know how they might have envisioned avoiding disaster in the end. For those stories we'll have to wait.

Videotron Roaming Agreement

Roaming arrangements between the new Canadian wireless providers and the incumbents are expected because they are necessary. It is therefore no surprise that Videotron would enter a roaming arrangement with Rogers. If they do not do this, the value of their wireless service is compromised: subscribers' phones would become an expensive burden out of the Videotron's limited home territory of Quebec and Eastern Ontario. Even for new entrants with a more national footprint, they will still build their network in stages, and so will need a way for their subscribers to travel economically.

Most interestingly is the question: what's in it for Rogers? If they and the other incumbents simply refuse to enter roaming agreements with Videotron and the other new entrants, they retain a critical differentiator - national service, without roaming surcharges. After all, Rogers is already selling wireless services in Quebec. Further, Videotron subscribers would still be able to use Rogers' and the others' networks on an ad hoc basis when they travel, but at a higher rate. This, too, benefits Rogers and the other incumbents. In a limited sense, Rogers is consigning Videotron to becoming an MVNO outside of their home territory, or even within their territory where Rogers has towers and Videotron does not.

By concluding this agreement, they lock out Bell and Telus from any revenue sharing with Videotron. This favours Rogers since every incumbent will lose a portion of their subscribers to Videotron, but now only Rogers can claw back some of the lost revenue.

Rogers is already at a marketing disadvantage in Quebec since it is less able to sell bundles - Videotron is the regionally-dominant company for cable TV and broadband. With this agreement, they are also compensating for the subscribers they are bound to lose to takers of Videotron bundles. While they are enhancing Videotron's offerings, they know Videotron is only a modest threat because it is regional.

It would be more telling if Rogers, Bell or Telus enter a similar agreement with a new entrant with national aspirations, such as Bitove, which are more direct competitors. Agreements with those companies are unlikely. It is not impossible, but it will strongly depend on circumstances and pricing, with the incumbents in the strongest negotiating position.

How Not to Keep Your Job

With all of the turmoil in Nortel's prospects, and especially for its component businesses, I have to wonder what it is that these people are thinking. Even though French workers have a decidedly unique way of dealing with labour disputes - with tacit approval by the government with their hands-off approach to worker criminality - this action against Nortel is simply stupid.

Now is the time when every worker at Nortel should be striving to increase the "curb appeal" of both themselves and their business units. They are, after all, on the selling block. If you were a prospective buyer, would you want to purchase a business whose employees would openly threaten sabotage and violence against you?

I can sympathize with their plight as their lives and incomes are thrown into disarray by the troubles of their employer. However, they are doing themselves a disservice by this gross misbehaviour. They are only increasing the chance that their employment troubles will become permanent.

DPI: Engineering Solution or... Something Else

I find it sometimes surprising that in all the discussions and regulatory proceedings both here and elsewhere in the world there is little attention paid to the basic economics of DPI for broadband throttling and usage caps. The major ISPs typically claim that they need to take these measures since a portion of their users are causing congestion in their networks due to their extreme practices, especially heavy P2P usage. Following their lead, we end up diving into rat-holes and chasing red herrings in trying to ascertain whether there really is congestion and in considering the privacy implications of DPI.

The more basic question on the congestion question is: which is more economical for the ISP - intervention or adding capacity? It is not that this question is being ignored or avoided by those opposing the ISPs' practices, but rather that the discussion is almost always derailed when it comes up. Since all the data is closely guarded by those ISPs (often, large telecom carriers when it comes to broadband), you can either accept their claims at face value or come up with an independent model of their network and operations economics - which those ISPs will always poo-poo, yet never disclose the true data. Let's explore a qualitative view of the latter - network and operations economics - even while the CRTC seems to lean toward the former - trusting the carriers - in their deliberations.

First, there is the matter of capital intensity. As reported here, Andrew Odlyzko makes the claim that there is no need for increased investment to achieve higher capacity. (He goes further and says that internet traffic volume growth has slowed somewhat, but let's leave that aside.) This seems very believable on its face . The long term capital budgets of all the large carriers is fairly steady over time as a proportion of revenue. Even so, they have built massive wireless and broadband networks from scratch, and which continue to increase in capabilities and universality.

