Bell Canada

Bell Canada Enterprises is a major telecommunications company and a provider of telephone services in Canada.

Alexander Graham Bell was born in Scotland, but lived most of his life in Nova Scotia, Canada, and was granted a US patent for the telephone. Bell Canada was founded in 1880 and granted a government monopoly on Canadian long distance telephone service.

Eventually there were two main companies in the telephone industry in Canada -- Bell Canada selling services and a division of AT&T, Northern Electric, making equipment. There was a parallel setup in the US -- AT&T selling phone services and Western Electric making the equipment.

In recent years there have been a number of changes. Bell Canada was removed from its monopoly position and provides phone service in only Ontario and Quebec, but not the whole of Canada. Because of the breakup of AT&T in the United States, Northern Electric has became Nortel.

Bell Canada has also moved into new industries like Bell Sympatico, an Internet service provider, Bell Mobility a cell phone service. The BCE corporation also owns CTV television. These are together operated as Bell Globemedia, Canada's largest media coproration.