Bell Canada, a telecommunications company headquartered in Montreal, plays a role in the space industry primarily through its Bell Satellite TV service, providing satellite television across Canada. They utilize satellites owned by Telesat Canada to broadcast channels to over a million subscribers, competing with services like Shaw Direct. Bell Canada is also an investor in AST SpaceMobile, which is building a space-based cellular broadband network, and partners with companies like Esri to integrate geospatial data for smart city solutions.
Identity changes, mergers, acquisitions, splits, and transferred business lines.
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Loral Space & Communications and Canada's Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments) acquired Telesat from Bell Canada for US$2.8 billion, completed October 2007, with Loral holding 63% ownership. Telesat later went public on Nasdaq and the Toronto Stock Exchange in 2021.
Telesat Canada, founded May 2, 1969 as a Crown corporation by Act of Parliament (launched Anik A1 in 1972, the world's first commercial domestic geostationary comsat), was privatized and sold by the Canadian federal government to Bell Canada in 1998.