Rule number one of corporate spin...confuse people!
Writing on his blog on IT World Canada, Mirko Bibic does an excellent job disecting Bell's corporate speak here. The comments from posters are also very informative.
He even goes so far as to suggest that a new nationalized company (what we in Canada call a "crown corporation") be setup to manage the telephone line infrastructure.
"We can give Bell a simple choice.
One option would be for this last mile infrastructure to be spun off into a separate company that would then become a crown corporation. Bell can even be given a contract to manage the services of this company for a 10 year period, after which it would be open to competition or to employees of this new crown corporation. With a separate corporate structure, Bell Canada would clearly no longer be able to allege that they “own” this infrastructure, or claim they can manage it any way they see fit.
Another option would be to allow Bell to retain ownership of this infrastructure, as long as they paid a rental fee at a fair price for the right of way, as well as returning any government subsidies — including interest over the last 50 years. We would be fair and only backdate this for 50 years, even though they have received privileges for far longer. It would be clarified that the Crown Corporation would still be created, and while historical right-of-way would be grandfathered, it would be this new Crown Corporation that would own any new last-mile infrastructure."
In the Canadian federal election campaign of 1972, New Democratic Party leader David Lewis ran a populist campaign against "The Corporate Welfare Bums". With all of the special rights of way that Bell Canada has obtained over the last century to lay it's cables, poles and other equipment, I think that Bell is the sort of corporation that David Lewis was referring to!
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