Bell Canada
Bell Canada Enterprises is a major telecommunications company and a provider of telephone services in Canada.Alexander Graham Bell lived most of his life in Nova Scotia, Canada, and was granted a US patent for the telephone. Bell Canada was founded in 1880 and granted a government monopoly on Canadian long distance telephone service.
Eventually there were two main companies in the telephone industry in Canada -- Bell Canada selling services and a division of AT&T, Northern Electric, making equipment. There was a parallel setup in the US -- AT&T selling phone services and Western Electric making the equipment.
In recent decades there have been a number of changes. Between 1980 and 1997, the telcommunications industry was fully deregulated and Bell Canada was removed from its monopoly position, providing local phone service only in Ontario and Quebec, not the rest of Canada. Because of the breakup of AT&T in the United States, Northern Electric became Northern Telecom, later renamed Nortel. Bell Canada currently services over 13 million phonelines.
Bell Canada has also moved into new industries like Bell Sympatico, an Internet service provider, and Bell Mobility, a cell phone service. The BCE corporation also owns CTV television and The Globe and Mail, a national newspaper. These are together operated as Bell Globemedia, Canada's largest media corporation. Bell Canada also operates Bell ExpressVu, one of Canada's two national satellite television providers.