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Telus Corporation is an Alberta–British Columbia telecommunication firm created by the 1999 merger of two province-based companies. It is the second largest telecommunication organization in Canada and one of the largest business operations in Canada headquartered in the West.
Telus's emergence reflects the changing goals of western provincial enterprises and governments and the influence of federal regulations. Until privatized and renamed Telus in 1990, the former Alberta Government Telephones operated from 1908 to 1990 as a provincial crown enterprise regulated and sheltered under a provincial public utilities board. Operating from 1904 to 1999, bc Telephone, renamed bc Telecom in 1992 and a wholly owned subsidiary since 1926 of American utility gte, was confined to provincial activity under the federal regulation that oversaw private-sector utilities.
In 1988 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled
that federal regulation of telecommunication
included provincial crown-owned enterprises,
and in 1992 the federal regulator, the Canadian
Radio-Television and Telecommunication
Commission, began allowing interprovincial
telecommunication competition. The
merger between Edmonton-based Telus and
Vancouver-based BC Telecom has enabled
Telus to compete nationally with other telecommunication
and cable providers for the
total market of data, Internet, voice, and wireless
communication. Current federal regulation
of telecommunication stipulates that
rates and ownership structures are controlled
but not competition for markets. Telus shares
are one-fifth held by Verizon, the successor to
gte and Bell Atlantic. Telus has made major
acquisitions in Canada and abroad in order to
compete throughout Canada, in the United
States, and elsewhere.