Formerly | Telephone Company of Prince Edward Island |
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Founded | 1885 |
Headquarters | , Canada |
The Island Telephone Company Limited (IslandTel) was a Canadian telephone service provider located in the province of Prince Edward Island, Canada. [1] [2] [3] It operated from 1929 to 1999, when merged into Bell Aliant.
IslandTel traces its history to The Telephone Company of Prince Edward Island which was founded in 1885. This company was one of several dozen private independent companies operating in fixed geographic areas in the province. This particular company was largely focused on the Charlottetown area.
In 1910 Halifax, Nova Scotia-based Maritime Telephone and Telegraph Company (MT&T) laid a submarine telephone cable from Wood Islands, Prince Edward Island, to Pictou, Nova Scotia; it entered service on January 1, 1911. The Telephone Company of Prince Edward Island suffered severe financial hardship as a result of a fire on September 5, 1911, that destroyed a newly installed switchboard and caused heavy damage to its central office and headquarters in Charlottetown. By December 1, 1911, a controlling interest in the company was bought by MT&T, thus establishing a partnership of shared telephone communication with Nova Scotia that endures to this day (see Area codes 902 and 782). The company was renamed The Island Telephone Company Limited under a law passed by the Legislative Assembly of Prince Edward Island on April 29, 1929.
The Island Telephone Company Ltd gradually grew through acquisitions of smaller competitors. In 1932, there were 45 privately owned telephone companies in Prince Edward Island. The last independent telephone company merged with The Island Telephone Company Ltd on May 29, 1974, with the purchase of the South New Glasgow Rural Telephone Company.
In the 1980s, the company branded itself as IslandTel. In 1998, the company was renamed Island Telecom Inc. to reflect the growing diversity of its business areas.
In 1999 the shareholders of Island Telecom Inc voted to merge with the other Stentor Alliance companies in Atlantic Canada (NBTel, MT&T, and NewTel Communications) to form Aliant Telecom Inc. / Télécommunications Aliant Inc.
The new company is named Bell Aliant.
Prince Edward Island is an island province of Canada. While it is the smallest province in terms of land area and population, it is the most densely populated. The island has several nicknames: "Garden of the Gulf", "Birthplace of Confederation" and "Cradle of Confederation". Its capital and largest city is Charlottetown. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces.
The Northumberland Strait is a strait in the southern part of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in eastern Canada. The strait is formed by Prince Edward Island and the gulf's eastern, southern, and western shores.
Bell Canada is a Canadian telecommunications company headquartered at 1 Carrefour Alexander-Graham-Bell in the borough of Verdun, Quebec, in Canada. It is an ILEC in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec; as such, it was a founding member of the Stentor Alliance. It is also a CLEC for enterprise customers in the western provinces.
An incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) is a local telephone company which held the regional monopoly on landline service before the market was opened to competitive local exchange carriers, or the corporate successor of such a firm.
Bell Aliant Inc. is a brand name used by Bell Canada for telecommunications services in Atlantic Canada.
Bragg Communications Inc., doing business as Eastlink, is a Canadian cable television and telecommunications company. The privately held company was founded in Nova Scotia in 1969 by the Bragg family, and has grown since through the amalgamation of several telecommunications companies.
The Stentor Alliance was a formal alliance of Canada's major telecommunications companies, specifically its incumbent local exchange carriers. It derives its name from the Greek mythological figure Stentor.
Ontera is a telecommunications company in Ontario, Canada and a subsidiary of Bell Aliant. It provides local telephone service in the Northern Ontario towns of Bear Island, Iroquois Falls, Marten River, Moosonee, Moose Factory and Temagami, and also offers long-distance services in most of area code 705.
CTV Atlantic is a system of four television stations in the Maritimes, owned and operated by the CTV Television Network, a division of Bell Media. Despite the name, it is not available on basic cable or analog in Newfoundland and Labrador even though that province is part of Atlantic Canada.
The Maritime Telegraph and Telephone Company was founded around 1910 in Halifax, Nova Scotia and provided telecommunications to Nova Scotia until 1998 when it merged with the Island Telephone Company, NBTel, and NewTel Communications to form Aliant.
Bruncor, based in Saint John, New Brunswick was a Canadian telecommunications holding company and the parent company of NBTel.
Island Telecom Inc. was a Canadian internet service provider in Prince Edward Island. Its headquarters is located in Summerside.
NewTel Communications was a telephone and internet service provider in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Originally known as the Avalon Telephone Company, it served the Avalon Peninsula and later became the Newfoundland Telephone Company and served several additional regions: southwestern Newfoundland between Port-aux-Basques and Corner Brook; part of the Burin Peninsula; Windsor and Grand Falls; and most of Labrador. This was as a result of the acquisition of four smaller companies and their phone services from 1948 to 1962.
Area codes 902 and 782 are telephone area codes in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Area code 902 was one of the nine original North American area codes in Canada established in October 1947. Area code 782 was added to the numbering plan area in August 2014, to form an overlay complex in relief to prevent telephone number shortages.
White Juan is the unofficial name given to the hurricane-strength nor'easter blizzard of February 2004 that affected most of Atlantic Canada and the Eastern United States between February 17 and 20, 2004—five months after Hurricane Juan devastated Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.
Roger Charles Bell is a Canadian former secondary school teacher and convicted criminal from Prince Edward Island. Born in Murray River in 1944, Bell is a graduate of University of Western Ontario and taught high school chemistry at several schools in eastern Prince Edward Island.
An independent telephone company was a telephone company providing local service in the United States or Canada that was not part of the Bell System organized by American Telephone and Telegraph. Independent telephone companies usually operated in many rural or sparsely populated areas.
Fibe is the brand name used by Bell Aliant for its suite of fiber to the home (FTTH) unified communication services, including Internet access, IPTV, and home telephone service, available in much of Atlantic Canada and previously in some regions of Ontario and Quebec. The Fibe service covers an entire urban area with a fibre optic network.
PEI FC is a senior men's amateur soccer club from Charlottetown, PEI. The team is composed mainly of current and former UPEI Men's Soccer players. They were the 2008–2013 provincial representative for Prince Edward Island at the BMO Canadian National Soccer Championships and were the 2010 Challenge Cup champions.