TBComm 35 Years Old
by Scott A. Sumner
Thunder Bay Business
If you drive down Tungsten Street in Thunder Bay near the TBayTel buildings you will notice the familiar TB Commbuilding operated by the second generation of the Exell family. “ My
father, William Exell, started this business in 1973 then called Thunder Bay Communications and built it on sales and service of two way radios and then local paging in Thunder Bay. My sister Karen and I got involved about 21 years ago and helped bring cellular into our company,” noted Bill Exell. “ My father is down south now but when he is in town he comes in everyday checking up on things making sure everything is running smoothly.”
Bill Exell started working as a 16 year old student in the company, now renamed TB Comm, doing radio installations and cleaning up the shop floor. Bill will be 42 years old this month.
“ My sister Karen Bagdon and I are partners in the business with my father. We call my father the president and my sister and I are managing partners. My dad started from the garage at home and then moved on to Roland Street in a rented location. In 1973 they bought
a building on Russell Street and finally in 1990 built this building we operate from near the TBay Tel operations. There is a lot of traffic going to the TbayTel offices which has helped us,” noted Exell. “ We sold our two way radio division about 9 years ago to CRC Communications
of Thunder Bay. Today we focus on our paging systems, Iridiun and a Globalstar satellite phones and two way paging systems. A satellite phone will transmit the latitude and longitude of your location. There is a new product we are offering that Globalstar has, a little orange
device that transmits data like we are arrived ok. It will transmit your GPS location. It sells for $160 and the monthly service costs are $10 per month. We are Thunder Bay Mobility largest private supplier of hardware as we sell cell phones and Blackberries. We also do Sirius
satellite radio and have a line of cordless phones. The two companies XM and Sirius are trying to merge to be successful.”
“ We try to keep up with the latest technology. Wireless communications is our expertise and we want to carry on the tradition. We got into cellular when it arrived in Thunder Bay in1989. At that time we did service for both Tbaytel and Rogers but became an exclusive TbayTel dealer shortly after that. In 1989 the business person was the only one who could afford the phone. Now there are 4 or 5 phones in the family where the parents and kids have them for their
personal use. The phone have gotten smaller and can do text messaging,
play games act as cameras etc.” stated Exell
In the Thunder Bay population of say 100,000 they hoped for 5 to 10 % penetration rate for cell phones in1989 and now it is 50 to 60 % and in Europe it is in the 80 to 90% according to Bill Excell. The average costs for a cell user are $35 to $40 month. The average person
might use 300 to 400 minutes per month according to Exell. The Blackberry came to Thunder Bay 2 years ago. “ It was a product with which our competitors were ahead of us. Tbaytel became a fast 100 programs with RIM. It has been selling great with our coverage NW
Ontario,Canada and the US. The Blackberry advantage is you don't have to sit in your office to wait for email, send email and gather information. It gives you the ability to get out in the street in sales for instance, and keep in touch with your email and voice messages and do web browsing looking at the website. RIM, a Canadian company,has done a good job with the technology. The product is directed at the business person with some additional costs involved to accept data,” noted Bill Exell. “ What we will see in the near future is devices coming down the line that will have the music capability, camera and some of the devices the younger generation like. You can store addresses, appointment calenders as everyone needs that. All of your information is at your finger tips so I see the penetration increasing on Blackberry devices. They can have a GPS mapping technology so you can pull up the maps. If you look at the brick phone that weighed a pound an half to today’s palm sized unit we have come along way.” smiled Exell.
TB Comm currently has a staff of 10 including two sisters that work part time. Another brother used to work in the company but is now a police officer in Thunder Bay. We are all like a big family. Every day is different and you meet a lot of new people each day . I can go out
to a hockey game or restaurant and see a lot of familiar faces. Everyday brings something different with new technology we can offer people. We try to give the best service possible so they enjoy their experience here and come back. We want to make people lives easier,
smiled Exell. It has gone well and we have been lucky enough to be supported by the community for 35 years. Thunder Bay is a great place to raise your kids. You hear that all the time. It is sometimes isolated but also insulated from things you hear about in larger
centers. It is a great place if you like the outdoors.t has everything you need to have a comfortable life with lots of friends and family. It is a good lifestyle , not too hectic but has enough to offer. There has got to be ways to generate new economy for our young people to stay here.
It is a fun business because of the technology changing constantly and you have to play with new things to it figure out how they work. It is like playing with new gadgets all the time and then looking at ways to market them. You have to sometimes relies on your younger staff who
are more up to date and not frightened by the technology noted Karen Bagdon. I have ben here for 20 years and seen lots from the first cell phone to the types of phones we see today. We are going to keep moving forward with the technologies as they evolve, make sure we have staff
that are trained and interested or excited in the new products to keep us excited with them as well as knowing how the products work so they can explain it. I lke Thunder Bay a lot. We have a nice camp on Lake Superior and that is the lifestyle we like the most. We do like to
travel when we can but are also always happy to come back to Thunder Bay.
