By IAN ROSS
TBay Tel has reached into the private sector to find an energetic new chief executive to push forward its performance-driven culture.
The municipally-owned telecom service provider introduced 43-year-old former venture capitalist Peter Diedrich as its new president and CEO Oct. 3.
The Ottawa-native brings more than 20 years of experience in the finance and telecom industry serving with Bell-Northern Research, Nortel Networks, Bell Canada Enterprises and the Royal Bank Financial Group as a corporate strategist.
This year, Canada’s largest independently owned telecommunications company produced the biggest dividend cheque in its 100-year history with $16.5 million in profits delivered back to the City of Thunder Bay’s municipal coffers.
The annual dividend usually makes up 16 to 17 per cent of the city’s operating budget.
Two years ago, due to an increasingly open and competitive telecom market, TBay Tel was spun off from a city department into a more arms-length entity. A municipal services board was installed headed by prominent local businessman Don Paterson. But the corporation remains 100 per cent municipally owned.
Diedrich says that’s what attracted him to the job, a solid board of directors as well as a “healthy insulation” from the political element.
“I’ve been on parts of several boards as a venture capitalist and I saw many of the same fantastic ingredients that I’ve tried to build into my own board of companies that I’ve invested in.”
Diedrich says he also fell in love with the family-oriented community and the area’s rugged topography which he first viewed last August when flying in for the interview with his wife.
As an avid outdoorsman, skier, snowboarder as well as a four-handicap golfer, he says Thunder Bay has plenty to offer along with a competitive soccer program for his two children.
“We did all our due diligence and we were quite satisfied that we could replicate and improve on the quality of living in Ottawa.”
To replicate some of his eastern Ontario lifestyle, Diedrich will be practically living in the same house. He’s handed the blueprints of his custom-built Ottawa home over to a Thunder Bay contractor. The construction will be complete when his family joins him in June.
From a career standpoint, Diedrich says TBay Tel is unlike larger telecoms like Telus and Bell Canada “where change management is an abstract concept.”
The intimacy of a small and flexible company with few layers of bureaucracy means changes can implemented almost immediately.
TBay Tel’s field operations crew, repair service bureau, marketing, business solutions team and product management group are all in a building complex within a one block radius of his office.
Diedrich says he intends to push their already-established performance culture forward by clarifying to all 360 employees what their core business is, by slotting the right people into the right roles, and reward workers for producing results.
“It’s different from public service. Pay-for-performance is a huge element of behaving like a public company and not a municipal department.”
Diedrich says their wireless business poses the greatest growth potential within their 30,000 square kilometre coverage area of northwestern Ontario, while penetrating further along the eastern shore of Lake Superior.
Through technology partnerships with BlackBerry-maker RIM and Motorola they have set “aggressive targets” to take products and services to their regional market stretching from the Manitoba border to Bellevue Mountain, north of Sault Ste. Marie.
Diedrich says Motorola’s Canopy product allows them to deliver high-speed wireless to isolated areas with no fibre optic cable.
“There’s a few big companies that almost refuse to serve customers out there because they don’t have the assets nor the will.”
Diedrich says remote communities fully realize the value of the Internet and government will assist with leverage dollars. Plus, there’s always innovative and alternative technologies available to serve small forms including satellite.
The company’s recent acquisition of local service provider Superior Wireless, which was finalized Sept. 1, delivered an additional 11,000 customers in 40 communities and added more cell towers.
Diedrich says the superior wireless acquisition should increase their “regional footprint,” since the biggest competitive weapon is having access to infrastructure and towers.
It also affords an opportunity to infill some areas with greater network access and deliver service to other places with a lack of coverage. “We’re in the process of doing that now and it should complete by the end of 2007.”