Part of this is easily explained: if you want to buy a piece of equipment today you will be hard pressed to get one with 56 kbps line speed - it's obsolete and only available on the used market, if at all. If you go out to buy equipment, like it or not you will get the latest and greatest, and you will pay about the same price as in the past for its less-capable predecessor. While time may not cure all ills, it will result in higher-capacity networks with no change in capital intensity on the part of the ISPs. We then only need to consider whether this natural capacity growth is keeping pace with user demand. I have no hard numbers to present in this post, however all indications I've seen is that user demand has yet to overwhelm network capacity in either the access or core. It is also naturally limited by user connection speed, whether DSL, DOCSIS or wireless - if you have 3 Mbps DSL, you can't use 4 Mbps - and the ISPs charge preciously high prices for higher-speed tiers. They are getting additional revenue from the high-usage subscribers they decry as a blight on their profitability.

For my second point, we must understand that capacity is not free; if there is congestion it will cost money to alleviate it, however it is done. The only alternative would be to modify user behaviour, but that is unlikely without draconian measures such as raising prices or limiting availability - neither the ISP nor the user benefits from that. Therefore there are two technical strategies that can be performed in the network to alleviate congestion: increase capacity or reduce usage. Which is the more economically attractive? Adding capacity is technically easiest: just add more of the same, whether it be more or faster data connections within the access and core networks, and to peer networks, as subscribers are added and as per-user consumption increases. They just need to add up the prices of the new assets, write off the assets being replaced (old cards and boxes) and figure out how much operations costs change for the projected life of the asset. Since capital investment for mature technology is usually in the range of 25% to 50% of total expenditures, this can be modeled with some confidence.

Now let's consider DPI as the technology to reduce usage. Have you ever tried to sell a new box, a piece of the network infrastructure, to a carrier? I have, and I can tell you that it isn't easy. You'd better be a very athletic salesman if you hope to jump all the hurdles they put in front of you on the path to your goal. The prospective customer will roll his eyes, grimace and otherwise look for any and every reason to avoid doing business with you. Depending on the specific technology, the carrier may demand that you partner with an existing supplier and convince them to incorporate your technology within their box, just so the carrier doesn't have to add a new box to their network.

DPI includes a box (network element) of this latter classification. Since it is in series with the users' data it becomes another point of network failure which must be accounted for in network engineering. It must also be integrated with the carrier's OSS (operational support systems), including provisioning, maintenance and accounting. On top of this, staff must be trained for the new equipment and services, and service requirements must be designed, tested in a lab, and deployed, with the possibility of backing out if there are problems. Not only that, since it manipulates user data there is a risk that user services will be (unintentionally!) degraded. As can be seen, there are good reasons for the carrier to be extremely wary of introducing new network elements - there must be a compelling business reason. Unlike the costs associated with existing technology, the capital costs for something entirely new is typically only about 10% to 15% of their total costs - the box itself is essentially free.

This is why I am dubious that the ISPs deploy throttling DPI to solve network congestion. There is an easier solution, and likely at least as economical in the long run: add capacity. As an engineering solution to congestion it would be difficult for the decision-makers at these companies to approve the necessary budgetary requirements, especially when you also consider the high risks of the public relations strategy in which they are currently engaged. I therefore conclude that DPI has not been deployed as an engineering solution to an engineering problem.

If not an engineering solution, the ISPs' drivers must come from marketing. This involves many possibilities, including new service revenue, innovative service opportunities, competitive positioning, and so on. Everyone has an opinion on what, exactly, they are up to, but since they are less than forthcoming about their reasons (as should be expected), there are many suppositions. These may or may not include an evidence trail. Some of the possibilities came out on Friday at the CRTC hearings when it became clear that DPI was not used solely for congestion control but for other purposes, including, but not proved, anti-competitive behaviour.

These hearings are still more politics than substance, even with the revelations that have come to light. The question to my mind is whether the evidence will convince the CRTC to rule based on the evidence instead of political policy. We won't learn the answer to that question for some time yet.

