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Ironic: Bell awards US company to manufacture mobile phone displays for all The Source stores
Back in March Bell announced they had taken over all 750 locations of The Source. The price they paid was $135 million and they’ve already started to sell their Bell TV products and come January 1st you’ll see their mobile phones available (including Solo and Virgin Mobile).
A complete overhaul of the brand is already on the way. Wade Oosterman, President of Bell Mobility in July said “The idea is to make it super convenient for people to actually buy those products and services. The Source has products already today that create traffic from youth and The Source will give additional reasons for youth to come and visit coming January 2010…This is an environment that is a comfortable environment for tech savvy clients”.
Specifically when it comes to the mobile phone display cases, Bell has contracted Vira Manufacturing. This is an organization that they’ve worked with in the past to create their display areas. From what we’ve been told the value of the deal is worth well over a million dollars.
So why is this so ironic? Well, here is my reasoning. In the midst of the CRTC looking into the foreign ownership of Globalive, one of the carriers to oppose them launching was Bell mainly for “not being Canadian enough” and getting financing from an company outside company. I know it’s different from launching a wireless brand to contracting a display company, but I find it a bit odd and a very interesting choice, especially at this point in Canadian wireless that Bell would go with a non-Canadian company when there are so many well known capable and competitive organizations right on our home turf.
The million dollars goes south and so did the Canadian jobs.
Just a thought.
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10 comments for “Ironic: Bell awards US company to manufacture mobile phone displays for all The Source stores”
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hmm… still not seeing the irony.
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And your point is?
Bell gets their network hardware from a Finnish-German company (NSN) – should they try and go to Nortel for that?
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Thats an interesting comparison. and talk about Bell being a hypocrite in a way. if i am not correct on that i apologize.
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The point is foreign ownership laws aren’t keeping money or jobs in Canada. They’re just ensuring that the Mobile industry has a license to rip-off Canadian consumers and stifle competition. It’s time to deregulate and watch Bell, Rogers and Telus sweat a little. Clearly those companies being Canadian owned has contributed very little to the Canadian economy or Canadian consumers.
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TNSF Reply:
October 16th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Foreign ownership restrictions do keep jobs in Canada. However, that is not their primary purpose. The primary purpose is to keep CONTROL in Canada. The idea is that there are certain things we just don’t want to lose control of and our national communications infrastructure is one of them. If CONTROL is in Canada then decisions made will be to the benefit of CANADIANS.
Thats the idea anyway. And in many ways it is working well for us.
Relaxing forieng ownership will not benefit Canadians. Don’t think for a moment that foreign companies want to enter Canada for the purpose of lowering prices. They want to enter Canada because we have a profitable industry and they want to extract those profits out of Canada. And with those profits go high paying, valuable jobs.
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J-M Reply:
October 16th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Yeah, you’re right
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just to make some correction … The Source will not have the Solo brand in store and the fixture doesnt look at all like the picture
wayyyy better looking than that !
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I log onto mobilesyrup for tech news; not necessarily for the political columns..!!
Having said that; your analogy is full of holes; BELLUS, ROGERS etc primary responsibility is to their shareholders and their actions are a function of that responsibility.
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Rick Reply:
October 17th, 2009 at 8:26 am
I think any companies primary responsibility is to their customers first. As essentially all of Bells wireless customers are Canadian, its a slap in the face to spend money in the US for something that they could get in Canada for the same value. We’re not talking about equipment that creates a competitive advantage here, it is a display.
It is the equivalent of Bell sponsoring US athletes in the 2010 Olympics.
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So ..one of canada’s oldest company is trying to lower it’s overhead costs buy sending “pennies” to the states for some flat screens and wood and you feel that this is a headline… go and write for tmz will ya Robbie
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