BCBusiness

W JULY/AUGUST 2019 BCBUSINESS 81 As group president and chief corporate ocer Josh Blair can attest, telecom titan Telus has hardly been phoning it in b y N i c k R o c k e l Lord of the Rings e know, we know— you want an update from Telus Corp. on the delicate situation with Huawei Tech- nologies Co., its key supplier for next- generation 5G wireless. But •rst, let's hear it for Telus, which again claims the No. 1 spot in the Top 100. As of May 31, the Vancouver-based telecommunications giant's stock had hit an all-time high of $50.79. Since 2000, its 490-percent total shareholder return had outstripped that of its peers and the S&P/TSX Composite Index, which gained 205 percent during the same period. Back in 2000, Telus had 4.3 million customers and $6 billion in annual rev- enue; customers now number 13.4 mil- lion, and the telecom posted close to $14.4 billion in revenue for •scal 2018. Group president and chief corporate o–cer Josh Blair has spent most of his career with the business that began its B.C. life in 1904 as British Columbia Tele- phone Co. and now employs about 58,000 people worldwide. "There's been great leadership courage to transform the com- pany from a very small regional player to a world leader when it comes to many met- rics, and to have our business operate now all across Canada, and in many cases on a global basis," Blair says. Three years after Blair joined BC Tel in 1995, it merged with Edmonton- based Telus Communications. Former Telus chief executive Brian Can•eld launched a national expansion taken global by Darren Entwistle, who became president and CEO in 2000 and stepped down brie¡y this decade before returning to the helm. Today the company is much more than a telecom provider. As group president, Blair leads and supports business areas such as Telus International and Telus Health. The former, which has about 32,000 team members in 12 countries, provides back-o–ce, IT and other services to Fortune 500 corporations. "We're leveraging technolo£y and infor- mation to deliver better health outcomes for less money spent in Canada," Blair says of Telus Health. For example, this division is behind the federal government's elec- tronic prescribing service, which aims to save billions by reducing the estimated 50 percent of prescriptions that don't get •lled or followed. Telu s m ay b e a n i nte r n at ion a l player, but it hasn't ig nored its ow n b ac k y a rd . F rom 2000 through 2021, the company w ill have allocated $55 bil- lion to technolo£y and operations in B.C. Since 2013, Telus has spent roughly $2 billion to connect 1 million homes in 52 communities of all sizes throughout the province to its PureFibre network. "If you look at every other vertical, from health care to the ener£y sector to the for- estry sector to tourism, all of them rely on having a good telecom infrastructure in order for them to be successful," says Blair, who has an electrical engineering degree from UVic. A practitioner of what it calls social capi- talism, Telus also gives generously. In B.C. alone since 2000, its employees and retir- ees have contributed some $170 million and 700,000 days of their time to charities and community groups. OK, but what's happening with Huawei and 5G, which promises to be up to 200 times faster than LTE wireless networks? At press time, President Donald Trump had blacklisted the Chinese telecom, cit- ing threats to U.S. national security. The company's CFO, Meng Wanzhou, remained under house arrest in Vancouver, fac- ing extradition to the U.S. If Canada bans Huawei, Telus and rival BCE might have to shell out upward of $1 billion in total to remove its equip- ment, according to the Globe and Mail. "We anticipate that it w ill take some time for deci- sions on 5G infrastruc- ture to be reached," Blair says. Unlike the U.S., he adds, countries in Europe and elsewhere have taken the view that no matter where a supplier is from, indus- try must test its technolo£y with govern- ment to prove that it's safe and capable for 5G networks. "We're proponents of that approach, too, and I think it's a good thing for Canada to take our time and learn from what the rest of the world is doing, because it's not a decision that needs to be rushed into." A L L S T A R S T e l u s C o r p .

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