The IT Nerd

Bell has posted an “open letter” from their CEO Mirko Bibic about some serious cutting that Bell is doing. You can read the full letter here. But here’s the TL:DR:

• Bell is still salty about being forced to open up their fibre networks to competitors. As a result of that they stopped rolling out fibre. But they’re now going one step further by capping speeds at 3Gbps. That means that 8Gbps that I said that nobody needed is no longer available. In fact, I checked the Bell website and found that in my area, 8Gbps is no longer an option for me to order.
• Bell is cutting 4,800 positions which is 9% of their workforce.

All of that is bad. But it’s actually much worse. Remember when I posted a story about Bell killing The Source brand and rebranding as Best Buy Express? Well, MobileSyrup is reporting that they’re going to close locations and slash jobs as part of that. That wasn’t mentioned in the open letter. The other thing that wasn’t mentioned in the open letter was the fact that Bell is selling 45 radio stations as part of this. All of this says to me that not only is Bell not in a good place, but they’re no longer in a position to challenge Rogers. Which is something that I am sure that a bunch of people in corner offices at 333 Bloor St. E. and 1 Mount Pleasant Road which are the corporate addresses of Rogers in Toronto are happy about. I say that because whether you like or hate Bell, their push to get fibre deployed fostered competition and forced Rogers to up their game. That’s now not going to happen and consumers will pay the price for that.

This entry was posted on February 8, 2024 at 9:29 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Rogers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.