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TELUS (, ) is a Canadian Telecommunications firm, the country's second-largest telecommunications carrier after Bell Canada , with C$ 8.8 billion of annual revenue, 10.8 million customer connections which includes 4.5 million wired network access lines, 1.05 million Internet subscribers, and 5.1 million wireless subscribers. The company provides a wide range of wireline and wireless telecommunications products and services including data, IP , voice, video, and entertainment services. It is the primary local telephone service provider ( ILEC ) in Alberta , British Columbia , as well as in portions of eastern Quebec near Quebec City and the Gaspé region; it competes with Bell and other telephone companies as a CLEC in many parts of Canada that lie outside of Telus' ILEC regions. While the company name is not an acronym, it is typically written in uppercase in Telus' documentation and communications material. HISTORY The history of Telus began with Alberta Government Telephones (AGT), which was established by the Alberta provincial government under the provincial Liberal Party in 1907 to acquire and operate Bell Canada operations in the province, which were scant, inadequate for the growing settlements, and which the government felt that Bell had neglected in favour of central Canada. AGT was then commissioned to develop telephone services for the entire province. Edmonton , however, had a city-owned telephone utility, 'Edmonton Telephones' later to become Edmonton Telephones Corporation, an arms' length company of the City of Edmonton, that contracted for long distance with AGT. Tensions erupted between AGT and 'ET' in the early 1980s, as 'ET' wanted more revenue from the long distance traffic it generated for AGT. Without any willingness by AGT to negotiate,'ET' began scrambling long distance billing records so that AGT could not bill for calls. AGT responded by routing all originating 'et' calls through the operators, who verbally requested the caller for the number they were calling from. Eventually, the companies agreed on a more compensatory arrangement. The brand name Telus was first used in 1990 as a new name for the former AGT after it was privatized by the Alberta provincial government. In 1995, Telus purchased Edmonton Telephones Corporation from the City of Edmonton, ending the era of government-owned telecommunications carriers in Alberta and continuing the deregulation of the telecommunications market already in progress. This deregulation also led to competition from such companies as Rogers Communications , Bell Canada , Primus Canada , and many others; at the same time, rapidly emerging technologies such as cellular phones, fibre networks and Internet service forced the new Telus to vastly and quickly broaden its offerings. In 1996, The Telus "master brand" was introduced, bringing products and companies under one unified identity. The ED TEL and AGT brands were retired. {Link without Title} A new iteration of Telus was formed in January 1999 via the merger of General Telephone And Electronics (now part of Verizon Communications ) subsidiary BCTel , the former monopoly telecommunications service provider in British Columbia, and the Alberta-only version of Telus. Although BCTel was the larger of the two merging companies the new entity decided to retain the Telus name, abandoning the regional limitations of the BCTel brand, while expanding its reach to compete on a national and international scale. Telus also moved most administration functions to Alberta to take advantage of lower taxes and a less union-oriented work force. The new Telus, however, moved its headquarters to Burnaby , BC, the former headquarters of BCTel. Up until 2000, Telus and its predecessors AGT and BCTel had been partners with seven other Canadian telephone companies in what began as the Trans-Canada Telephone System, became Telecom Canada, and was now the Stentor Alliance . In 2000, Telus decided to compete with Bell Canada, causing the Stentor Alliance to dissolve. Bell Canada, in turn, went into Telus territories to compete. Telus has fared somewhat better in the deal, acquiring more customers in Central and Eastern Canada than Bell has acquired in the West. Oddly enough, Telus has an agreement with Bell to use their Towers in Central and Eastern Canada, and Bell uses Telus's towers in the West. In March 2000, Telus obtained a controlling interest in QuébecTel, a local service provider in southern Quebec (QuebecTel had previously been owned, together with BCTel, by Anglo-Canadian Telephone Company, which in turn was a subsidiary of General Telephone and Electronics of Connecticut). Later that year, Telus made a C$ 6.6-billion acquisition of Clearnet Communications, a digital mobile telephone provider using the same CDMA cellular network technology as Telus based in Toronto, Ontario , which it combined with Telus Mobility to form a wireless telecommunications service provider with national scope. Telus attempted to further expand its reach into the wireless communications sector in May 2004 when, through its wireless division, the company made a curious $1.1-billion bid for Microcell Telecommunications (holders of Fido, a GSM network and thus not compatible with the CDMA network deployed by Telus). Telus was eventually outbid by Rogers , a Canadian cable and media firm. Telus briefly flirted with the idea of acquiring Bell Canada Enterprises in June 2007, but the idea was dropped a few days later, citing "The inadequacies of BCE's bid process." 1 Labour dispute See Also: Telecommunications Workers Union Telus' labour dispute with the Telecommunications Workers Union (TWU) began after the previous contract negotiated with BCTel before the two merged expired at the end of 2000. After Telus made its last offer to the TWU, it informed the union of its intention to bring an end to the dispute by unilaterally implementing its April offer to employees in Alberta and British Columbia . The union set up pickets the next day. Telus and the union reached and ratified a tentative agreementhttp://www.teleclick.ca/2005/11/64-of-telus-workers-say-no-to-continued-labour-action/ on November 18, 2005, ending the dispute. Pornography sales On January 8, 2007, Telus, Canada's second-largest telecommunications company also became the first North American wireless company to offer its own in-house pay-per-download pornography sales via cellphone. Telus made the explicit pictures and videos of full nude and partially nude men and women available to its cellphone customers across Canada for approximately $3 and $4 per download. Naked ambitions put Telus on the spot Industry analysts considered it a landmark move. Is Telus willing to accept the scorn with its porn? No other wireless company in North America had attempted to cross that moral boundary and begin its own in-house pornography sales. Before making the move into its own pornography sales, Telus research had found that 20% of search terms entered by subscribers on their mobile browsers were intended to find adult content. 13 of the top 25 sites being accessed were hard-core pornography sites. Is Telus willing to accept the scorn with its porn? On February 9, 2007, Catholic Archbishop Raymond Roussin, who represents 400,000 Catholics in the Vancouver area, called on the 130 local parishes and schools in his archdiocese to consider cancelling their Telus contracts to protest the adult content. Telus defended the service as "responsible" because users must first prove they're adults. In a February 12, 2007 issue of The B.C. Catholic, Archbishop Roussin, a Telus customer himself, denounced Telus for selling pornography. Archbishop criticizes Telus porn decision On February 19, 2007, the Globe And Mail published an editorial calling Telus a "Purveyor of Porn." There were numerous print and broadcast stories about the company's decision to sell pornography, including one in the New York Times.[http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30A1EFB3E5A0C7A8DDDAB0894DF404482&showabstract=1 Canadian Company Offers Nude Photos via Cellphone After customers, including the Catholic church threatened to cancel their service, Telus announced on February 20, 2007 that it was discontinuing sales of adult content to subscribers. Telus Stops Selling Porn After Protests From Catholic Church |
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