Before deregulation, the majority of Canada's "Provincial" telco's were majority owned and operated under an umbrella company called Stentor.
Stentor was majority owned and operated by GTE in the US. So in essence, a US company was responsible for Canadian Provincial telcos, again with the exception of two.
MOST Canadians would swear that the provincial companies were Canadian owned, even the telco employees did, but it was realized a few years after deregulation (by some people) that they had been mislead.
A company in Toronto, started by two guys with ambition, provideddetailed rebilling to governments, local utility companies etc. After deregulation, they took a non-equity share from Sprint US and started Sprint Canada, under the new regulations, company's have ot be majority Canadian owned and operated.
The CDAR (Call Detail Account Recording) they used to provide local telco's with was no longer made available to telcos and they were forced to try their own system (which offered insecure codes and thus is deemed useless). As a result, the push was on for the maufacturers to provide KSU and PBX based cards so employers could track their own calls and use secured codes.
So far the telco's have not matched these offerings and instead will add cards to a Nortel DMS200 (the more popular long distance switch) for call tracking and recording, instead of using inhouse software now.
It's an issue I have followed rather closely since 86 when the deregulatio was passe dby the CRTC, where I worked at the time.
Deregulation aches and pains:
Consumers got really fed up with the competitor phone calls
Consures thought Canadian companies were dipping out and American companies were taking over, because the new compnies carried US corporate names, AT&T Canada (formerly Unitel) and Sprint Canada for example, some even thought BELL Canda was American!!!
The benefits:
more accurate billing from pricate entities
boosted Canadian economy and kept millions of dollars in the country
EVERYONE PAYS LESS THAN THEY USED TO
I remember paying over $2.00/min to call London (at off peak hours)
now I can call for 5 cents a minute (LD, deregulation hit the Atlantic line too).
SO pretty much all call recordign systems and billing is now proprietary from the switch, it may be manipulated, printed and controlled at the server though.
A good friend of mine works for Telus, when BCTel went through major reorganization and teamed up with Albertan companies to develop BCTTelus, he was one of many who were hiredfull time on an 8 month contract to add the Nortel cards to the switches for detailed billing.
This is tracking calls days or weeks before they ever hit a desktop.