CRTC Items: Flat Rate; Guaranteed Bandwidth

I am going to reverse my decision to not comment on the ongoing CRTC hearings into net neutrality. The reason is that a couple of points came up that I believe are worth some discussion. I am taking my cues from the excellent summary of the first day's proceedings by Frances Munn, as published in Michael Geist's blog.

The first point is about flat-rate vs. usage-based pricing for broadband. Take for example Munn's summary of an exchange between Commissioner Lamarre and Canadian Consumer Groups:

Lamarre went on to address the five percent "high end" users who use more bandwidth than others. She asked whether it was fair for light users to in effect subsidize their usage. The Consumer Groups reiterated that it was appropriate to charge for usage, but expressed concern that prices would go too high too quickly since ISPs remain an unregulated industry. Further, Lamarre pointed out that it is difficult for users to know how much bandwidth they are actually using, and the Consumer Groups agreed that such information would be helpful for users.

I don't understand why it is that people get so excited when the subjects of flat-rate pricing and broadband come up together. This is hardly a novel concept: flat-rate pricing for telephony service, as one prominent example, has long been a CRTC objective for local service, and is now common for VoIP long distance service. Yet there are wide differences among subscribers' use of the telephone, and therefore also in the network costs for the carrier. Broadband is in much the same situation.

There may be some wider variations in usage (a wider Bell curve over the population of subscribers) although this has not been demonstrated. This point was overlooked by both the questioner and the questioned. I have to wonder whether either understands the point. At least Sandvine in its earlier testimony does appear to understand the issue, although it didn't appear to make an impression on the Commissioners:

Sandvine expressed scepticism that monthly usage charging could impact congestion. An economic model that deviates from the simple flat rate 40 dollar/month model would have to have transparent and visible measures of when charges are and are not incurred. Sandvine argued that it could become a powerful model in the long run, but that it would require a change in consumer understanding and acceptance.

The second point is about guaranteed bandwidth. This is a subject I discussed one year ago this month. I was a bit irritated about how it is being misrepresented by Sandvine at the hearing.

...Sandvine argued that their submission was based on how to best manage internet traffic to create an equal space for everyone. They claimed their main purpose is to manage congested internet traffic. For instance, their technology will delay a live streaming video if there is a call attempting to go through the network.

In his presentation, Sandvine's CTO spoke of the need to prioritize traffic according to some carrier-specified criteria - which, not surprisingly, requires DPI - which is about queuing packets and not about guaranteeing bandwidth (what they call "equal space for everyone"). It comes up again during the discussion between him and Von Finckenstein:

First, a service provider has to identify the VoIP packets. All VoIP packets have similar qualities - they are low packet and use relatively little bandwidth. When given priority, the idea is for the VoIP packets to precede non-voice packets.

VoIP packets do not require priority to attain a set level of service quality; VoIP requires a constant guaranteed bandwidth. The reason is that, even when pushed to the front of the queue, there may still not be sufficient bandwidth at all times to assure service quality for this real-time sensitive traffic. It would appear that Sandvine is more concerned with talking their product capabilities rather than the needs of the underlying services; that is, they are promoting what they can do, but not what needs to be done.

Guaranteeing bandwidth is a tougher problem in a packet network that is shared by a multitude of users and applications than it is in legacy networks. The reason is that those legacy networks - circuit-switch telephony, ATM, and long-haul trunks - were designed from the ground up to meet the needs of services that require guaranteed bandwidth. This is also the reason why DOCSIS cable technology includes a telephony channel that is completely separated from that for broadband data.

Guaranteed bandwidth has a cost that is anathema to the traditional data communications paradigm: bandwidth must be reserved whether or not it is actively in use. For example, if you are in a conversation on your wireline telephone, when you are not talking the bandwidth is not available to anyone else. In the same situation with VoIP, packets are not sent and any bandwidth that is therefore not consumed is available to other users and services (or perhaps just other services when it's your home network or your dedicated uplink to the network).

