Bell Canada
Company Profile

by Faulkner Staff

Copyright 2022, Faulkner Information Services. All
Rights Reserved.

Docid: 00016382

Publication Date: 2212

Report Type: VENDOR

Preview

Bell Canada, a subsidiary of Canada’s largest communications company BCE
(formerly Bell Canada Enterprises), offers communications services such as
Internet, wireless, and voice and data communications to residential,
small-to-medium-sized business, and large enterprise customers throughout
the country. Bell Wireline provides local and long distance telephone and
Internet services primarily in Ontario, Quebec, the Atlantic provinces,
and Manitoba, while satellite TV service and connectivity are available
nationally. The Bell Wireless subsidiary offers integrated digital
wireless voice and data communication across Canada.

Report Contents:

• Fast Facts
  
• Related Reports
• Profile
• Strategy
• Product Lines
• Activity

Fast Facts

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Bell Canada
1 Carrefour Alexander Graham Bell
Building A
4th Floor
Verdun QC H3E 3B3
Canada
Phone: (800) 339-6353
Web: http://www.bell.ca/
Services Areas: Canada
Founded: 1880
Stock Symbol: BCE (TSX and NYSE)

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Profile

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Bell Canada is a subsidiary of Canada’s largest communications company
BCE (formerly Bell Canada Enterprises). The firm is the umbrella brand for
two of BCE’s three main business segments:

• Bell Wireline provides data, including Internet
  access and Internet protocol television (IPTV), local telephone, long
  distance, as well as other communication services and products to
  residential, small-to-medium-sized business and large enterprise
  customers primarily in Ontario, Quebec, the Atlantic provinces, and
  Manitoba; satellite TV service and connectivity to business customers
  are available nationally across Canada. In addition, this segment
  includes a wholesale business, which buys and sells local telephone,
  long distance, data and other services from or to resellers and other
  carriers.
• Bell Wireless provides wireless voice and data
  communication products and services to residential,
  small-to-medium-sized business and large enterprise customers as well as
  consumer electronics products across Canada. Bell Wireless offers data
  and voice plans as well as devices through its national consumer
  electronics retailer, The Source. Bell Wireless also supplies mobile
  business solutions as well as IoT solutions such as asset management,
  smart building and smart city services, and fleet management.

BCE’s third business segment, Bell Media, controls 35
conventional TV stations, 27 specialty TV channels, 109 licensed radio
stations in 58 markets, and a network of more than 50,000 advertising
billboards and other signage in key urban markets.

History & Milestone Events

Contrary to popular belief, it was not Alexander Graham Bell who began
the business now known as Bell Canada. However, he did assign rights to
the brand, including licenses of operation in Canada, to his father,
Professor Melville Bell, who sold the rights to National Bell of Boston,
owners of Graham Bell’s patent in the United States. National Bell
president, W.H. Forbes, chose Charles Fleetford Sise as general manager
and instructed him to organize a Canadian company on a national basis.
Sise founded the Bell Telephone Company of Canada, and it was incorporated
by federal charter on April 29, 1880. The directors selected Montreal
businessman, Andrew Robertson, as the company’s first president and
Montreal as the location of the head office. Milestones in the company’s
history include the following:

