Canadian Enterprises Gallery

Canadian Heritage Gallery
Canadian Enterprises Gallery

Bell Canada Web Site
Profile
Image One
Image Two
Image Three

For more than 115 years, Bell Canada has been a vital part of the national landscape. Just as roads and railways have linked communities across the country, Bell has brought Canadians together through a growing network of telecommunications lines and switches along with voice, data and image services. Today, as a key architect and builder of Canada's "information highway," Bell continues to play a leading role in the country's development.

Bell values the communities it serves and strives to contribute to their growth and prosperity. Through its corporate citizenship initiatives, Bell seeks to contribute to the well-being of these communities and to maintain its presence as a model corporate citizen. In selecting the programs and organizations to which it contributes, Bell gives special importance to technology, youth and education — our future.

Bell Canada began life in 1880, six years after Alexander Graham Bell's historic long distance call from Brantford to Paris, Ontario. At the end of its first year, the company had telephone exchanges in 13 cities, 2,100 phones in service, 150 employees, and its stock was "selling quietly among good people." Telephone technology was basic: customers turned a crank to signal to the operator that they wanted to make a call.

In the following decades, service steadily expanded and was streamlined to offer improvements, such as overseas links (the 1920s), cooperative delivery of long distance service through Canada's telephone companies (1930s), direct distance dialling (1950s), electronic switching (1960s), and much more. The 1970s brought several world firsts for Bell and Canadian telecommunications in the areas of digital data, packet and circuit-switched networks. In the 1980s the industry moved into value-added services, such as electronic messaging, and launched "intelligent" phones and calling features.

It was the turbulent 1990s that accelerated Bell's transformation from a supplier of telephone service to a provider of total communications, information and entertainment solutions. To begin with, the emergence of global markets had made it crucial for Canadian companies to succeed internationally. At the same time, the barriers between different technologies — such as telecommunications and cable television — were eroding, making it possible for telecommunications companies and cable companies to compete for each other's business. In addition, in 1992, the telephone companies' monopoly in long distance was ended and open competition introduced. In 1998, local service will also become competitive, and telephone companies will be able to enter the broadcast business.

Bell Canada is working to meet changing needs in several ways. For example, it has launched Sympatico ™, now Canada's leading Internet access service, featuring innovatively packaged Canadian content. On the horizon, there are many other applications — such as navigational tools for the "information highway," interfaces for electronic commerce, privacy protection agents, and communications profile managers - all geared to letting customers derive value by designing the way they exchange information.

Bell Canada is also investing in several technologies, such as broadband wireless, to bridge what it calls the "last mile" between its network and customers. One of these technologies is ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line). With ADSL, the telephone network can become a powerful system, able to deliver graphics and full-motion video, as well as voice and data, 100 times faster than the standard modem, all over the twister-pair copper wiring in our homes today.

One Hundred and Twenty-Five years after Alexander Graham Bell’s famous invention, the telephone industry can still learn from his example. He asked tough questions and answered them by innovating, making new devices and improving existing ones. Bell Canada is committed to continuing this spirit of innovation.