Stentor, Bell Canada, Independents - Some History Another excellent history lesson for us today submitted by Mark Cuccia. PAT From: Mark J. Cuccia Subject: Stentor, Bell Canada, Independents - Some History Recently, I mentioned in the Digest (Re: An Old Stromberg Stepper) that Pat is correct that the history of US Telcos is a fascinating one, and I continued that the history of Canada's telcos, which in many ways parallels that of the US, is also an interesting one. What follows is some of the history of Canada's telephone industry. I want to thank Nigel Allen (ndallen@io.org, http://www.io.org/~ndallen/) for looking over this and helping me "fine-tune" it. Alexander Graham Bell lived a good part of his life in Canada, particularly in rural Baddeck in Nova Scotia. There is also a telephone museum there, which my retired parents had a chance to visit when they travelled to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland four Summers ago. My Dad gave me copies of some photos he took of the exhibits at the Nova Scotia telephone museum. (I only wish that I could remember where I "buried" those pictures with my papers!) The Bell Telephone Company of Canada was incorporated on 29 April 1880 to operate telephone exchanges throughout Canada, and to manufacture telephones and associated equipment. This was initially done under a licensing or franchising arrangement with the US-based American Bell Telephone Company, similar to the franchise arrangements for Bell companies in the US. Bell Canada served primarily the populated areas of Quebec and Ontario, but it also operated exchanges in the Atlantic provinces, and at one time operated exchanges in provinces west of Ontario (Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta). Bell Canada's "Mechanical Department" was set up in 1882. The "Mechanical Department" was incorporated as the Northern Electric Manufacturing Company Ltd. in 1895. In 1899, Bell Canada purchased the Barrie and Johnson Wire and Cable Company of Montreal, which in 1911 was renamed Imperial Wire and Cable. Imperial and Northern Electric merged in 1914 to become Northern Electric Ltd. In 1976 Northern Electric became Northern Telecom and has recently become known as Nortel. It still is partially owned by the holding company BCE Inc. (formerly known as Bell Canada Enterprises), which also owns Bell Canada. In years past, Northern Electric also had a licensing arrangement with Western Electric. For a while, WECO owned as much as 44% of NECO. As a collector of nostalgic mid-20th Century telephones, I know that NECO equipment was *virtually identical* to that of WECO. Both used the same model numbers for telephones and parts. Even NECO's old three-slot payphones looked *just like* WECO's. In Canada, NECO phones had the stamp "Northern Electric - Made in Canada", written in the same 'lightening-bolt' script used by Western Electric. Just like Cincinnati Bell and Southern New England Telephone, Bell Canada could be considered to have been a "semi" Bell operating company of the Bell System. As recently as 1972, AT&T owned stock in Bell Canada, although only a paltry 2%. In 1968, The Bell Telephone Company of Canada officially changed its name to simply Bell Canada. Prior to 1970, Bell Canada also used the *same* older Bell logo (the one which looked more realistically like an actual bell) however the words "Bell Canada" were written inside of the bell instead of the words "Bell System". When the Bell System in the US changed over to the more modernisitic looking Bell logo sometime around 1970, Bell Canada retained the older Bell logo for a few more years, but eventually dropped it altogather. As WECO also manufactured or distributed non-telephonic equipment, so did NECO, although NECO was still manufacturing or distributing such items well after WECO had spun-off most non-telephone manufacturing and sales into Graybar Electric by 1930. Northern Electric also manufactured electrical equipment and parts, household appliances, and electronic consumer goods, such as radios, TV's, phonographs, audio amplifiers, movie equipment, etc. NECO even manufactured bells -- not just bells for telephone sets, but all sorts of bells, even sleigh bells. In 1923, NECO even started radio station CHYC, just as AT&T/WECO/Bell-Labs was involved in radio broadcasting for a while in the 1920's. Bell Canada and Northern Electric also had a licensing arrangement with AT&T's Bell Labs. When the US Government and AT&T reached their Consent Decree in 1956 to settle the 1949 government antitrust suit against AT&T, the