• 1983 – Created Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE) as a
  holding company.
• 1999 – Through an alliance with MCI WorldCom, gained
  access to a global network.
• 2002 – Manitoba Telecom Services (MTS) and Bell
  Canada announced the combining of interests in Bell Intrigna and Bell
  Nexxia in Alberta and British Columbia to create Bell West; sold
  US-based long-distance operator Excel Communications to VarTec Telecom.
• 2003 – Restructured, moving from a geographic
  organization to one based on three customer market segments: consumer,
  small and medium-sized business, and enterprise.
• 2006 – BCE Holding, Bell Canada’s parent company,
  completed the integration of Aliant, the incumbent phone company in the
  Atlantic and Maritime Provinces; sold its Telesat Canada unit to Loral
  Space & Communications.
• 2007 – BCE accepted the offer from a private-equity
  consortium to acquire all assets of the company and take Bell Canada
  private.
• 2008 – BCE announced that it agreed to terms of a $35
  billion CAD ($34.3 million USD) sale to a takeover group led by the
  Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan; however, in December, auditor KPMG said
  BCE would be insolvent if the transaction went through, and the
  purchasing company backed out of the deal. The privatization transaction
  did not proceed.
• 2009 – Acquired The Source, a Canadian electronics
  retailer that had been acquired in 2004 by Circuit City, which filed
  Chapter 11 in the US in November 2008; announced that its Bell Mobility
  wireless division will be the first carrier to offer Canadians full SMS
  (Short Messaging Service or mobile text messaging) support for
  interacting with social networking application Twitter; acquired the
  remaining 50 percent in its Virgin Mobile Canada partnership, bringing
  ownership to 100 percent.
• 2010 – Completed the roll out of HSPA/HSPA+ 3G on its
  wireless network; launched service on portions of a C$225 million
  fiber-to-the-node (FTTN) network in Quebec City that will take three
  years to complete; Bell Aliant launched an FTTN network in Nova Scotia
  with operating speeds of 7G bps; Bell Aliant launched FiberOP FTTN
  service in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Reported plans to acquire CTV.
• 2011 – Completed its $40 million acquisition of
  xwave from Bell Aliant; the transaction will enhance offerings in the
  areas of IT products and professional services for corporate,
  government, and health-care clients cross Canada. Launched its Bell
  Business Apps Store, providing business software including accounting,
  project management, collaboration, customer relationship management, and
  other types of applications via a low-cost, subscription-based delivery
  model. Closed its CA$3.2 billion acquisition of CTV, and launched a new
  business unit called Bell Media which combines CTV and other Bell
  content assets. Launched 4G LTE services in Toronto, Mississauga,
  Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo and Guelph.
• 2013 – After initially rejecting BCE’s proposal to
  acquire Astral Media in 2012, the CRTC ultimately approved the C$3.2
  billion acquisition in June, 2013.
• 2014 -Completed its privatization of Bell Aliant and
  the integration of the Atlantic Canada affiliate into BCE’s national
  operations. BCE reported plans to acquire mobile phone retailer Glentel.
• 2015 – With the Kilmer Group, agreed to jointly
  acquire the Toronto Argonauts Football Club of the Canadian Football
  League (CFL) from sports entrepreneur David Braley. Divested its 15%
  equity position in Globe and Mail Inc. to the Woodbridge Company
  Limited.
• 2016 – Acquired all equity it did not already own
  in Q9 Networks Inc., a Toronto-based data center operator that provides
  outsourced hosting and other data services.
• 2017 – Acquired Manitoba Telecom Services Inc. for
  approximately $3.9 billion.
• 2018 – Completed its acquisition of Canadian home
  security and monitoring company AlarmForce Industries in an effort to
  expand in the connected home marketplace, and acquired Axia NetMedia
  Corporation, the Calgary-based operator of the SuperNet broadband
  network.
• 2019 – Filed a patent that details a wearable device
  designed for providing emergency services.
• 2020 – Mirko Bibic becomes president and CEO of BCE.
  Sells 25 data center facilities to global data center operator Equinix
  for $1.04 billion. Launches its 5G wireless network. Acquired Environics
  Analytics and made a minority investment in Grande Studios to increase
  resources for Quebec’s French-language content creation and production.
• 2021 – Announces a $1 billion capital plan to
  accelerate fiber, rural, and 5G network rollouts across the country.
  Rebrands its Virgin Mobile operations as Virgin Plus.
• 2022 – Acquires EBOX, an independent Internet,
  telephone, and television service provider based in Longueuil, Quebec.
  Announces the network readiness of 5G+, the fastest mobile technology in
  Canada, building on the the acquisition of 3500 MHz spectrum.

Strategy

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The strategy of Bell Canada, as manifested through its parent, BCE, is to
deliver on BCE’s six strategic imperatives:

Strategic Imperative 1: Build the best networks.

As reported by analyst Diana Goovaerts in August 2021, “Bell Canada
revealed plans to deliver fiber to 2,000 new locations in the Niagara
region as it pushes toward a goal of reaching 850,000 to 900,000 new
passings by the end of 2021. Bell Canada [also] announced it would also
extend fiber to a total of 3,700 rural locations in Rawdon, Sainte-Adele,
and Roxton Pond this year. The builds are part of a plan announced in
February to accelerate capital investments in fiber and 5G over the next
two years, with the goal of increasing Bell Canada’s broadband footprint
to a total of 6.9 million locations by end-2021.”¹

Strategic Imperative 2: Drive growth with innovative services.

