Old champions, new contenders: managing telecoms. (Bell Canada and other telephone companies fight the flat pricing structure of Internet service providers and do not invest in data services companies that could improve their financial standing)(Brief Article)

Economist (US), The, October, 1997

TORONTO

WHEN you have been in a nice line of business for more than a century and you suddenly realise that the activities which account for 30% of your revenues and 75% of your profits may evaporate, what do you do? In Canada, where Alexander Graham Bell made the world's first long-distance telephone call (to Paris, Ontario, in 1876), such calls are priced at premium rates, and make premium profits. But, as Bernard Courtois, head of regulatory affairs for Bell Canada told a recent telecoms conference in Toronto, traditional telephone companies like his can no longer count on these profits. They are threatened by the rise of the Internet, with its quite different pricing structure.

Bell Canada is not the only traditional telephone company worrying about the...

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