involvement in Bell-Canada/NECO by AT&T/WECO/Bell Labs began to decline. NECO set up its own research and development facilities in Belleville ON in 1957, and in Ottawa in 1959. Bell Canada also began its own R&D facilities. In 1971, Bell Canada and NECO merged their R&D facilities in a new organization, Bell Northern Research (BNR). On 30 June 1975, AT&T and Bell-Canada/NECO formally terminated their service arrangement, based on a decision reached in 1973. This ended the close relationship between AT&T and Bell Canada which had been in existence for close to 100 years. However, telcos in both Canada and the US continue to work closely in developing telecommunications standards for North America, and Canada remains an integral part of the telephone numbering/dialing plan, switching/routing network, billing/rating accounting arrangements, etc. for North America. In the early years of this century, Bell Canada's operating exchange territory extended west of Ontario, into Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. By the early 1920's or so, the governments of these three prairie provinces purchased the operations of Bell Canada in their respective provinces, and formed what has become known as MTS, Saskatel and AGT. In more recent years, these provincial governments have been in the process of privatizing their telephone operations. So far, only AGT has been sold off by the Alberta government into the holding company, Telus. Manitoba's government is considering privatizing MTS. As far as I know, the Saskatchewan government still owns Saskatel. During the earliest years of this century, many small local independent telephone companies were formed, usually operated by farm families and private investors, to provide telephone service in small towns and rural areas. From what I understand, there were even locations where there was competition from the independent telephone industry, with an independent telco competing against Bell Canada, or several independents competing against Bell Canada and each other, just as independents and Bell in the US had their competitive period early in the century. In 1905, the Canadian Independent Telephone Association (CITA) was formed, similar to the USITA which was formed some ten years earlier in the 1890's. CITA negotiated interconnection and operational standards between its independent member telcos and Bell Canada, and it has assisted with developing better toll revenue settlements for the usually smaller local independent "non-Stentor" telcos in Canada. At times, the relationship between Bell-Canada/TCTS companies and the independents weren't always "friendly". As recently as February 1984, the "Toll Wars" started between EdTel and AGT. EdTel (still at that time the municipally owned telco in Edmonton AB) began to "scramble" its AMA (Automatic Message Accounting) billing records for outbound toll calls, all routed through AGT (still at that time the provincially owned telco for Alberta), due to a dispute regarding toll revenue settlements. AGT retaliated by intercepting all outgoing toll traffic from EdTel at AGT's toll and operator switch for an (ONI) Operator Number Identification, "What is the number you are calling from, please?" A few months later, an agreement was reached between AGT and EdTel regarding the division of toll revenues, and things returned to normal. Last year, Telus, now the parent company of AGT, purchased EdTel from the Edmonton city government. For the time being, Telus will continue to provide telephone service in Edmonton using the EdTel name. In 1931, Bell Canada and the dominant provincial telcos formed the "Trans-Canada Telephone System" (TCTS). One of TCTS' major goals was to form a truly Canadian coast-to-coast telephone toll/transmission network, which was accomplished during that year. Prior to the completion of the TCTS network, long-haul telephone calls from one end of Canada to another had to traverse through AT&T's Long-Lines in the US. TCTS became known as Telecom-Canada in the late 1970's or early 1980's, and reorganized as Stentor around 1992/93. For years, the major operating telcos in the Atlantic provinces (all now members of Telecom Canada, now Stentor) have been partially held by Bell Canada. In 1983, Bell Canada, NECO and BNR were placed under the holding company, Bell Canada Enterprises, now known as BCE Inc. The Atlantic province telcos are now owned by holding companies, which BCE owns stock in, including Bruncor (which owns NBTel), MT&T in Nova Scotia, and NewTel (formerly Newfoundland Telephone). MT&T