George Cope New Prez & CEO of Bell Canada

The Canadian Telecom market-place will be a lot more interesting in 2006.

Early this morning BCE announced that George Cope, who was the CEO & President of Telus Mobility, would join its Bell Canada unit as the President and COO.  His responsibilities at Bell will include: residential (wireline, internet and video) as well as Enterprise, SMB and Wholesale units.  He will start the new role in January.

Getting George Cope to join the BCE family is a tremendous win for Bell; and something that Darren Entwistle, CEO of Telus Inc., should have foreseen and could have avoided with progressive succession planning.  Mr. Cope is widely respected within the industry.  This is a gentleman who made his fortune getting Mr. Entwistle to bite on an over-valued Clearnet, yet operationally exceeded every target thrown at the Mobility group within Telus.

While Telus Mobility was treated as a high-performance fiefdom within the organization, with its own style of management, marketing and "team orientation", this level of independence will no longer be available to Mr. Cope.  Regardless, Bell desperately needs George Cope, no doubt it will help reinvigorate the organization and its brand.

To summarize my thoughts:

• Its not a money issue for George, so expect him to prove to Telus and its board, that he is the Canadian Telecom rain maker.  Expect Entwistle to try and beat Bell at every turn or react very quickly.
• All the Canadian telco's go crazy trying to protect a low margin $20M/year enterprise account, yet pay little executive attention to the ever changing mass market.  Expect Cope to  continue this focus, but take risks  in  the mass market to help margins and get back some much needed growth back to Bell.  Here, small improvements in retention, service or pricing strategies can move hundreds of millions of dollars over the P+L.
• Any Non-Compete Mr. Cope has on the wireless side with Telus will be honoured,  however interpretations related to bundling may be loose.  If longer than a year, Bell & Cope will always have the option to challenge the viability of a Non-Compete in a telecom market as small as Canada's.
• Expect Mr. Cope to make sound brand decisions and focus efforts to build on Bell's core strengths and out, with a strong emphasis on the brand, mass-markets, service levels, and retention.
• Watch out advertising companies!  Mr. Cope won't be mollified with what has satisfied Bell in the past.  Agencies like Grip, seeing its Bell account orbit back and forth to Cossette may have another chance.  Mr. Cope was a key driver behind keeping Clearnet's Taxi agency over to the larger Telus organization.  Expect him to come out swinging at Cossette, but with an open mind to everyone else.  Telus and Taxi would be smart to lock down key resources for the next 12 months.
• Telus should probably use Cope's departure as an opportunity to re-shape its organization.  With the Telus Mobility King gone, the fiefdom no-longer needs to exist; bringing Telus' Wireline and Wireless organizations together for the first time.
• While never working with Mr. Cope directly, any Bell employees reading this should feel pretty comfortable with the leadership announcement.  From what I have seen and heard, Cope is very loyal to his organization and rewards performance well.
• Investors should also like this move, now Sabia can focus on lobbying, convergence, deals and BCE's needs; Cope can focus on the market.  Not to mention a defined succession plan post-Sabia that should become much clearer after Cope notches a couple of wins.

Having worked for and/or consulted for senior executives of both Telus and Bell, both organizations are incredible strong, deep and should be well respected.  Having some long-term savings in both company's stocks (like most Canadians); and over the past few years being well rewarded holding onto Telus, I see this as an exciting time to see two great organizations compete.  Hopefully, Bell's rewards to its shareholders will catch-up to those of Telus.

Watch both Jon Arnold's and Mark Evans' blogs for more.  My intermittent posts will continue, but hopefully something every week or two.  Since I'm not trying to make ad revenues or anything, I only want to share with readers content and thoughts that are different.  I hope this is a value-add to all.  Please feel free to comment or send me an email.

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