BCE INC. $55 (Toronto symbol BCE; Conservative Growth and Income Portfolios, Utilities sector; Shares outstanding: 841.9 million; Market cap: $46.3 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.2; Dividend yield: 4.7%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.bce.ca) is Canada’s largest telephone provider, with 7.0 million customers in Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces. It also has 3.3 million highspeed Internet users and 2.7 million TV subscribers.

This business supplies 57% of BCE’s revenue. The company also sells wireless services (31% of revenue) to 8.1 million customers across Canada, and its Bell Media segment (12%) owns CTV Television, specialty channels and radio stations.

In the three months ended March 31, 2015, BCE’s overall earnings rose 12.6%, to $705 million from $626 million a year earlier. But per-share profits gained just 3.7%, to $0.84 from $0.81, on more shares outstanding. Revenue rose 2.8%, to $5.24 billion from $5.10 billion.

BCE lost 15,914 wireless subscribers, net of additions, in the latest quarter. However, it signed up 35,373 new users under long-term contracts, up 3.7% from a year earlier. That’s important, as these customers tend to use smartphones, which generate higher monthly fees than regular cellphones.

The company recently paid $29 million for new 2500 MHz radio frequencies (or wireless spectrum) under Ottawa’s latest auction. That should let it expand high-speed wireless service to 98% of Canadians by the end of 2015, up from 91% now.

Meantime, the company is seeing strong demand for its TV offerings: it now has over one million subscribers to its Fibe TV service, more than double the 479,430 it had at the start of 2014.

BCE now plans to increase Fibe speeds in Toronto to 1,000 megabits a second, or 5.7 times faster than its current top speed of 175 megabits. Faster networks will help BCE hang on to its current customers.

The company will spend $1.14 billion on these improvements, which will eventually reach 1.1 million Toronto homes and businesses. It will also speed up its Fibe networks in other cities. These projects are part of BCE’s plan to invest $20 billion in its high-speed networks by 2020.

BCE’s sound balance sheet will help support these projects. Its long-term debt of $16.6 billion is a manageable 36% of its market cap, and it holds cash of $1.1 billion.

The company expects to earn $3.28 to $3.38 a share for all of 2015, and the stock trades at an attractive 16.5 times the midpoint of that range. BCE has raised its dividend 11 times since December 2008; the current annual rate of $2.60 yields 4.7%.

BCE is a buy.