in turn holds stock in the Island Telephone Company on Prince Edward Island. Island Telephone was not a member of TCTS on its own for many decades, but in more recent years, it has become a member of Stentor (Telecom-Canada). Also, I don't think that what has become NewTel was originally a member of TCTS, as Newfoundland (including Labrador) was not a part of the Dominion of Canada until 1949. Throughout the decades, many of the small rural independents in Canada became unviable and were absorbed into nearby larger independents, Bell Canada, or one of Bell's "sister" TCTS telcos. Sometimes, it wasn't that the independent became unviable -- it was just that the once rural area served by an independent had become a suburb or part of a growing town served by Bell Canada or another TCTS telco. When the independent was absorbed into a larger company, the customers were frequently upgraded in service availabilities, such as being converted from manual (sometimes even magneto) to dial. At one time, there were small local or rural independents in almost every province of Canada, including Yukon and the Northwest Territories. Traditionally, the toll services in YT/NWT and northern BC had been provided by CN Telecommunications. CN (Canadian National) was originally the telegraph division of the Canadian government's CN Railways. The telephone toll network in YT historically dates back to the US Army's Alaskan Communications System, also known as the Northwest Communications System (NCS), constructed during World War II, along with the Alaska Highway. After the War, the US Army turned over the Canadian portion of the NCS to Canada's Department of National Defence. The Canadian Army took over management of the highway while the Royal Canadian Air Force took over the the communications line. Canada's Department of Transport took over the NCS from the RCAF in August 1946, then contracted CN Telegraphs to maintain and operate the NCS, effective April 1947. In December 1954, the Department of Transport announced that it intended to put the NCS up for sale, including the government owned telegraph and telephone exchanges in Ft.St.John and Dawson Creek BC. The North West Telephone Company in British Columbia purchased these two exchanges in July 1956. In April 1958, the Department of Transport formally turned over the NCS to CN. CN began expanding telephone services throughout YT/NWT and also began buying out local independent telcos in YT/NWT/northern BC, beginning in the late 1950's and throughout the 1960's. In October 1958, CN purchaed the Yukon Telephone Company which operated local telephone exchanges in Whitehorse (the capital of the Yukon since 1953), Mayo and Keno YT. The Yukon Telephone Company dates back to 1920, when it was founded as the Mayo Utilities Company, providing telephone, power and light, and water. Mayo Utilities was sold in 1942, the new owner then sold the non-telephone utilities and changed the name to Yukon Telephone Company. In 1962, CN purchased the Yukon Telephone Syndicate from the Northern Light Power and Coal Company Ltd. of England, which included the Dawson City (YT) telephone exchange, a magneto board dating back to 1901. In August 1962, CN replaced the magneto board with a dial exchange. Dawson City had been the capital of the Yukon until 1953. In 1959, CN began to expand into the NWT. Three local telephone exchanges (Yellowknife, Hay River and Ft.Smith) were connected to CN's new Great Slave Lake area toll network by 1961 and thus to the TCTS network of lower Canada. By 1962, additional locations were added by a VHF radio link. CN also began to purchase local telcos in the NWT, beginning in July 1961 with the Hay River Telephone Company (which began local service in the late 1950's). On 31 December 1963, CN bought the Yellowknife Telephone Company which began local service in 1947. In May 1964, CN purchased Ft.Smith's telephone exchange. Throughout the 1960's, CN also expanded telephone service to other NWT locations previously without any service. CN and AGT constructed a microwave link to supplement the recently completed pole lines in these areas. In the mid 1960's, CN began extending new telephone service to the lower Arctic islands of the NWT, some of it via tropospheric scatter radio, in association with construction of the military's DEW line. In the late 1960's and throughout the 1970's, CN continued to extend service to additional locations in the northern part of YT/NWT and along the YT/NWT border, much of this area needing communications due to the oil and mining