{"id":21491,"date":"2013-08-04T11:26:16","date_gmt":"2013-08-04T16:26:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=21491"},"modified":"2013-08-04T11:26:16","modified_gmt":"2013-08-04T16:26:16","slug":"ben-klass-responds-to-bell-canada-ceos-open-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/08\/04\/ben-klass-responds-to-bell-canada-ceos-open-letter\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Klass responds to Bell Canada CEO’s open letter"},"content":{"rendered":"

An excellent response<\/a>:<\/p>\n

You begin the \u201cunusual step of writing to all Canadians\u201d (Strange, isn\u2019t it, that \u201cCanada\u2019s Top Communication Company\u201d should find it unusual to communicate with its customers?) with a history lesson, ostensibly in the interest of helping us \u201cunderstand a critical situation\u201d now facing the wireless industry: the potential entrance of an American company into the Canadian market.<\/p>\n

You inform us that, since Parliament granted Bell its charter in 1880, Bell has spent 133 years \u201cinvesting in delivering world-class communications services to Canadians.\u201d An impressive track record!<\/p>\n

You must, however, be aware that Bell\u2019s permission to operate in Canada was initially obtained by agents acting in the interest of the (American) National Bell Telephone Company and that, after securing a favourable charter, three top-level executives from National Bell were appointed to Bell Canada\u2019s board of directors (Babe, 1990, pg 68-69). Or how about how American Bell initially owned 50% of your company, only fully divesting its interest 43 years ago, in 1970 (Winseck, 1998, pg 119)?<\/p>\n

Bell began its life in Canada as a branch plant of an American company. (In a strange twist of fate, it\u2019s now a descendant of National Bell Telephone — Verizon — which is contemplating (re)entering the Canadian market.) And they leveraged this relationship to get an early leg up on the competition — using patents owned by its American parent, Bell quickly monopolized the market for Canadian telephone services, a monopoly it used to funnel profits back to the States. (Smythe, 1981, pg 141)<\/p>\n

You suggest that \u201cUS giants don\u2019t need special help from the Canadian government,\u201d but that\u2019s exactly how Bell got to where it is today!<\/p>\n

That\u2019s all ancient history, however, and in the here and now, BCE is a Canadian company who \u201cwelcomes any competitor,\u201d so long as they \u201ccompete on a level playing field.\u201d Right?<\/p>\n

You\u2019re calling on the Federal government to close \u201cloopholes\u201d that are intended to promote competition in your industry — rules that your company has forced the government to create.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole thing<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An excellent response: You begin the \u201cunusual step of writing to all Canadians\u201d (Strange, isn\u2019t it, that \u201cCanada\u2019s Top Communication Company\u201d should find it unusual to communicate with its customers?) with a history lesson, ostensibly in the interest of helping us \u201cunderstand a critical situation\u201d now facing the wireless industry: the potential entrance of an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,6,84,7],"tags":[645,266,547],"class_list":["post-21491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-cancon","category-government","category-history","tag-corporatewelfare","tag-protectionism","tag-smartphones"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5AD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21491"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21493,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21491\/revisions\/21493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}