Mark Evans

Bell Moves into the Montreal VOIP Market

Bell Canada, which has watched Videotron lure away more than 100K local
phone customers in Quebec since Februray, finally made a move to stem
the cable telephony tide. Bell will sell its VoIP service - Bell
Digital Voice - for $35 a month with all the regular bells and
whistles, excluding LD. For an additional $5, customers can get 1,200
minutes LD calling within Quebec. The service is being launched a few
days after Bell won approval from the CRTC to offer different prices in
Quebec than Ontario to deal with different market conditions - i.e.
Videotron is killing Bell with low prices (as low as $15.95 a month)
while Rogers and Cogeco are being far less aggressive in Ontario.
Quebec consumers will pay $5 a month less than their counterparts in
Ontario. It's left to be seen how effective Bell's offer will be given
Videotron's service will still be less expensive. At the very least, it
should stop existing Bell customers, who want VoIP, to jump over to
Videotron.