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
International Bell Telephone Company kilometers of telephone lines. The largest exchanges were in Rome (2,022 subscribers), Milan (1,089), Genoa (950) and Naples (873). The International Bell Telephone Company was also responsible for the introduction of the telephone into Norway, and Sweden. In 1881, exchanges were established in Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. IBTC established Sweden's first telephone company, Stockholms Bell Telefonaktiebolag, formed with the assistance of three former Swedish PTT superintendents named Lybeck, Bratt and Recin. The new company established their first exchange in the Skandinaviska Kreditaktiebolag Building on Västerlånggatan Street in Stockholm, originally utilizing equipment designed by Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Thomas