CR123
join:2006-11-04
Vancouver, BC
| reply to jfmezei
Re: Telus-Bell Merge Rumor - Say Whaaaaaaat!?!?
said by jfmezei  :As I recall, Telus is really the alberta government (through AGT) buying BC Tel, so I would assume GTE's holding in the new combined Telus would have been very reduced. Does anyone know if GTE sold all of its stake when Telus was formed, or did it retain some ownership for a few years before full divestiture ? Close. AGT was privatized, became TELUS, and TELUS and BC Tel merged (a merger of equals, pretty much). GTE's holding in BC Tel was reduced gradually, and they effectively divested their stake in around 2003-4 I think?
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- The content of this post is my opinion, and does not reflect the opinions of my employer. - |
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MaynardKrebs
Premium
join:2009-06-17
| reply to Davesnothere
Re: SMS to Land Line Phone
said by Davesnothere :I have not personally witnessed this, but a friend told me of a model of phone which Bell Canada used to sell / rent (and she had one), which she claims could receive emails (and I expect also send them) using its internal several line LCD text screen. It may have been a Nortel built phone. I used a Nortel phone once which had a small screen on (maybe 40 chars x 6 lines) and VT100/200 emulation. It also had a small keyboard. I had it connected to my VAX and could access al the operating system's features, including local and wide-area e-mail. Bell/Nortel came and took some promotional photos with it connected to my system, which they then used in some promo literature. This was back in 1984 (for real). |
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freejazz_RdJ
join:2009-03-10
1 edit | reply to jfmezei
Re: SMS to ????
Dave is talking about the Cybiolink device, which is much more modern than the Alextel. It was an out-of-band device that used frequencies outside the voice band to send/receive interactive services such as email, news and weather. In essence, a uber-vista 350 with keyboard and large multi-lien screen.
As for SMS to landline, it exists: your wireless provider will use a text to speech engine to read the message to the landline recipient AND allow the recipient to record a reply.
Trying to market a landline phone device that does SMS is like trying to sell the videophone: why buy an expensive single-purpose device (SMS or Video phone) when existing, more versatile devices can do the same thing with better value (cell phone or SMS PC app / Every IM program like Skype, MSN, AIM, iChat). |
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jfmezei
Premium
join:2007-01-03
Beaconsfield, QC
 ·ELECTRONICBOX
| reply to Davesnothere
>I have not personally witnessed this, but a friend told me of a model of
>phone which Bell Canada used to sell / rent (and she had one), which
>she claims could receive emails (and I expect also send them) using its >internal several line LCD text screen.
Yep, I actually used one. It was a combo terminal/telephone . Name escapes me at the moment. 1200 baud dialup modem inside. You could use it for voice and data at same time if you have 2 phone lines on it.
It was a black and white CRT. I think it had VT100 emulation. They had deployed a few of those at airports to allow Envoy 100 customers to access their email from airports. That would have been around mid 1980s.
It was just ahead of Bell's NAPLS "Alex" trials which failed royally because of exhorbitant pricing.
»www.answers.com/topic/alex-videotex-service
But the Envoy 100 terminal/phone had styling for office environments. |
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Davesnothere
join:2009-06-15
2 edits | reply to jfmezei
SMS to Land Line Phone
said by jfmezei :Bell should have long ago added "SMS" capabilities to its network so you could send an SMS to a landline phone, especially if the person is using it on a voice call to another person. .
I have not personally witnessed this, but a friend told me of a model of phone which Bell Canada used to sell / rent (and she had one), which she claims could receive emails (and I expect also send them) using its internal several line LCD text screen.
It may have been a Nortel built phone.
Exactly how this was set up I do not know, and it was 5 or 10 years ago that we had this conversation.
I think that she may have had dialup Sympatico service and it may have shared the assigned email address.