industry in the area. In January 1979, Northwestel was set up as a subsidiary of CN, to provide the local and toll services of YT/NWT/northern BC. By 1988, when CNCP (which has since evolved into Unitel) wanted to start competitive full service toll operations throughout Canada (similar to what MCI and Sprint had done earlier in the US), they divested themselves of their telephone operations in YT/NWT/northern BC as well as Terra Nova Tel in parts of Newfoundland. CNCP (or Unitel) still provides most of what still exists of national public telegram and Telex services in Canada. Terra Nova Tel, also set up in 1979 as a subsidiary of CN, was an "independent" telco (and member of CITA) which had been providing local exchange services in Newfoundland (and Labrador) in areas which Newfoundland Telephone didn't serve. Terra Nova Tel and Newfoundland Telephone *DID* interconnect their networks togather, and Terra Nova Tel also had a toll or tandem switch for its own local switches and to interconnect with other parts of the TCTS network. When CN divested their local/regional telephone operations in 1988, (BCE's) Newfoundland Telephone absorbed Terra Nova Tel, and BCE bought CN's Northwestel operations in YT/NWT/northern BC. Telephone services in the eastern and far north Arctic NWT was originally developed and operated directly by Bell Canada, in the 1960's and 70's. In 1992, BCE transferred its Bell Canada operations in eastern/Arctic NWT into the (since 1988) BCE held Northwestel, which has since been merging the operations and identity into a single unit. The original CN operations of YT and western/southern NWT have been identified by Alberta's Area Code 403. The original Bell Canada operations in eastern/Arctic NWT have been identified by one of Quebec's Area Codes, 819. Recently, the territorial governments, Northwestel, Stentor, and Canadian government agencies have requested a single unique Area Code for Yukon and all of the Northwest Territories. I understand that Bellcore NANPA has approved the request, but I don't have any notices of a date for the split to occur nor do I know what the new Area Code's numericals are going to be. Northwestel's operations in northern BC will remain in Area Code 604 for now, but that will soon be part of the split into BC's new second Area Code, 250 to occur later this year. Today, all of the "non-Stentor" telcos are located throughout Quebec and Ontario, with one exception. The Prince Rupert City Telephone Co. is municipally owned, located in Prince Rupert, a town on British Columbia's west coast. Its local exchange interconnects with (GTE) BCTel's toll network. In addition to CITA, two other associations of independent telcos in Canada are The Ontario Telephone Association (OTA) and L'Association des Compagnies de Telephone du Quebec (ACTQ). Most of the "non-Stentor" telcos are members of CITA. Most of the "non-Stentor" telcos in Ontario are also members of OTA; likewise most of the "non-Stentor" telcos in Quebec (including GTE's Quebec-Telephone, for some time also an "associate" member of Stentor) are also members of ACTQ. Northwestel has also become an "associate" member of Stentor, as well as it has been a member of CITA. (GTE's) Quebec-Telephone was not a member of CITA. I don't know if Stentor has since allowed "associate" members Northwestel and (GTE's) Quebec-Telephone status as "full" members, nor do I know if Northwestel is still a CITA member. Three other major independent or "non-Stentor" telcos in Ontario and Quebec are (BCE's) Northern Telephone in Ontario and (BCE's) Telebec in Quebec, and Ontario Northland Telecommunications which is a part of the Ontario Government's Ontario Northland Transportation/Railways in northeastern Ontario. Ontario Northland has been a member of CITA but not of OTA. It provides the toll services for its own small handful of local exchanges as well as the numerous local exchanges of (BCE's) Northern Telephone. I don't know what the future of Ontario Northland Telecommunications will be, due to the present political situation of the Ontario provincial government. I understand that the provincial government has discontinued the airline services of Ontario Northland Transportation. As for Northern Telephone and Telebec, these have both been subsidiaries of Bell Canada (now BCE) since the mid 1960's. Neither Northern Telephone nor Telebec are members of Stentor on their own, nor are they members of CITA, but they are members of OTA and ACTQ, respectively. Northern Telephone can trace its history back to April 1905, as the Temiskaming Telephone Company. It began purchasing other nearby local telephone companies beginning as early as 1906. The name was changed to the Northern Telephone Company Ltd. in 1928. Northern Telephone continued to expand its service area and purchasing other telcos, as far west as the Manitoba border. Its telephone exchanges in parts of Quebec were under its subsidiary, Northern Quebec Telephone, Incorporated (Telephone du Nord de Quebec). In 1966, Bell Canada acquired control of Northern Telephone. The Quebec operations of Ontario Northland Telecommunications were purchased by Northern Telephone in 1967. Northern Telephone transferred its western Ontario operations directly to Bell Canada in 1969. In 1976, Telebec purchased Northern Telephone's Quebec exchange operations, Telephone du Nord de Quebec. Northern Telephone's exchanges have continued to exist as a subsidiary of Bell Canada (BCE) rather than being completely absorbed, probably due to Ontario provincial regulations. Since the 1970's, the operating service area is a string of local exchanges in towns along a stretch of a branch of the Trans-Canada Highway in central/northeastern Ontario, from the New Liskeard (ON) area to the Hearst (ON) area, including Timmins ON. The town of Cochrane ON is also included in this area along that branch of the Trans-Canada Highway, however its telephone services and other utilities are municipally provided by the Cochrane Public Utilities Commission. In 1910, Cochrane was incorporated as a town, and its mayor and council franchised out utility services, with an option to purchase the franchises after ten years, which was indeed exercised in 1920. The town government purchased the Cochrane area operations of the Northern Ontario Light and Power Company, and its Cochrane Telephone Company subsidiary. Telebec operates a large contiguous block of local exchanges and toll services in western/central Quebec, as well as smaller blocks of local exchanges, scattered all over southern and eastern Quebec, including the local and toll operations of Quebec's Iles-de-la-Madeleine (located east of NB and north of NS/PEI, in the Gulf of St.Lawrence). Some of Telebec's other exchanges scattered across southern and eastern Quebec have toll services provided by Bell Canada or (GTE's) Quebec-Telephone, while Telebec does directly provide toll switches itself for some of its other exchanges scattered in small blocks around southern and southwestern Quebec. Telebec gets its name from Telephone Becancour, originally the local telephone company in the town of Becancour, located along the St.Lawrence River, roughly halfway between Montreal and Quebec City. Becancour had attained the status of a town around 1965 and was a consolidation of various municipalities, under a decree by the Quebec government. A steel plant was to be constructed in Becancour at that time, although later abandoned. The investors who formed Telephone Becancour turned the telephone company over to Bell Canada. Similar to the situation of Northern Telephone in Ontario, Telebec has been a subsidiary of Bell Canada (BCE) instead of its exchanges being directly those of Bell Canada, again due to provincial regulations. Telephone Becancour merged with seven other local Quebec telephone companies in 1969. The new name was Telebec Ltee. at the incorporation in May. In the early 1970's, Telebec expanded its service area and also bought out other local telcos in Quebec. As mentioned earlier about Northern Telephone, in 1976, Telebec purchased Northern Telephone's Quebec exchange operations, Telephone du Nord de Quebec. Telebec continued buying out other local Quebec telcos through the late 1970's and early 1980's. Its most recent purchase was that of Sotel which provided service in the area around James Bay, in 1985. GTE's telephone operations in Canada (most of British Columbia and a good part of eastern and southern Quebec) are handled through its subsidiary, Anglo-Canadian. British Columbia's first actual telephone company was the Victoria and Esquamilt Telephone Company in 1880. However, in 1891 the Vernon and Nelson Telephone Company was incorporated which began buying out other telephone companies in the province. In 1904, the Vernon and Nelson Telephone Company became the British Columbia Telephone Company Ltd, which obtained a federal charter in 1916. In 1955, General Telephone purchased Anglo-Canadian which held interests in Compania Dominicana de Telefonos (CODETEL) in the Dominican Republic (which is still associated with GTE), the Philippines Long Distance