Bell MTS ringing in a brighter future

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This article was published 11/04/2023 (991 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Mirko Bibic, CEO of BCE Inc., the owner of Bell MTS, sounded like a community development worker extolling the importance of broadband connectivity for small rural, remote communities, as he appeared in front of a jam-packed Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce audience at the Fairmont Hotel on Tuesday.

After recently publishing a white paper on the subject, this was his first public speech on the importance of telcos like his working to change the reality of place-based economic disparities in Canada.

It’s a message that has a captive audience in Manitoba where many rural and remote communities are effectively in a broadband dessert.

While Bibic later acknowledged in an interview that there is no business case for Bell to, for instance, build fibre connections to remote communities — he said that’s where government subsidies play an important role — he also detailed an historic pace of capital investment that his company has undertaken over the past few years.

In the three years since the pandemic began, the company has invested $14 billion in its fibre and 5G wireless networks across the country, including $1.3 billion in Manitoba since acquiring MTS in 2017.

“Bell is looking to bring investment, jobs and possibility to every community, large and small, urban and rural, helping to diminish the relevance of a community’s postal code on its economic future,” he said.

While Bell might be the focus of ire by communities who are still on the outside looking in when it comes to broadband connectivity, the company has been on an epic run to build a robust network throughout as much of the country as possible.

Bibic said the company’s vision for the country where economic prosperity and opportunities are not dictated by the town you may live in includes more cooperation with the public sector and more careful regulatory rulings that don’t serve to hamper investments.

Meanwhile, the company forges ahead with its fibre rollout.

The latest rural expansion program in Manitoba will bring all-fibre connections to East St. Paul, Gimli, Headingley, Ste. Anne, Teulon and West St. Paul.

Its national mobile 5G network is currently available in Winnipeg, Steinbach and seven other municipalities in this province. And Bibic said Bell has recently started delivering a slightly less robust wireless service — LTE-A wireless services — in Gods River, Red Sucker Lake, Jackhead, Pauingassi, Grand Rapids, Little Grand Rapids, Easterville and Berens Rivers, communities that were previously unserved or underserved.

In an interview, Bibic paused when asked what role BCE should or could play in expanding services to the most remote communities in the country.

“When thinking about that I automatically go to our mission statement which is advancing how Canadians connect with each other and the world,” he said. “So when we anchor ourselves to our corporate purpose we clearly do have a role.”

But when pushed he said that the small local internet service providers (ISPs) are the more likely entities to deliver the service. Among other things, he said Bell can help by raising the profile of the challenge at hand.

He also said that it is an industry that relies on scale to succeed which is one of the reasons small capital intensive projects with slow, small returns on investment are so challenging.

He said even Bell runs into challenges accessing some technology and equipment when its peers in the U.S., for instance, operate with 10-to-15 times the number of subscribers that Bell has.

He pointed to Bell MTS’s track record since the acquisition in 2017 as another example of how important scale is in the telco business.

He said the company’s decision to accelerate its capital investment program — it spent $5 billion in 2022, up from the $3.9 billion average of the pre-pandemic years — has made a difference in Manitoba.

“This allowed us to significantly boost investment in Manitoba to a degree that simply would not have been possible, had Bell and MTS not joined forces in 2017,” he said.

“And because of this investment, we expect to reach about 290,000 locations with our Fibe Internet service across the province by the end of this year.”

With the competitive landscape changing with the Rogers-Shaw merger and Quebecor’s acquisition of Freedom Mobile and its intentions to expand nationally, Bibic said Bell is preparing by building the best network possible.

“We feel good about where we are at,” he said. “The things we have been doing independent of other market transactions put us in a great position to continues to be competitive.”

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca