Bell Canada owner of several Toronto professional sports franchises. BCE ranked number 262 on the 2011 edition of the Forbes Global 2000 list. Historically, Bell Canada has been one of Canada's most important and most powerful companies and, in 1975, was listed as the fifth largest in the country. The company is named after the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, who also co-founded Bell Telephone Company in Boston, Massachusetts. Bell Canada operated as the Canadian subsidiary of the Bell System from 1880 to 1975. However, unlike the other regional Bell operating companies, Bell Canada had its own research and development
Bell Telephone Company provided such service in the country, the others having evolved principally from telegraph carriers. BTMC eventually came under complete ownership by Western Electric, and also established other divisions as national companies across Continental Europe and Russia. Western Electric was itself later majority owned by the American Bell Telephone Company, returning indirect control of BTMC back to the Bell organization. At the close of 1899, the American Bell Telephone Company was acquired, for business purposes, by its own subsidiary, the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T), which then became the head of the monolithic and monopolistic Bell System. Significant criticism of