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NWT/NUNAVUT
"Competition" is not a scary word to new NorthwesTel Inc. chairman Charles Brown.

David MacLean is the manager of DKDC Store in Fort Resolution. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

Post-monopoly business is familiar territory for the telecommunications executive, who began his career as a sales representative with Bell Canada in 1980, when the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) started deregulating the telecom market, largely ending Bell's monopoly.

"It's always a challenge, simply because it's a different world when there's more competition in the marketplace," said Brown, whose appointment comes on the heels of the CRTC's ruling last month opening the North's local telephone market to competition, ending NorthwesTel's regulated monopoly over the service.

"If the environment is changing you can do one of two things; you can react and change with the environment, or you can get left behind," Brown said. "And NorthwesTel is not going to be left behind."

Involved in starting up mobile telecommunications company Clearnet Communications -- which has competed with Bell and Rogers, and currently president of electronics and wireless retailer The Source, Brown said from his experience that customer service, sales and marketing will "absolutely" be important factors in NorthwesTel's performance in a competitive market.

"When a market goes competitive, your reactions are typically, 'How do you do a better job of talking with the customer, how do you make sure you've got the best products in the marketplace, and how do you make sure everybody knows that'," he said. "It's a matter of making sure that your products are competitive and I think we'll find that the products that NorthwesTel currently sells are quite competitive."

While the board is not involved in the day-to-day operations of the company, management is on the same page with this strategy, said NorthwesTel president and CEO Paul Flaherty.

"We're going to have to earn customer business, customer by customer," Flaherty said. "Understanding our customers, working hard to ensure that we're meeting their needs in the best way possible -- that's got to be our focus moving forward. So this whole marketing aspect of the business is going to be much more prominent."

The company is also continuing to look for ways to reduce costs as the marketplace becomes more competitive, Flaherty added, while attempting to find the right balance between meeting the different needs of customers, regulators, and continued shareholder investment, all while under increased scrutiny from the CRTC.

"It's not in the regulators' interest to drive profits down so low that no one wants to invest in the territories," Flaherty said. "So at the end of the day it will come back to the right balance."

Based in Toronto, Brown joins board members Rob Hunt of Calgary, Alta., Lillian Hvatum-Brewster of Yellowknife, Helen K. Klengenberg of Iqaluit, Piers McDonald of Whitehorse and Richard I. Hardy of Nanoose Bay, B.C.

He succeeds retired Bell executive Terry Mosey, who stepped down after serving as chair of NorthwesTel's board since June 2003.

NorthwesTel is a subsidiary of Bell Canada, which also owns The Source.

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