Another way to put it is this: bandwidth on any communications link can only be guaranteed (reserved) for a particular user and/or session by reducing the available bandwidth available on that link to all other users and services. It's a very elementary tenet of network engineering, but an important one. IP networks for the most part do not allow reserved bandwidth and can only manage traffic by adjusting stream and packet priorities by a set of policies. However, none of this guarantees bandwidth.

The schemes that can achieve this on IP networks exist (see MPLS) but are largely not available to the vast bulk of the internet market. Internet services continue to be best effort.

Why Buy Nortel?

At first blush it might seem insane for anyone to offer to buy a bundled Nortel. After all, nothing has changed - the parts are still worth more than their sum. Yet that is what one of the creditor groups - MatlinPatterson Global Advisers - is proposing to do.

This is not insanity. Rather it is a recognition that now is a poor time to be selling assets, when the market is at its worst. It is only natural for creditors, those first in line to claim the proceeds of asset sales, to not lock in distressed valuations.

Their motivation is purely financial; it is not a rescue bid to save Nortel. It is instead a bid to delay the sale of Nortel's parts until market valuations rise when the economy recovers. The ploy is risky: the creditors are betting that the expense of keeping Nortel in business for the interim will be less than the increase in valuation when sold at some uncertain future date. The businesses themselves may also deteriorate further as customers abandon a supplier with a dubious future. It may be better for them to take the loss now and deploy the cash proceeds in, hopefully, better investment vehicles. However, it is their money and their risk, and therefore their call.

The outcome may be delayed but it is the same: Nortel is done.

Internet Non-neutrality

With the start of CRTC's so-called network neutrality hearings this week, there will be much pontificating about right vs. wrong, advantages vs. disadvantages, and so on. You might think from this that this will be an academic and law-based exercise where the evidence is impartially weighed and a just outcome will be the eventual result.

I do not believe this. I have myself written on the topic of throttling, caps, metering and other controls used by Bell Canada and other ISPs in Canada and elsewhere, but not recently. I stopped because this is less and less about the evidence and technological capability, or even about sound public policy: it is about politics and influence. This is what happens when there is a lack of diverse competition in a market - politics comes to the fore in an attempt by interested parties to skew the market to desired outcomes. What we have here is a market failure. In a broader sense this is no different from the situation with GM or Nortel, and government's choice to become involved, or not, in each respective instance.

This CBC article nicely summarizes the grouping of the contending parties in front of the CRTC. Notice that while they are grouped by commonality of position, perhaps it is more important that these are also barometers of each group's political influence. I don't want to come across as too cynical, but I think it is most probable that the largest businesses, the ones with the biggest numbers for employment, network assets, business investment and ties to government will skew the results in their direction.

This is not necessarily a dreadful outcome, even though it is not entirely fair. Regardless of how one may feel about broadband, these are the companies that have made it possible. The main contenders, for all their attention to customer service and responsiveness, ride on the infrastructure built by others; the passengers will always have less influence than the carriers when it comes to transport policies. This is as true for broadband as it is for railroads and airlines.

Therefore, if you are on the side of the independent ISPs, don't look to government to help you out. The only effective solution is facilities-based competition. We need more than the telephone and cable companies providing broadband infrastructure. However it is not easy to break this effective duopoly. Wi-Fi and Wi-Max have yet to come to the rescue since, like any facilities-based ventures, they require massive up-front investment to become viable alternatives. All they've scored so far is limited penetration, and a lot of unfulfilled promises. Mobile wireless competition, which is on the way, will also help a little bit, but again, not much.

I am going to largely ignore the CRTC proceedings since I do not see that they will be very influential on CRTC's ultimate policy determination.

Our Young Centenarians

A belated Canada Day to everyone.

As celebrations wind down for our country's 142nd birthday, I want to share a thought. Everywhere you looked during all the events around town there were countless young children. What struck me was the realization that a large proportion of these children will live to see the next century. That's right - they will live past the year 2100. I find that remarkable.

I have no deep messages to convey except a sense of the continuity of life and hope for the future. There will of course be both good and bad developments both in Canada and the world over the next 90 years, and these future centenarians will see it all. We won't, of course, but they will.

It pleases me to speculate on what wonders they will see, experience and share in that distant future. Hope springs eternal.