Canada’s largest telecomm company just got larger. Today’s announcement that BCE Inc. will acquire Astral Media for $3.38-bln means that Bell will be harder than ever to avoid. Whether you’re out on the street or holed up at home, the chances that you’ll be making Bell richer just got even higher. Here’s an incomplete inventory of everything the telecom giants own.
Infrastructure — Since the late 1800s (when the telephone was invented) Bell Canada (named after that telephone guy) has been building the actual physical networks we use to connect to one another: phone lines, satellite transmitters, and more recently fibre optics cables. Even if you’re not a subscriber to either Bell’s home phone service, Bell TV, Bell Mobility, Virgin Mobile Canada, Bell Fibe TV or Bell Fibe Internet, there’s a good chance that your service provider (like TekSavvy or Acanac) rents bandwidth from them at least occasionally.
Bell’s purchase of Astral extends their dominion of the physical world beyond out-of-sight infrastructure and into directly-in-your-sight street furniture. BCE will take control of Astral’s 9,500 “out-of-home advertising signage locations,” including TTC bus shelters and those lovely “InfoToGo” pillars taking up sidewalk space. To be clear: Bell will now make money off you if you walk around with your eyes open. They also own the city’s garbage cans.
Media – Name your top three favourite TV shows. I’ll bet two of them air on a Bell station. Besides providing technology that transmits television to your home, Bell owns some of Canada’s most-watched television stations including CTV, CP24, Much Music, TSN, MTV Canada, BNN, Comedy Network, Space, Fashion Television, Bravo! and Discovery among others. Having acquired Astral the list now includes The Movie Network, HBO Canada, Teletoon and The Family Channel (that’s not even counting all the French channels). You can add Astral’s 84 radio stations across the country to the mix bringing Bell’s grand total to 117.
Even if you’re the type of person that’s afraid of having “transmissions” sent to your brain and spend most of your time building giant stacks of newspapers in your apartment, Bell owns a 15 per cent stake in The Globe and Mail.
Sports – Last year Bell partnered with arch-rival Rogers Communications to buy a huge stake in Maple Leafs Sports & Entertainment, the company that owns the Leafs, Raptors, Toronto FC, The ACC and Maple Leaf Square. When the sale goes through as expected this summer, you won’t even be able to cheer against the Leafs without Bell getting a piece: they own a chunk of the Habs too.
Oh, and if Bell’s ubiquity has got you thinking about breaking into 299 Queen St. and sabotaging “the mainframe” using a some kind of homemade electronic device, they also own The Source electronics store.
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