Has anyone heard of this scenario ? |
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Cloneman
join:2002-08-29
45436 | reply to Farchord
Re: Telus-Bell Merge Rumor - Say Whaaaaaaat!?!?
I'd be down for a Bell-Telus Merger just for anarchy purposes |
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jfmezei
Premium
join:2007-01-03
Beaconsfield, QC
·ELECTRONICBOX
| reply to freejazz_RdJ
Bell's mentality is very similar to what Digital had, which caused Digital's demise:
Give up on offering competitive prioces, and milk your remaining customers for everything they've got.
Bell is counting on its former image and loyalty and knows exactly how much it can squeeze its customers' testicles before they get angry enough to leave. This is short term greed which may help Cope stay in his job an extra 6 months, but it does not position Bell to survive in the long term.
At the very time that VoIP stands to take over from POTS, Bell should be loweriong its rates, not increasing them. And it should have long ago added "SMS" capabilities to its network so you could send an SMS to a landline phone, especially if the person is using it on a voice call to another person. |
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freejazz_RdJ
join:2009-03-10
| reply to jfmezei
said by jfmezei :If Telus were to buy Bell, you need to understand that because Bell is much bigger, its terrible corporate culture would infect Telus to a certain extent. It would take extremely strong leadership from Telus to fix Bell and not let Bell infect Telus. Also, Bell has wasted much money on other pointless vetures (such as Globemedia and Teleglobe) and resulted in its own network infrastrcuture lacking upgrades for over half a decade and if Telus bought Bell, there would need to be a fairly major investment to bring Bell back up to modern standards before it could even think about fibre to the home which, everyone knows, is the inevitable outcome for all telcos. I don't think the corporate culture is that different. I've done business with both providers, and they're both greedy, cost cutting, shareholder return focused machines. Also, Bell has a larger network and deployed 40G long haul before Telus did. And they're about equal on wireless, with Bell having VDSL2 capability and Telus being ADSL2+.
The behavior of the ILEC's has little to do with corporate culture and more to do with maximizing their returns to investors. They therefor act almost identically in regulatory matters. As for decisions on throttling and DPI, they've got different networks with different parameters and constraints. Bell decided DPI/throttle was needed (perhaps killing two birds with one stone in anticipation of CALEA/lawful intercept), Telus did not. |
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win win for us
@cgocable.net
| reply to jfmezei
said by jfmezei :If Telus were to buy Bell, you need to understand that because Bell is much bigger, its terrible corporate culture would infect Telus to a certain extent. It would take extremely strong leadership from Telus to fix Bell and not let Bell infect Telus. Ok so maybe I was daydreaming.
Hard to believe there wouldn't be some resistance to the assimilation.
Where is Picard when we need him? |
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jfmezei
Premium
join:2007-01-03
Beaconsfield, QC
·ELECTRONICBOX
| reply to freejazz_RdJ
GTE owned majority stake in BC Tel (which is interesting when you consider telecom ownership limits). In the 1980s, you could tell the difference between payphones in canada were almost all northern telecom/nortel, but in BC, they were .... yes, you guessed it, from GTE 
As I recall, Telus is really the alberta government (through AGT) buying BC Tel, so I would assume GTE's holding in the new combined Telus would have been very reduced.
Does anyone know if GTE sold all of its stake when Telus was formed, or did it retain some ownership for a few years before full divestiture ? |
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jfmezei
Premium
join:2007-01-03
Beaconsfield, QC
·ELECTRONICBOX
| reply to win win for us
If Telus were to buy Bell, you need to understand that because Bell is much bigger, its terrible corporate culture would infect Telus to a certain extent. It would take extremely strong leadership from Telus to fix Bell and not let Bell infect Telus.
Consider that Bell hasn't changed much under Cope in terms of corporate culture. In fact, its "games" with the CRTC have increased quite a bit.
Also, Bell has wasted much money on other pointless vetures (such as Globemedia and Teleglobe) and resulted in its own network infrastrcuture lacking upgrades for over half a decade and if Telus bought Bell, there would need to be a fairly major investment to bring Bell back up to modern standards before it could even think about fibre to the home which, everyone knows, is the inevitable outcome for all telcos. |
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freejazz_RdJ
join:2009-03-10
1 edit | reply to Big Dreamer
said by Big Dreamer :» www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/···M0011790Telus is owned by an american communications company.. So if Telus buys Bell things may get very interesting... this link is also an interesting read, it has Telus and GTE corp saying, "we can take on anybody." so i'd believe they're trying to buy Bell as well.. could be a fun show... You're wrong. GTE, now Verizon, owns 0% of Telus today. At one point, SBC, now ATT, owned 20% of Bell Canada. They now own 0%.
BTW, your article is more than a decade old. |
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win win for us
@cgocable.net
| reply to Farchord
People you are getting worked up for nothing.
Its a win-win for us out east. Bell is in need of a lobotomy they are so bad. Can it be any worse?
So either some good comes from the Telus board and management or we can say to the people out west:
"Welcome to our world."
Freeze in the dark eh. FU |
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freejazz_RdJ
join:2009-03-10
| reply to jfmezei
JF provided a pretty good overview of the history of telecom since the 80's. Up until deregulation, the prices charges by telcos were set by guaranteed the return ("profit"). Once deregulation hit, this was no longer suitable.
Telus (and BCTel/ATG), Sasktel, MTS, the Atlantic providers and Bell were all Stentor alliance members. They were essentially a canada-wide alliance of telcos that shared common services beyond the boundaries of their serving areas. After Telus left the alliance due to Clearnet and wanting a piece of the nationwide enterprise market, MTS and Bell formed Bell West, which MTS had to leave when they got Allstream. As of that moment, MTS changed it's position on the issues from the incumbent side to the competitor side since they now derive more of their profits and growth from their Allstream division than their MTS ILEC division.
Regardless, the merger is a non starter since the resulting company would be subject to so much regulation, if it were allowed at all, that it wouldn't be worth it for shareholders. |
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jfmezei
Premium
join:2007-01-03
Beaconsfield, QC
·ELECTRONICBOX
| reply to Farchord
People are forgetting that in the past, Telus was best buddies with Bell Canada.
Back in the goold old days, TCTS/Telecom Canada was a consortium of canadian telephone companies including BC Tel, AGT (both of which became Telus) and Bell Canada. They united in order to try to provide nationwide services which CNCP was able to provide under one account. They worked together to coordinate long distance system, provided nationwide services such as email (Envoy 100) and Telecom Canada branded services such as Datapac, Dararoute etc.
When mobile phones came out, the Telecom Canada group went for that proprietary CDMA technology and agreed to "free" cross roaming agreements in order to compete against Cantel (Rogers) which had a single nationwide network without roaming fees when you left your province.
Later on, competition between Telus and Bell started when Telus got the permission to buy Clearnet, and got spectrum in Ontario/Québec, and was forced to give Bell spectrum in BC/Alta. Telus bought some of the smaller telcos in ontario and quebec (notably Telebec) and started to compete for large contracts (it won a contract to supplie the governmnet of quebec with telecom services for instance).
The so called compeition between Telus and Bell is very recent. In fact, Telus itself is a young company compared to Bell. The merger of BC Tel and AGT wasn't easy for the staff, lots of layoffs etc.
Meanwhile, MTS (no, not "maladies transmises sexuellement !) bought the leftovers of CNCP Telecom (aka: Unitel aka AT&T Canada) and magically became an important nationwide player for commercial services.
Bell Canada bought Northwestel (Formerly a CN subsidiary), and I believe that CN Teleco which provided telephone services in Newfoundland is now under the Bell Aliant umbrella whih has all of atlantic canada.