According to Fierce Telecom, “Bell Canada has chosen to work
with Google Cloud to power Bell’s company-wide digital transformation and
enhance its network and IT infrastructure. The new, multi-year partnership
will combine Bell’s 5G network with Google Cloud’s Anthos Multicloud
solution, which extends Google Cloud services to its customers’
environments. Bell plans to begin the collaboration by shifting some of
its critical workloads and applications from its on-premise IT
infrastructure to Google Cloud. Bell Canada will also tap Google’s
expertise in data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) to gain
insights about real-time network performance, capacity planning, and
service assurance.”²

Strategic Imperative 3: Deliver the most compelling content.

For example, for the 2020-2021 broadcast year, Bell Media partnered with
nearly 50 production companies across Canada to create hundreds of hours
of original content in French and English, deliverable by Bell Canada.

Strategic Imperative 4: Champion customer experience.

For example, the Bell team adapted to the “unique service challenges”
presented by COVID-19, introducing remote-assisted, self-install programs
which enabled field technicians to guide customers through service setups
via phone or video. Both customers and technicians were spared exposure to
the pandemic.

Strategic Imperative 5: Operate with agility and cost efficiency.

For example, to promote efficiency and effectiveness, Bell is rebuilding
Canada’s communications backbone with fast, secure, and scalable fiber
infrastructure.

Strategic Imperative 6: Engage and invest in our people.

As evidence, Bell set new standards for Black, Indigenous and People of
Color (BIPOC) representation with:

• At least 25 percent BIPOC persons in senior management by 2025
• At least 40 percent BIPOC representation among student and graduate
  hires

Strengths

The brand name of “Bell” is probably Bell Canada’s biggest strength as it
carries considerable clout – company recognition and respect – throughout
Canada and all of North America.

It’s not enough, however, to provide high-quality products and services
if reliability, safety, and security are not assured. To that end, all of
Bell’s critical business units have documented business continuity plans
for all critical business functions. The plans are reviewed and exercised
annually to ensure their currency and viability.

Bell’s Emergency Management Program includes procedures to ensure the
safety of employees, customers, partners, and suppliers who work in the
company’s facilities.

Vitally, plans are in place to ensure the resumption of activities
following any type of incident including:

• Mass evacuations
• Infectious disease outbreaks
• Labor disruptions
• Loss of systems
• Loss of telecommunications networks and/or company facilities

Weaknesses

Bell Canada’s position as the preeminent provider of telecommunications
services in Canada is probably beyond challenge, but the company is
nonetheless concerned about two recent developments:

COVID-19 – While many experts predicted the novel
coronavirus would, by now, transition from a pandemic to an endemic
affliction, a combination of persistent vaccine resistance and the related
emergence of new virus variants like the Delta and Omicron strains have
business leaders nervous about continuing – perhaps worsening – economic
conditions. This uncertainty could result in increased insolvencies,
bankruptcies, permanent store closures, and decreased consumer and
corporate spending in Canada and around the world – potentially affecting
Bell’s bottom line.

Global Chip Shortage – The continuing shortage of
electronic chips may adversely affect the production and delivery of
consumer electronics and mobile devices, including smartphones and
tablets, thereby diminishing Bell’s revenues as fewer devices mean fewer
service charges.

Adverse Economic Conditions – Inflation and increasing
interest rates leading to uncertainty in the financial markets or a
declining level of retail and commercial activity could have a negative
impact on the demand for, and prices of, Bell’s products and services.

Competition – The proposed combination of Rogers
Communications and Shaw Communications could create a Canadian competitor
with larger scale than Bell, which could have implications for each of the
company’s business segments.

Outlook

The immediate future for Bell Canada is tied to the company’s 5G vision.
Bell expanded its 5G network to new markets across Quebec, Ontario, the
Atlantic provinces, and Manitoba during 2021 and 2022. Bell’s 5G network
covered more than 70 percent of Canada’s population as of December 31,
2021, a significant increase from the 26 percent of the population covered
at the end of 2020.

Further improving Bell’s business prospects, PC Magazine
determined that Bell’s mobile networks are the fastest in Canada for three
consecutive years (2020-2022)³, and Global Wireless Solutions
(GWS) ranked Bell 5G as the nation’s best.⁴

Product Lines

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Bell Canada Enterprises offers a wide range of products and services for
both individuals and businesses, as highlighted in Table 1.