Bell Aliant - History

History

The current firm is the successor to Aliant Inc., formed from the 1999 merger of Maritime Telephone and Telegraph Company (MT&T), Island Telecom, Bruncor (parent of NBTel), and NewTel Enterprises (parent of NewTel Communications), then the four main incumbent telephone companies in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador respectively. Aliant was approximately 53% owned by Bell Canada. At the time that Aliant Inc. was being formed, the executives of the four merging companies agreed to a co-operative management strategy which would see no specific province have a Bell Aliant head office; instead the headquarters functions would be spread across its constituent companies.

On March 7, 2006, Bell and Aliant announced plans to merge Aliant's operations into those of Bell. Specifically, Aliant's "high growth" wireless and retail (DownEast) networks would be folded into Bell's wholly owned Bell Mobility and Bell World operations, respectively. Aliant, under a new income trust structure, would acquire Bell's "regional" landline operations (i.e. outside of major city centres) in Ontario and Quebec. This created the significant challenges involved with merging English-speaking operations with French-speaking operations. The transaction was completed on July 7, 2006, and saw the appointment of Stephen Wetmore, formerly of Bell, as President and CEO. Bell Canada retained 45% of the restructured Aliant.

Fund units representing about 28.5% of Bell Aliant were distributed to shareholders of Bell's parent company, BCE. Shareholders of the former Aliant Inc. received units representing 26.5% of the firm. (The company would convert back to a regular corporation at the end of 2010.)

The purpose was to separate out the more stable (or low-growth) parts of Bell's holdings, i.e. wireline operations in markets with relatively little competition, to satisfy investors. The restructuring was not expected to have any effect on end consumers in terms of existing pricing or bundling practices. Meanwhile, Bell Canada proper continues to have full control over its wireless and satellite/cable operations throughout Canada, as well as wireline operations in major centres such as Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and surrounding areas.

Bell Aliant has also assumed Bell's 63.4% interests in both NorthernTel and Télébec. Since January 30, 2007, both are 100%-owned by Bell Aliant. Both firms continue to operate their own wireless networks.

In late 2009, Bell Aliant launched its FibreOP service with deployment commencing in New Brunswick, followed by simultaneous deployments in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island in 2010-2011 with the service available to approximately 600,000 customers in urban centres across the three provinces by 2012. The FibreOP service will cover an entire urban area with a fibre optic network to offer IPTV and high speed internet. This is an evolution of earlier efforts that saw Bell Aliant predecessor NB Tel deploy television services in the Saint John, New Brunswick urban area in the 1990s, followed by a similar deployment in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The new FibreOP network will provide Internet speeds of up to 70 Mbit/s down and 30 Mbit/s up and 170 Mbit/s down and 30 Mbit/s up in Nova Scotia and will be bundled with Bell Aliant's television and residential telephone services.