During the Telecom Canada days, it was the good old days where Bell had enough profits so it could offer great service and never question or nickel-dime customers (except for the touch tone tax). |
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freejazz_RdJ
join:2009-03-10
| reply to MaynardKrebs
said by MaynardKrebs :Sure, why not. Condition 1 - CRTC and Competition Bureua enshrine net neutrality (application, protocol, content, provider) into law. Condition 2 - All land line & data services are competitor neutral, ie. no throttle, speed parity, no nuisance charges, no DPI. Condition 3 - All fiber facilities are offered to competitors on a non-discriminatory basis. Capacity to be added on a priority basis based on competitor requests ahead of Bellus regular build-out, ie. if Rocky needs more remote fibre DSLAM's or FTTH in Rosedale, they get put in before Bellus rolls out new capacity in an area Rocky doesn't need capacity in. Condition 4 - One of their two wireless divisions is sold as a public offering or spun-off to existing shareholders, with an anti-takeover clause for 7 years, and individual or shareholders in-concert limited to a maximum of 4.9% of the outstanding shares. Debt assumed by the spun-off company to be in the same proportion as that retained by the combined Bellus. The only reasonable condition among them is #4. 1-3 are all basically a surefire way to encourage those constrained to make no investments. Why invest a dime when competitors who bear none of the investment risk would get to dictate when, where and how you spend the money? Condition 3 is the most absurd of all. Condition 1 I could see being a pseudo-reasonable, but it would still lead to sucky internet if consumers aren't able to bear the cost of the any application at maximum speed function it would dictate.
At the end of the day, unless Canada decides industrial policy and a command and control regime is the way to go, private business will get to decide when and where they will spend their money. Canada likes social welfare, but it doesn't want a socialist economy. |
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Big Dreamer
@teksavvy.com
| reply to Farchord
»www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/···M0011790
Telus is owned by an american communications company.. So if Telus buys Bell things may get very interesting...
this link is also an interesting read, it has Telus and GTE corp saying, "we can take on anybody." so i'd believe they're trying to buy Bell as well.. could be a fun show... |
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jat
join:2008-04-28
Burlington, ON
| reply to Kareeser
said by Kareeser :said by pnjunction :They already have monopolies...areas that have one don't have the other. Unless you're willing to move across the country for a different phone company there's no choice. Obviously, but that's a duopoly. A monopoly is much worse. No, he's right. Telus has a monopoly out west, and Bell has a monopoly out east. That's not a duopoly. The only market where they compete in the same territory is mobile phone service. And even then, I think Telus owns most (all?) towers out west, and Bell most (all?) towers out east, and it's only through tower sharing agreements that they can offer service in each other's territory. If that's the case, then they're entirely dependent on each other to compete in their respective opponent's territory. That may not be a monopoly, but neither is it much of a duopoly. |
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MaynardKrebs
Premium
join:2009-06-17
| reply to Farchord
Sure, why not.
Condition 1 - CRTC and Competition Bureua enshrine net neutrality (application, protocol, content, provider) into law.
Condition 2 - All land line & data services are competitor neutral, ie. no throttle, speed parity, no nuisance charges, no DPI.
Condition 3 - All fiber facilities are offered to competitors on a non-discriminatory basis. Capacity to be added on a priority basis based on competitor requests ahead of Bellus regular build-out, ie. if Rocky needs more remote fibre DSLAM's or FTTH in Rosedale, they get put in before Bellus rolls out new capacity in an area Rocky doesn't need capacity in.
Condition 4 - One of their two wireless divisions is sold as a public offering or spun-off to existing shareholders, with an anti-takeover clause for 7 years, and individual or shareholders in-concert limited to a maximum of 4.9% of the outstanding shares. Debt assumed by the spun-off company to be in the same proportion as that retained by the combined Bellus. |
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Big Dreamer
@teksavvy.com | reply to Farchord
i can't help but to wonder if Telus bought bell would they ditch their satanic boxes? I believe Telus doesn't throttle their customers or do they? |
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