Bell Canada
Bell Canada (commonly referred to as Bell) is a Canadian telecommunications company headquartered at 1 Carrefour Alexander-Graham-Bell[6] in the borough of Verdun, Quebec, in Canada. It is an ILEC (incumbent local exchange carrier) in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec; as such, it was a founding member of the Stentor Alliance. It is also a CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier) for enterprise customers in the western provinces.
Formerly
The Bell Telephone Company of Canada, Ltd. (1880–1968)
April 29, 1880[1]
Verdun, Quebec, Canada[2]
CA$23.96 billion (2019)[4]
CA$10.106 billion (2019)[4]
CA$3.253 billion (2019)[4]: 58
52,100 (2019)[4]
- American Bell (1880–1899)[5]
- AT&T Corporation (1899–1975)
- BCE Inc. (1983–present)
- Bell Technical Solutions
- Bell Mobility
- Bell Aliant
- Bell MTS
- Virgin Plus
- Bell Internet
- Bell Satellite TV
- Bell Fibe TV
- Lucky Mobile
Its subsidiary Bell Aliant provides services in the Atlantic provinces. It provides mobile service through its Bell Mobility (including flanker brand Virgin Plus) subsidiary, and television through its Bell Satellite TV (direct broadcast satellite) and Bell Fibe TV (IPTV) subsidiaries.
Bell Canada's principal competitors are Rogers Communications in Ontario and Western Canada, Telus in Quebec and Western Canada, and Quebecor (Videotron) in Quebec. The company serves over 13 million phone lines and is headquartered at the Campus Bell complex in the borough of Verdun in Montreal.[7]
Bell Canada is one of the main assets of the holding company BCE Inc., an abbreviation of its full name, Bell Canada Enterprises. In addition to the Bell Canada telecommunications properties, BCE also owns Bell Media (which operates mass media properties including the national CTV Television Network) and holds significant interests in the Montreal Canadiens ice hockey club and Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, owner of several Toronto professional sports franchises.[8][9] BCE ranked number 301 on the 2021 edition of the Forbes Global 2000 list.[10]
Criticism[edit]
Bell Canada has faced controversy and scandal. In late 2011, Bell Canada admitted to a policy of bandwidth throttling of BitTorrent traffic across its network when it announced it would stop the practice of "traffic shaping" during periods of high demand beginning in March 2012.[34] In November 2011, only a few weeks before, the CRTC issued a ruling that stopped the controversial practice of usage-based billing of smaller internet service providers who purchase space on Bell Canada networks, providing a fee structure based on total capacity needed. Bell Canada had originally wanted to charge providers by how much data each user downloaded.[34]
In May 2017, the email addresses of 1.9 million Bell customers were stolen, along with the name and phone numbers of 1.7 million customers.[35] Then in January 2018, there was another data breach affecting about 100 thousand Bell customers.[36]
Bell Canada's mobile phone services has been criticized for monopolistic practices, including during its acquisition of MTS.[37]
Marketing[edit]
Bell Canada created the Frank and Gordon beavers to advertise its products from 2006 to 2008.
Coinciding with its advertising campaign as part of its sponsorship of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Bell introduced a new logo and minimalist ad style, with the slogans "Today just got better" (with emphasis on the suffix "er") in English Canada and "La vie est Bell" (a pun on "La vie est Belle" — French: life is beautiful) in French Canada.[45] The font used in Bell's marketing is a custom typeface known as 'Bell Slim', by Canadian typeface designer Ian Brignell.