Gateway answers call.

Company plans to go head-to-head with Bell as a local service provider

If, as Tim Kuntz maintains, Bell Canada hasn't paid a lot of attention to Gateway Telephone yet, then that situation could well be about to change.

"We (Gateway Telephone) are really not much of a threat to them (Bell Canada)," says Kuntz, a spokesperson for Gateway Telephone. The company is the only competitive local access carrier licensed by the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission for a small market.

Bell Canada is such a large company and faces more and stiffer competition from larger companies in major centres like Toronto and Montreal, that Gateway is not likely a major concern, Kuntz says.

"Our strategy is different from other players. We're the only competitor in a small market," Kuntz says. "They (Bell) have their eye on their ball and we have our eye on our ball."

Not that Gateway is not worthy of notice. The company, since rolling out services in North Bay almost a year ago, has signed about 10 per cent of the business market, representing about 1,000 businesses. That's also a third of the 30 per cent market share Gateway had targeted to hit in year five, he says.

"We have the retail market growing very steadily," Kuntz adds, confident that the company will reach its target much earlier than forecast.

Customers have the full range of telephone services such as call display, call waiting, voice, mail, long distance, 800 service, wide area network packages and more.

Only the company's internet service is not yet available as Gateway tests its system and considers the best way to marketing the service to suit its customers' needs.

North Bay customers can keep their existing phone numbers or get anew number on Gateway's own 482 exchange, allowing them to get a "vanity" number or an easy-to-remember number.

Sudbury-area callers will soon have their own new exchanges - 628 and 629 - as Gateway introduces the same range of services there. The company is testing its interconnection with Bell Canada and will offer services as soon as that is complete, Kuntz says.

Sudbury is linked to North Bay by a fibre-optic cable, and the two will soon be linked by another cable to Toronto and Barrie, the third centre in which Gateway will go head-to-head with Bell Canada as a local service provider. Barrie is expected to reach the same level of service by mid-year.

Initially, the company targeted small to medium-sized businesses, offering them attractive, long distance service; but the trend has shifted to larger businesses requiring 10 or more lines and more sophisticated services.

The lower part of the business market hasn't been forgotten, but the higher end has shown more activity than expected. The residential market is not a focus because of the small margin it offers.

"Some people are definitely passionate about the North and that we're based in North Bay and headquartered in Northern Ontario," Kuntz says.

But when it comes down to business, they want value-added products, not just someone from the North.

"And we're a strong value producer," Kuntz says.

Gateway first made headlines in October 1999, when it became the first and to date only carrier licensed to compete with Bell in a secondary market. But the company burst into the national business media spotlight last spring as it started to build a wholesale multiservice telecommunications carrier called Gateway Networks.

The decision came as Gateway realized how difficult competing with Bell Canada was if the company had to pay Bell Canada for using its service, Kuntz reports. The idea was to build or lease facilities to create its own North American network that other competitive carriers would pay to use.

Gateway Networks is now operational in seven Canadian cities, including Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal, and 11 American cities including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Houston, Detroit, Atlanta and New York.

The network is maintained in North Bay, home to the net work 'operations centre, which consists of two banks of computer consoles and three giant wall-sized monitors, manned 24-hours a day.'

Any problem at any any site results in an alert at the centre where technicians use the computers and giant screens to isolated the problem right down to the chip, possibly thousands of kilometres away. Usually the alert is the result of client testing, but if a serious problem is detected maintenance and repair is only a Gateway Telephone call away, he says.