In the slow progression toward a more enlightened and tolerable human civilization, another negative stereotype (is there any other kind?) unraveled this week as Canadians moved with the speed of spawning salmon to achieve national MMS interoperability.

Other than downhill skiers--who are assisted by gravity, high-performance wax and a sharp outer edge--Canadians have not been regarded by their southerly neighbors as the swiftest creatures to roam the continent. After all, it's hard to run in snowshoes. And during what little summer they enjoy, there is really no hurry to paddle one's canoe at a coxswain's pace and miss the moose along the shoreline. Nor is there much point in racing from one side of a lake to another to follow the fish like we do in our filthy waterways here. The fish are plentiful there. They will find you if you're patient.

Granted, as we in the U.S. celebrated this month our 229th year since declaring our independence from King George and the Church of England, the Canadians were still warming up to the idea of regularly celebrating what they used to call Dominion Day--the official marking of the formation of Canada on July 1, 1867. The Canadians established the holiday in 1879, but didn't get around to celebrating it again until 1917 and then had another party in 1927.

In 1958, the government called for an annual observance, and the country did so for the most part until 1982 when they changed Dominion Day to Canada Day, which is a long way of saying Canadians sometimes take a while to establish a routine.

However, Canadian telcos have good reason to hold their big-city counterparts south of the border in the same regard as those telcos hold their counterparts south of the Mason-Dixon line--as being a little slow on the uptake (all negative stereotypes and all wrong of course, but in a competitive world what do you expect?)

The Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association last week established a nationwide multimedia messaging service interoperability network for all Tier 1 operators. A central MMS exchange hub from VeriSign will manage the routing, protocol conversion and transcoding of different media formats.

As it was for instant messaging, MMS won't go mainstream until this level of interoperability is in place. Carriers in the U.S. have all the same relationships with companies like VeriSign with its newly acquired LightSurf technology as well as with other providers of MMS clearinghouse solutions. They could easily do the same thing. They simply need the will.

Taking a back seat to Canada should provide some incentive. But a 100-fold increase in the amount of multimedia messaging should be incentive enough.

E-mail me at tmcelligott@primediabusiness.com.