The IT Nerd

Bell today announced it is launching services for Microsoft Teams Phone Mobile, building on its collaboration with Microsoft to offer Canadian businesses a flexible, secure, high-performance communication solution. This innovative mobile-first solution integrates mobile numbers with Teams, enabling seamless calling and collaboration. Teams Phone Mobile provides a consistent user experience, simplifying business communication and boosting productivity and efficiency.

With Bell Calling for Microsoft Teams Phone Mobile, users can expect:  

• Reliable mobile calling: Make and receive business calls using a mobile device’s native dialer or the Teams app, all with one mobile number.
• Unified communication: Make and receive business calls from any device, including mobile, laptop, desktop, or tablet, and access all the features of Teams, like status updates, call transfer, voicemail, unified call logs and missed calls, and recording, from any device, no matter the work location.
• Enhanced management: IT administrators can now manage Teams Phone users, both mobile and fixed-line, within the Microsoft 365 Admin Portal, simplifying moves, adds, and changes.
• AI integration: Advanced features like Microsoft 365 Copilot, available as add-ons, add powerful artificial intelligence capabilities, including summarization of live calls.

Bell expands its Calling solutions for Teams with the addition of its Teams Phone Mobile services, joining Operator Connect, Direct Routing as a Service, and Direct Routing. These options cater to diverse workstyles, from remote and hybrid to mobile-only employees, allowing businesses to choose the best integration method for their specific communication needs.

Beyond Calling, Bell offers a range of Microsoft Modern Workplace solutions, including Microsoft 365, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and security, providing full Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) resale, professional services, and complimentary management solutions for Microsoft 365 subscriptions, including Teams Phone and Microsoft Defender. Through affiliates like Stratejm , Bell enhances communication, collaboration and security with its Security as a Service (SECaaS) offering. This service ensures the secure deployment, installation, and integration of Teams, while effectively managing Microsoft security licenses to enable businesses to operate with confidence and maximize their investments in cybersecurity. 

Bell also collaborates with customers to optimize their use of Microsoft 365 Copilot, enhancing both their calling experience and broader operations. This commitment to comprehensive solutions extends to cloud migration, where Bell assists businesses with Microsoft Cloud solutions, providing secure access to existing solutions while paving the way for future innovations.

To learn more about how Bell can help your organization embrace the future of communication, visit Bell.ca/MicrosoftTeamsVoiceSolutions .

If you’re a long time reader of this blog, you’ll know that I started out having Bell DSL Internet and home phone a very long time ago. And because of a rather negative experience when my phone went out of service, I dumped Bell for Teksavvy. This was in 2009. And only because Rogers took the entire country offline a couple of years ago did I return to Bell. And this was despite the fact that a previous attempt to return to Bell went off the rails. Though the process to do that was not exactly the best customer experience possible, and it as also full of attempts to upsell me. But at the end I got Bell Fibe installed and it worked well for our needs. Though that’s when I also confirmed that Bell’s customer service wasn’t that great at times. Other times it was brilliant.

So that brings me to today where I am dumping Bell for a second time. And it’s due to price. Now when I signed up for Bell, I was paying the following when I first signed up for Bell:

• 1.5 Gbps down/940 Mbps up Internet service for $49.95 a month for 24 months. After that the price goes up to 84.95 a month.
• A home phone package with North American calling and services like call waiting and caller ID for $56.56 a month.
• TV, which I didn’t want but they slipped in for $10 a month to facilitate a bunch of discounts.

The bottom line is that I started out paying $116.51 a month with Bell including taxes. But fast forward to today and I am paying $192.10. That’s because of Bell’s seemingly random price increases and the expiration of various promotional credits added over $75 a month to my bill. That’s a non-starter in today’s economy. And asking Bell for a better deal is also a non-starter because like a lot of Canadian telcos these days, they won’t try to keep you as a customer. Instead, they would rather let you go to another telco and try to win you back. I spoke about this here, but in short Canadian telcos don’t care about retaining customers. They only care about making as much money as they possibly can before those customers leave for another telco. Then trying to win you back so that it looks like you’re a new customer. Knowing that, I am forced to switch providers if I want to lower my telco costs.

Enter Distributel. They’re owned by Bell and use Bell’s infrastructure. But they for the most part don’t behave like Bell. And according to Reddit, they also seem to have decent customer service unlike Bell. But most importantly, they don’t cost nearly as much as Bell. So after looking at their website and giving them a call, I walked away with this:

• Internet: 1 Gbps down / 750 Mbps up – $69.95 a month. A WiFi pod is included for free.
• Home Phone: Free local calling and 500 minutes of North American Calling – $25 a month with the first month free.
• They are waving my install and shipping fees (to ship their hardware to me).
• They will work with Bell to cancel my Bell service. Which isn’t surprising as it’s technically the same company.

So with taxes my monthly bill should be just over $100 a month. Compared to what Bell is charging me, that’s a no brainer. Now I should point a couple of things out:

• Distributel appears to use YAK for their telephone service. Which makes this a VoIP type system. That means that if the Internet is out or the power is out, I have no home phone. Which is fine as that is the situation that I have with Bell right now. And I mitigate some of that by having a UPS as described here.
• Some of you will say that I am giving up speed on my Internet connection because I’m dropping from 1.5 Gbps down/940 Mbps up. The fact is that I am unlikely to notice a difference because of what I argue here. In short, nobody really needs anything over 500 Mbps up or down because you are highly unlikely to ever fully max out a 500Mbps connection, never mind anything faster.

I was on the phone with Distributel for about half an hour or so, and they had also committed to porting my home phone number, sending me their hardware, and booking a service appointment for the 25th of October in the afternoon subject to confirmation. During this time, I never felt pressured to get services that I didn’t need, and the rep explained everything to me in detail and answered any question that I had. This is the exact opposite experience that I had with Bell when I moved to them from Rogers. It’s shocking to believe that Distributel is owned by Bell.

So what happens now? Well I will wait for confirmation of my service appointment, and I will document how that appointment goes. I don’t expect it to be long as I already have Bell Fibe in my condo. And since they use Bell’s infrastructure, it shouldn’t hard to make the switch. The other thing that I expect is a phone call from Bell with a “winback” offer. For now I will ignore that as I want to give Distributel a fair shot as so far things seem positive with them.

As I said, I will be updating you on how the install goes along with anything else technical and non-technical that I encounter. Stay tuned for that.

Now I’ve been posting about threat actors running a number of scams where the threat actors pretend to be Bell Canada in order to advance the scam. Here’s a list of scams that I have come across:

• Bell Is Now The Target Of A Phone Scam
• BEWARE: Bell Is Being Used In A Phone #Scam Related To Fibe Internet
• A New Bell Telephone #Scam Is Making The Rounds

These scams were easy to spot. But I am not receiving Intel that they’ve gotten a lot harder to spot. I have been informed by a number of readers that the threat actors are now spoofing the phone numbers that show up on your caller ID screen and are typically associated with Bell. Specifically the following numbers:

• 1-866-310-2555
• 1-866-667-0123

The threat actors are doing this because in the past they were using random local numbers to try and carry out the scam. That made the scammers easy to spot because the real Bell Canada would not use random phone numbers. So I am guessing that they are doing this because what they were doing before wasn’t working. Or at least not to the scale that they were hoping.

Based on this, I am going to double down on the advice that I gave you here:

Because I come to the rescue of people who come in contact with scammers on a regular basis, I can say that trusting your instincts is one of the best things that you can do to protect you from being a victim of a scam. If you get the sense that something is wrong, go with it because you’re likely right. And trusting your instincts can save you from a very bad situation. On top of that, if you get a call from someone claiming to be from Bell, and what you hear doesn’t sound right, hang up and call Bell directly at 310-Bell. Finally, this advice doesn’t just apply to Bell, but to any situation that you might find yourself in where you get contacted out of the blue by someone claiming to have some great deal for you, or wanting to take some course of action that doesn’t sound right.

I am continuing to track this and other Bell related scams that are out there. Along with scams related to Rogers and TELUS. And when I get hard facts, I will post them here so that you can stay safe.

This week Lukas Lhotsky, President of FX Innovation (a Bell company), will be in NYC attending the Artificial Intelligence (AI) with Purpose Summit focused on the global imperative to establish an inclusive, equitable, and sustainable governance framework for AI.

Hosted by the Global Enabling Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), and UN agencies, including the UN’s Advisory Body on AI, Lukas will be joined by executives from global tech orgs, like the US Telecom Association, Kyndryl, and Globant, for a panel discussion on how infrastructure innovation is critical to unlocking broad participation in AI and for global sustainability and climate action.

Details of the discussion can be found below, and you can find the full event schedule and register to attend virtually here: https://aiwithpurpose.sched.com/  

• Date: Thursday, September 19, 2024
• Time: 12:15 to 1:00 pm ET

Anyone who’s been reading this blog for a while will know that I praise Bell for the quality and speed of the products that they offer. But I have been highly critical of the fact that Bell outsources as much of their customer service as they possibly can. And this story from CBC News illustrates why that is bad. In short, A woman in Nova Scotia is suing Bell and a third party call centre that Bell used to own and now contracts their services, along with an agent who works at said call centre for violating her privacy.

Now none of this been proven in court. But I just looking at the facts at hand, this illustrates why outsourcing customer service is a #fail. When you give a third party access to data on your customers, you have basically lost some control of that data. As in the company can get hacked, or an insider can steal data for whatever purpose. And then bad things can happen. This situation would quality as one of those bad things. And that’s on top of my other reason for not being in favour of companies outsourcing. Which is that customer service tends to suffer because you don’t have the same level of control over those who are delivering customer service, nor does the outsourced company have enough of an incentive to care about delivering the best possible customer service.

Now I don’t know how this case is going to turn out as this case has yet to go to court. But I for one hope that it makes Bell rethink the fact that it outsources so much of its customer service. Because this situation should serve as a wake up call to them.

Bell today announced the launch of its new Bell Business Wi-Fi App, designed to empower small businesses in Ontario and Québec with an enhanced Wi-Fi experience that combines improved security, customizable guest Wi-Fi, employee and customer data insights, and simplified network management.

The Bell Business Wi-Fi App with Bell pure fibre Internet provides tools and insights to help small businesses stay securely connected and manage their operations effectively, in addition to Wi-Fi access for employees and guests. A cloud-based platform designed in partnership with Plume, the app delivers an innovative next-level experience. Bell small business customers can expect:

• Enhanced Security: Creates three distinct Wi-Fi zones with increased protection to keep business, employee, and customer Internet usage separate.
• Seamless Guest Wi-Fi: Offers a customizable guest Wi-Fi experience with a dedicated login portal.
• Employee Insights: Creates employee profiles and tracks productivity insights, enabling managers to understand usage patterns and optimize workplace efficiency.
• Simplified Management: Controls user access through one-time or recurring schedules, all through the intuitive mobile or web-based app.
• Self-Installation: Easily install Bell Business Wi-Fi pods and monitor the health of the network and connected devices.

You can get the app starting today. For more details about the Bell Business Wi-Fi App, including pricing and eligibility, please visit Bell.ca/sbwifi

UPDATE: I should also mention that Bell’s pure fibre Internet has just been recognized as the fastest in Canada for the second year in a row according to Ookla’s Q1-Q2 Speedtest Awards report, which also ranks Bell pure fibre as fastest Wi-Fi in the country. This consistent performance is a testament to the inherent advantages of fibre optic technology. Unlike cable internet, which shares bandwidth with other users in the neighbourhood, fibre Internet provides a dedicated connection directly to your home, resulting in significantly faster speeds and greater reliability.

Frequent readers will know that I will praise Bell for the tech that they offer customers. But at the same time, I will criticize them for their customer service. More specifically how bad it is. This isn’t a new complaint. But this story that popped up last week really highlights how bad Bell’s customer service is. The top line headline is that Bell has been ordered to pay a Montreal customer $1000 for bad customer service:

A Quebec Court judge has ordered Bell Canada to pay a Montreal customer $1,000 after ruling he was subject to a “Kafkaesque” experience while trying to cancel his satellite television plan.

In a recent ruling, Judge Luc Huppé denounced how the man was given the runaround after contacting Bell’s customer service in the spring of 2019.

“Requiring a customer to endure a 75-minute telephone conversation in order to resolve a problem that, on the surface, seems relatively simple creates undue inconvenience,” Huppé ruled.

If you read the details of what this customer went through, it really sounds horrific. No customer should ever have to go through that. And I have to admit that I have experienced Bell’s bad customer service first hand. So while I am horrified by the experience, I am not surprised. And I will repeat something that I have previously said in the when I had my rather bad customer experience: 

If I were Mirko Bibic the CEO of Bell, I’d be doing everything possible to improve the customer experience as my experience with their call centre reps was not that good. And improving the customer experience should include ending their practice of outsourcing and offshoring their customer service staff. I say that because Rogers doesn’t have outsourced and offshore staff, and their customer experience is far better than Bell’s. And that was enough for my wife and I to hang in with them despite the fact that their Internet offering was substandard in comparison to what Bell offers. That was until their outage issues forced us to Bell. But to be clear, if Rogers somehow is able to get their act together and come up with an Internet offering that is actually competitive with Bell and actually reliable, and Rogers customer service continues to better than Bell, then they may have the means to lure us back. Because having great customer service is what matters. And right now, Bell doesn’t have that. At least not at the call centre level.

I am bringing my negative experience up because that experience was two years ago, which if you consider that this customer’s experience was in 2019 strongly suggests that Bell has not fixed anything when it comes to customer service. That really reflects poorly on Bell. And it’s beyond time that Bell actually start doing something about addressing their customer service issues. Because experiences like the one that this customer had should never, ever happen.

In January Bell announced a strategic partnership with Best Buy to introduce small-format consumer technology retail stores across Canada branded Best Buy Express. Fast forward to today, and Bell announced the grand opening of their first Best Buy Express store in Surrey, British Columbia.

The partnership with Best Buy brings together the best of both worlds, offering Canadians a one-stop shop for all their tech and connectivity needs. In total, Bell will open 167 Best Buy Express stores across Canada, offering a curated selection of consumer technology from Best Buy with over 100,000 products available through its world class fulfillment network, and exclusive telecommunications services from Bell, Virgin Plus and Lucky Mobile.

Today’s grand opening marks the beginning of a phased rollout over the next six months, with all stores expected to open by the end of 2024, following completion of renovations.

In line with Bell’s significant investments in AI, this partnership reinforces Bell’s transformation as a technology services leader, harnessing Mila’s groundbreaking research to drive transformative improvements across Bell’s operations. From data analysis and operational efficiency to internet-based applications, Mila’s expertise will accelerate advancements that will enhance the customer experience.

This announcement builds on the 18-month collaborative project Mila and Bell entered into earlier this year to apply deep learning neural network algorithms to Bell’s environment. This technique leverages the transformative power of AI deep learning to teach computers how to process information in a manner inspired by the human brain.

By working more closely with Mila, Bell will continue to champion the exploration of emerging technologies, leveraging Mila’s cutting-edge research and intellectual leadership, collaborating with emerging AI innovators and engaging in scientific discussions. The expertise gained from applying AI within Bell’s operations will be leveraged to empower the entire Canadian business community.

With Mila headquartered in Montréal, Bell will continue developing the city as a key centre for innovation, which includes recently purchased Montréal-based FX Innovation, a leading expert of cloud-focussed managed and professional services and workflow automation solutions, and the technology development team at Bell behind award-winning apps such as MyBell.