Telephone Company (GT&E's Philippines interests were sold off in 1967, the same year that GT&E purchased the Hawaiian Telephone Company, prior to 1954 known as the Mutual Telephone Company in Hawaii), and the British Columbia Telephone Company. In 1966, GT&E through Anglo-Canadian acquired control of Quebec-Telephone, which was formed in 1927 and had consolidated many small local or rural independents in eastern and southern Quebec. The Automatic Electric Company, the GTE held equipment manufacturer, was also involved in Canada. AE's Canadian plants supplied most of the the switching equipment and customer telephone sets in British Columbia. Many of the independent telephone companies in Canada have recently begun providing cellular services through a "mobility" subsidiary. The cellular services of Prince Rupert City Mobility, EdTel Mobility, Thunder Bay Mobility, NorTel Mobility (Northern Telephone) and Telebec Mobilite, along with the "mobility" subsidiaries of the Stentor associate members (NorthwesTel Mobility and Quebectel Mobilite) and member telephone companies, form Mobility Canada, a Stentor-like organization for Canadian cellular and wireless. Cochrane Cellular Mobility, part of the Cochrane (ON) Public Utilities Commission is not part of Mobility Canada. Being a telco's cellular subsidiary, Cochrane Mobility is most likely a "B-side" cellular carrier (telco or Mobility Canada) rather than an "A-side" cellular carrier (non-wireline). The "A-side" cellular carrier for most of Canada is Cantel, now known as Rogers-Cantel. Rogers is also a major player in Cable-TV and other mass-media. Rogers-Cantel Cellular also has had an association with Unitel. Two other Canadian telecommunications carriers associated with Stentor and/or the individual Stentor member telephone companies are Teleglobe Canada and Telesat. Telesat provides most of Canada's domestic satellite services and is also involved with the Mobility subsidiaries of the telephone companies in providing satellite movile telephone services for the more remote regions of Canada. Teleglobe Canada is the carrier for Canada's international telecommunications services outside of North America. For the time being, Teleglobe is still more-or-less a monopoly. Traffic between Canada and the US (continental including Alaska) is mostly handled "directly" between the various US and Canadian Stentor carriers and telcos. In 1950, international and overseas Canadian traffic handled by the Canadian Marconi Company and Cable & Wireless Ltd. was taken over by the government owned Canadian Overseas Telecommunications Corporation, which has since been renamed Teleglobe Canada. Today, Stentor and its member telephone companies including Bell Canada now maintain an association with MCI in the US and BT (British Telecom) in the UK, while Unitel maintains an association with AT&T. Sprint and Call-Net are assocaited. Call-Net is now known as Sprint-Canada. Canada also now has numerous other new telecommunications entities. Some such as fONOROLA provide resale services. There are other entities such as MicroCell 1-2-1 which is a PCS company. There has also been talk of competitive local telephone service, and even occasional murmurings of COCOTs (private payphones). Presently, all public or pay telephone service in Canada is provided by the local Stentor or independent telephone company in their respective territories. Most of the remaining local independent telcos in Ontario and Quebec are either municipally-owned, investor-owned, or are local "co-operative" associations. The independent telcos in Quebec and Ontario had been provincially regulated for many years, but a few years back, the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) took over the regulatory authority from the Ontario Telephone Service Commission and Quebec's regulatory agency. Bell Canada and GTE's British Columbia Telephone Company have been federally regulated for decades, while the individual dominant provincial telcos of TCTS (Telecom Canada, now Stentor) were regulated by their own provincial regulatory agencies. In the past few years, the federal CRTC has taken over regulatory jurisdiction of these Stentor member telcos from the provincial regulatory agencies. The following is a list of "independent" or "non-Stentor" Canadian telcos. It is about a year old, so I don't know if there have been any changes (name changes, mergers, take-overs): CANADIAN INDEPENDENT TELCO's (most but not all are members of CITA): ============================ ONTARIO (most but not all are members of