The Industry - Telecommunications 

For most of the past century, the industry that we now refer to as "telecommunications" was essentially synonymous with one device: the telephone. The average person's experience with communications technology was limited to their good old rotary-dial phone - available in any colour, so long as it was black. Using a copper-wire network, the telephone did what it was designed to do - allow subscribers to make and receive local, long-distance or overseas voice calls - exceedingly well. 

The telephone industry, by and large, consisted of several large companies which exercised a monopoly in a particular geographic region. For most of its century-long history, for example, Bell Canada operated as a monopoly phone company in Québec and Ontario. In exchange for this monopoly, companies such as Bell Canada and AT&T in the United States were subject to government regulations which placed limits on how much they could charge customers for their services.

The breakdown of this old-style monopoly telephone system and the emergence of the dynamic, rapidly evolving telecommunications industry that we know today was hastened by a landmark U.S. Justice Department decision in 1984. That year, the Justice Department introduced deregulation of the industry when it forced AT&T to relinquish its hold on its regulated telephone monopoly. The decision ushered in a period of deregulation, which in turn introduced large-scale competition in the telephone industry. AT&T was broken up into several smaller companies commonly known as "Baby Bells." At the beginning, these companies focused on providing local phone service, while AT&T's primary business was long distance. Today, more than 15 years after the breakup of AT&T, the United States is home to more than 1,000 independent local telephone companies.

In Canada, the process of deregulation began in 1992 when the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), the federal body which regulates telecommunications, opened up long-distance service to competition. Companies such as Bell Canada lost their monopoly on long-distance service. In the years that followed, many new companies entered the Canadian long-distance market, leading to lower prices and more services for consumers. Competition in long distance was followed by competition in local service, and providing communications services was opened to an array of providers, including cable companies. Today, Canada's communications landscape is filled with companies - such as Excel Canada - that provide a host of new services: everything from long distance services to satellite TV.

Deregulation, in North America and around the world, has created a U.S. $400 billion global telecom market. Some analysts predict that this market could reach U.S. $1 trillion in the next 10 years as new technologies are introduced and the demand for telecommunications services grows exponentially.

Canada has successfully taken advantage of this "communications revolution." Thanks to deregulation and competition, Canada has some of the lowest residential and business telephone rates in the world. Canada also has one of the highest rates of telephone and Internet users in the world, helping make our telecommunications market highly competitive: in 1999, for example, this market generated capital investments worth $6.3 billion - up from $4.4 billion in 1995.

Canadian Internet use keeps rising, with more than 50% of Canadian households having access to the Internet. That's more than the United States (43%), Australia (38%) and Britain, France and Germany combined (26%) - Source: Canadian Internet Commerce Statistics Summary Sheet November 7th, 2000

From the humble telephone to the fax machine, from voice mail to e-mail, e-commerce and e-business, the traditional telecommunications landscape has become unrecognizable. Just as copper wire gradually gave way to fibre-optic networks, so has the Internet and the Web transformed the way we communicate, indeed, the way we manage our lives on both a personal and professional level.