CHICAGO – Canadian VOIP provider babyTEL is expanding into the United States market to offer regional cable companies, Internet service providers, network integrators and others its VoIP services and products, the company announced this week.
“It is still early, but clearly the beginning of mass adoption of VOIP (voice over Internet protocol) services by consumers and business is here,” said Stephen Dorsey, babyTEL president and CEO. “Regional cable companies and ISPs must offer their customers VOIP or risk losing them to others who will.
“As a ‘provider of providers’, babyTEL has built a robust VOIP network that has already…
Continue Reading
THE CABLE INDUSTRY MIGHT not like reading this, heading into the local forbearance hearings next week, but residential phone choice seems pretty real to me.
If there was any doubt about it, my local newspaper, The Hamilton Spectator, delivered ample evidence last Wednesday. In the mess of inserts I curse about that usually flutter out of the thing, three glossy direct marketing pieces caught my eye: One from Primus; another from Rogers; and the third from Direct Energy.
Primus was a pure low-cost sell. “Get TalkBroadband and save big on your home phone service,” it said, beside a garish…
Continue Reading
BURNABY B.C. – Telus is suing the Telecommunication Workers Union (TWU) for allegedly infringing on its copyrighted trademark “the future is friendly”; and has fired 14 staffers in B.C. and Alberta for going against Telus’ code of conduct.
Drew McArthur, Telus vice-president of corporate services says recent TWU radio advertisements malign their copyrighted trademark: the future is friendly.
The ads, which begin as an on the spot report, “Live on the line,” call upon the public to “Give Telus a wake up call” by canceling telephone calling features (such as call waiting, call display, etc…). Ads include four Telus…
Continue Reading
MAPLE, Ont. – Telus announced today a $100,000 donation to the Bloorview MacMillan Children’s Centre, Canada’s largest and only teaching hospital for paediatric rehabilitation.
Veteran Canadian Tour golfers joined NHL greats and Telus business customers from across Ontario in support of children as the donation was made today at the 2005 TELUS President’s Invitational Golf Tournament, which brings the telecommunication company’s top-tier customers together to thank them for their loyalty and business.
The funds will go to Bloorview’s Electronic Aids to Daily Living (EADL) program, which teams up clinical therapists with specialized engineers who craft and adapt devices that…
Continue Reading
BURNABY, B.C. – The B.C. division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees is cutting Telus out of its life.
The largest union in the province, with 70,000 members, has begun negotiations with other telecommunications providers to replace the division office’s land line, Internet and mobile phone services.
The move is a direct response to the strike at the telco by the Telecommunication Workers Union (TWU). It makes CUPE the first union in Canada to launch a full-scale boycott of Telus products.
“We can no longer have ourselves in a position where we as a union are being serviced…
Continue Reading
BURNABY, B.C. – The Telecommunications Workers Union says that business analyst Michael Levy, while on Bill Good’s CKNW radio program yesterday, told listeners that Telus CEO Darren Entwistle is out to break the union.
According to a TWU press release, Levy said senior Telus managers have contacted him to express their willingness to enter into non-binding arbitration with the union, and also that "the big guy on top" has his sight on breaking the union.
"This confirms what we already knew. There is one insurmountable barrier to settlement – the intractable position of Telus CEO Darren Entwistle,” said TWU…
Continue Reading
VANCOUVER – Telus announced Friday that Darren Entwistle, the company’s president and CEO, has exercised his vested Telus share options, using the entirety of the net after tax gain to increase his Telus share ownership by 15,600 common shares and 110,711 non-voting shares.
Including his investment in January 2005 of 76,333 non-voting shares, Mr. Entwistle now owns 39,131 common shares and 283,947 non-voting shares for a combined total of 323,078 Telus shares.
During the last six years Entwistle “has consistently accumulated Telus shares, by: investing after tax net gains from exercising share options; reinvesting variable pay; investing from personal…
Continue Reading
VANCOUVER – An audit done August 31st for Telus by accounting firm Ernst & Young shows that the majority of the company’s unionized workers are on the job, despite the strike called by the Telecommunications Workers Union.
The E&Y procedures show that 2,880 Alberta based unionized employees were active on the Telus payroll system, which represented 52.6% of Alberta bargaining unit employees. This is up from August 16, 2005, where 2,715 Alberta based unionized employees were active, or 48.8% of the Alberta bargaining unit employees.
It also shows that the longer a labour dispute drags on, the higher the…
Continue Reading
THIS IS A BIG JOB. No wonder Rogers Communications Group’s president and COO Nadir Mohamed doesn’t want to talk about succession. He’s got lots on his plate to worry about now, rather than what his next job might be.
Besides, last week’s National Post Business article beat that story to death (and then some) last week.
What we wanted to know is where the company’s priorities lay. What’s job one for him rightnow? How is he going to bring together two disparate groups (cable and wireless, together a $5 billion business), two completely different technological platforms, into a cohesive,…
Continue Reading
THERE IS SO MUCH on the docket for lawyers working the telecom file in Canada these days, it’s almost hard to keep track.
The CRTC begins its hearings into forbearance from regulating the local phone market on September 26th (same week as Cable Week) while at the same time Industry Canada is deep into its Telecom Policy Review. Then there’s the Federal Court appeal of the CRTC’s telecom win-back rules and the ILECs’ VOIP decision appeal to cabinet, among other things.
So how will a coherent national telecom policy be developed from this muddle of related…
Continue Reading
