I had the pleasure of attending a half day road show on Wednesday put on Bell Wholesale. They reached out to me and other carriers, telcos, ISP’s in the 519 area. It was the first time in my memory that Bell had held such an event in the area. I was curious to hear what they had to say. A long time ago I actually worked at Bell Canada, as a Customer Systems Engineer (CSE) and I provided CSE support to Bell Carrier Services which is now branded Bell Wholesale.
Most of my 35 year career in telecommunications has been in the competitive sector so Bell and other incumbent players were “the competition”. Bell can be a very formidable competitor. Due to the large network that they have in Canada, they are however, also a supplier to their competitors. That is what Bell Wholesale does. The road show was a great way to show their commitment to helping competitors like AurorA.
The sessions focussed on four main areas; IP broadband services, Data Centres and hosting, SIP solutions and Polycom voice solutions. The IP broadband covered a range of network products from 1 Gig Ethernet to entire wavelengths. The extensive portfolio of Data Centres across Canada and in the USA (and London, UK too ) are available to competitors to resell. A whole range of SIP trunking options were also presented along with the Polycom equipment to be able to go with it.
There was plenty of time to meet and chat with the Wholesale team at the networking times before and after the sessions. The sales team was there, but also Product subject matter experts and executive support right up to the VP of Sales and the head of Bell Wholesale. Many discussions were heard around the room about ways to work together.
After the event my mind was racing with ideas. It was refreshing to see and hear that Bell Wholesale “gets it” and wants to work with companies like mine, to help us succeed and provide better services to customers. Kudos to the Bell Wholesale team for doing this road show and I hope they make it an annual event.
Hi Timo, it was great to see you at the Bell Road Show. I to was glad to see that they are going in the right direction and we are looking forward to doing more with Bell Wholesale. I though the event was very well done and hope to see more of them in the future.