Finance committee  Good evening, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. Thank you for this opportunity to present Bell Canada's views on Bill C-38. The government has said these changes, along with the proposed rules for the next spectrum auction, have three objectives. First, sustained compe

Finance committee  Okay. It would be a mistake to assume that Canada's national wireless carriers are impervious to such advantages being given to foreign companies. These advantages can and should be avoided, given the thriving competitive market we have in Canada today. There are two ways to ac

Finance committee  You are.

Finance committee  I'm going to take a step back. We appreciate and understand the balancing act the government had to put in place here. On the one hand, rules were set up in 2008 to allow for new entry. We have three examples of that here. The government wants to make sure that can continue, th

Finance committee  On the second question, our fundamental quarrel is this: companies as large as AT&T or Verizon can come in and bid for two blocks of prime spectrum that will be put up for bid next year, whereas Bell is captive bidding for one block. We ask ourselves why we would set up a con

Finance committee  Bell takes rural coverage extremely seriously. In 2009, when we launched a new network that put Canada at the forefront of wireless technology, we covered 96% of the Canadian population. That was with the technology called HSPA plus. That 96% covers thousands and thousands of sma

Finance committee  Correct, in the sense that Bell, under the rules, will never be able to have foreign capital beyond the current limitations of 20% direct foreign investment, whereas my colleagues here will be able to be 100% foreign owned.

Finance committee  If AT&T comes in and buys all of them, the answer is yes, in fact ten times bigger. The quarrel isn't with that; the quarrel is that in that environment, why should Bell be limited to one block whereas those behemoths get two spectrum blocks? That's the issue I'm putting for

Finance committee  No, but the way the spectrum policy has been designed for the upcoming auction, it says that if any provider has access to two blocks of spectrum, either through ownership or through combining with pooling its spectrum with somebody else, then you have an obligation to build to 9

Finance committee  That means Bell is everywhere today, so it's 97% of everywhere, and my friends are in Toronto and Montreal and it means 97% of Toronto and Montreal, so no rural obligations.

Finance committee  The last 3% in the most remote areas will ultimately need to be served via satellite. Wireline fibre Internet is being offered by multiple companies in the urban and suburban areas. But if you want that coverage it will be through wireless broadband using LT technology, which off

Finance committee  They're misperceptions based on empty rhetoric, basically ivory tower papers. The fact is if you take an iPhone now—not an iPad but an iPhone—and you compare the exact same number of minutes and the exact same wireless Internet plan, for AT&T it's $90 and for Bell Canada it'

Finance committee  The latest incarnation of the foreign ownership issue started in 2010, when then Minister Clement initiated consultations. I certainly appeared at the industry committee in 2010.

Finance committee  Foreign ownership didn't come up, no.

Finance committee  We talked about competition, telecom generally, deregulation, and those kinds of issues, but that was more about traditional home phone deregulation, primarily—