OTA): ======= Abitibi-Price Telephone Amtelecom ; Manitoulin Island Telephone (both associated with each other) Quadro Communications Co-Op. (recent name change from Blanshard Mun.Tel) Brooke Telecom Co-Operative Bruce Municipal Telephone Cochrane Public Utilities Commission (municipal) Coldwater Communications Town of Dryden Municipal Telephone Durham Telephone ; Otonabee Telephone (both associated with each other) People's Telephone of Forest Gosfield-North Municipal Telephone Hay Communications Co-Operative Huron Telecomm'ns.Co-Op. (recent name change from Huron & Kinloss Mun.Tel) Hurontario Telephone Keewatin Municipal Telephone Kenora Municipal Telephone Landsdowne Rural Telephone Mornington Communications Co-Operative North Frontenac Telephone North Norwich Telephone North Renfrew Telephone Roxborough Telephone South Bruce Rural Telephone City of Thunder Bay Tel.Dept. (municipal) Tuckersmith Communications Co-Operative Westport Telephone Wightman Telephone Northern Telephone: (a subsidiary of BCE; NOT a member of Stentor on its own; a member of OTA but NOT a member of CITA; Does not have Toll/Tandem switches of its own; its local switches home on those toll switches of Ontario Northland Telecommunications.) Ontario Northland Telecommunications: (a member of CITA but NOT a member of OTA; provincially owned by Ontario Northland Transportation/Railways; DOES have some of its OWN Toll/Tandem switches- and a few local switches of its own; Northern Telephone's local switches home on Ontario Northland Telecom's Toll/Tandem switches.) QUEBEC (all are members of ACTQ): ====== Telebec: (a subsidiary of BCE; NOT a member of Stentor on its own; a member of ACTQ but NOT a member of CITA; DOES have its OWN Toll/Tandem switches, but some of its local switches also home on toll switches of Bell Canada, and one homes on (GTE's) Quebec-Telephone.) Corp.de Tel.de la Baie la Cie de Tel.de Courcelles Tel.Guevremont Comp.de Tel.de Lambton Tel.Milot Comp.de Tel.de Nantes Comp.de Tel.de St.Ephrem (homes on (GTE's) Quebec-Telephone) Comp.de Tel.de St.Liboire de Bagot Comp.de Tel.de St.Victor (homes on (GTE's) Quebec-Telephone) Sogetel (most switches home on (GTE's) Quebec-Telephone, two home on Bell) Tel.Daaquam (homes on Sogetel)(Tel.Daaquam is now owned by Sogetel) Comp.de Tel.Upton Co-Op de Tel.Valcourt Comp.de Tel.Warwick (GTE's) Quebec-Telephone: (a member of ACTQ but NOT a member of CITA; DOES have toll/tandem swtches for its own local switches to home on, as well as for local switches of nearby small independents including some Telebec exchanges; is a Stentor ASSOCIATE member.) (OTHERS): ======== NorthwesTel (YT/NWT/northern BC) (BCE held; is a Stentor ASSOCIATE member; has been a CITA member; has toll/tandem switches) Edmonton Telephones (AB) (has NO toll switches of its own; has been a CITA member) *In early 1995, EdTel was purchased from the Edmonton city government by Telus, the parent company of AGT* Prince Rupert City Tel.Co. (BC) (has NO toll/tandem switches; is a CITA member; its single local exchange switch with only two or three 604-NNX codes -- soon to be 250-NNX codes -- homes on GTE's BC Tel) Here are the URL's of the home pages for some of the above mentioned companies. Many of them have a historical section you can click to giving a chronology of their telephone service development: http://www.stentor.ca http://www.bell.ca http://www.bce.ca http://www.mtt.ca http://www.nbnet.nb.ca http://www.bruncor.com http://www.newcomm.net/ntc http://www.quebectel.qc.ca http://www.nt.net/nortel/nortel.htm (Northern Telephone) http://www.telebec.qc.ca http://www.mts.mb.ca http://www.sasktel.com http://www.agt.net http://www.telus.com http://www.edtel.com/about.htm http://www.bctel.com http://www.yukonweb.wis.net/business/nwtel (Northwestel) http://www.onlink.net/puc (Cochrane ON Telephone/Utilities) http://www.mobility.com (Mobility Canada) http://www.teleglobe.ca/en http://www.telesat.ca http://www.unitel.com http://www.rogers.com (Rogers-Cantel) http://www.fonorola.net/ http://www.magi.com/~ota (Ontario Telephone Association) http://www.nortel.com (Northern Telecom) http://crtc.gc.ca http://info.ic.gc.ca (Industry Canada) http://www.att.com http://www.gte.com http://www.codetel.net.do MARK J. CUCCIA PHONE/WRITE/WIRE: HOME: (USA) Tel: CHestnut 1-2497 WORK: mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu |4710 Wright Road| (+1-504-241-2497) Tel:UNiversity 5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New Orleans 28 |fwds on no-answr to Fax:UNiversity 5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail