Telecom Trends

Twenty years ago, I worked for a guy at AT&T Bell Labs who told us not burn ourselves out by working crazy R&D hours. He told us to take time out to go to the theatre, get involved with little league, various community groups, family things. In his view, it was good business. After all, he wanted employees who would still have energy in 5 years; he knew that all of our neighbours were potential AT&T customers. Doing good for employees and the community was doing good for AT&T. There was a time that the 'telephone company' was held in such esteem across the country. In the monopoly and early competitive days, there was always a lot of community involvement, from the employee and pensioners' association, the Telephone Pioneers and corporate giving.

Tuesday evening, Darren Entwistle was in town as TELUS launched its Toronto Community Board. TELUS has set a goal for itself to become Canada's premier corporate citizen. I think it is a symbol of TELUS' commitment to be a permanent force across the country, not just in their home base: the western ILEC region. In addition to funding various community initiatives, TELUS plans to have a national community activity day - a day of volunteerism for its employees. Congratulations to those involved.

We hope that Rogers, Shaw and Bell will feel competitive pressures to match and 'up the ante'. Such involvement by the industry will hopefully return a little lustre to our industry that has seen reputations tarnished by accounting problems, stock market losses and controversy over internet access issues.

Our communities will benefit and the goodwill will be returned many times over.

Joe Natale cited Margaret Mead in his introductory remarks: "A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

At the cocktail reception at The Canadian Telecom Summit on Monday June 12, we will be featuring a silent auction to benefit the alliance of Big Brothers / Big Sisters and Boys & Girls Clubs of Canada. It's got a high tech twist to it - bidding will done by SMS text messaging using a software application being developed just for this event.

TELUS' launch on Tuesday evening was a good reminder for all of us. You do the right thing, because it's the right thing to do.