More bad news for BCE.. The past False, misleading advertisements, bad management, Download cappings, have all lead to this. Shares of BCE tumbled $13.10, or 34 per cent, to $25.25, trimming 102 points from the S&P/TSX composite index, after accounting firm KPMG said it couldn’t certify the solvency of the company before the Dec. 11 deadline for the deal to close. A group of private equity investors led by the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan agreed to pay $42.50 a share for BCE in the biggest leveraged buyout of all time. But the subsequent stock market crash, four quarters of declining profits, and a ballooning pension fund deficit have pushed the value of the company so low, it might not be able to service the mountain of debt that would replace shareholder equity after the buyout. http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/business/story.html?id=2d87f9bc-b646-4762-947d-514ef7fc32d0 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20081128.RVOX28/TPStory/Business
BCE says Teachers’ buyout ‘unlikely to proceed’ if solvency opinion not improved Wed Nov 26, 5:48 PM MONTREAL – Bell Canada’s roller coaster ride to privatization may finally crash under the weight of its prospective massive debt after an accounting firm raised serious doubt that the world’s largest leveraged corporate buyout could succeed. I am always amazed how they had wrongfully thought they could continue to abuse their own customers and next get away with it still too.. they had wrongfully failed to use profits to upgrade their old, obsolete phone lines, equipment too.. as a result lost many customers to the cable ISP too. They now really do not deserve any Business bail out by the taxpayers or the government.
Bell has always had it’s spin doctors spin, lying.. “But still “It’s getting hard to figure out the upside on the BCE story It’s very difficult to say what’s priced into the stock, but make sure you know the risks before you pile into BCE. There may be some hidden ones. And there might be some positive surprises too. Before the announcement of this deal, the shares traded between $26 and $28. The stock is trading at about $25 now. The cable companies are doing better… Then there’s the competitive landscape. It’s ferocious out there, with well-funded cable, VoIP and new wireless entrants moving in with their elbows high. There are three sources of potentially good news. The first is that BCE upgrades its land line network and makes inroads into television. That’s hard to bank on and, even if you do, it’s tough to figure out the upside. The second is the network-sharing agreement with Telus, which should yield strong returns. And finally, there’s “Belus.” Most of us find it hard to believe that the Competition Bureau would let a merger with Telus happen, or that it would let the merged entity cherry pick its divestitures… If none of these scenarios moves you, though, you’re probably better investing in the cable companies. As illustrated in this space not long ago, they are walloping the telcos because they generally have better technology. Where broadband goes, in the words of research firm Sandford Bernstein, so voice and video follow. In Canada, Rogers has mobile and Shaw is poised to move in. They’re more expensive, true, but in the long term, they seem to have more promise.”
Dec 11, 2008 BCE’s shares have fallen by almost half since Teachers’ made its C$42.75-a-share bid. BCE dropped 59 cents, or 2.6 percent, to C$22.43 at 12:50 p.m. in Toronto.The stock fell 34 percent on Nov. 26 on concern that KPMG was unlikely to bless the deal because of the C$34 billion in bonds and loans needed to finance the purchase. The company hired PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP in an unsuccessful effort to persuade KPMG to change its opinion. . BCE lost 72,000 home-phone lines last quarter as customers switched to wireless lines or to cable companies such as Rogers. BCE’s wireless unit, which makes up a quarter of sales, grew at less than half the rate of Rogers’s mobile unit. BCE must also realistically decide whether to invest in the much need fiber-optic lines for its home customers and whether it should provide Internet- based TV service to compete with the cable firms too http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=ayi6TCn22gaQ&refer=canada
BCE takes low road as deal fails For all BCE’s protests, the world’s largest leverage buyout just failed because lawyers for the telecom company inserted a requirement in the deal that stated BCE needed to get a favourable solvency opinion. When KPMG, a reputable accounting firm, weighed in with a final opinion that BCE didn’t meet solvency standards, the deal died. OnceBCE agreed to a buyout, they muffed the job of closing the deal.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081211.WBstreetwise20081211113644/WBStory/WBstreetwise
Basically motivated by greed, increasing the profits. Bait and switch, Misleading advertising, Unfair and Restrictive business trade practices seem to be a common thing in the Internet Service Providers industry too, especially since generally the ISP are unregulated both by the Courts and the governments. It is a sad reality that even what is advertised is also next what the customer next consistently gets. ”
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission on Thursday issued a decision ordering Canada’s big phone companies, including Bell, Telus Corp., MTS Allstream Inc., SaskTel and Bell Aliant, to offer the same internet speeds to smaller wholesale customers as they themselves sell on a retail basis.” Service speed is an important competitive attribute, with rates differing significantly by speed and speed often being a major differentiation point from a marketing standpoint,” the CRTC ruled.
Under existing CRTC regulations, the big phone companies are required to rent out their networks to smaller service providers, who then sell internet access to their own customers. The rules boost the number of competitors selling internet access to the public, and thus keep prices down and service levels up. The regulations, however, have only applied to older infrastructure based in phone companies’ centralized office buildings.
Recently, phone companies have been pushing their networks out of those buildings by putting new equipment into streetside cabinets in an effort to boost their customers’ internet speeds. Smaller internet service providers haven’t had regulated access to those cabinets, however, which means they have been limited to selling slower speeds than those offered by the big phone companies.
In Quebec, for example, Bell has been selling internet connections with download speeds around 16 megabits per second while small ISPs have topped out at less than half that. The phone companies will only be required to offer faster speeds to wholesale ISPs when they sell them on a retail basis in a given area. Smaller ISPs will therefore have to request the faster connections from the phone companies. Bell, Telus and the others have 45 days to file with the CRTC the proposed rates they intend to charge the small ISPs for faster services. The rates will have to represent the actual cost of the service, plus “a reasonable mark-up,” the regulator said.
1st Wittness 
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