BCE Inc., a $55-billion company that provides telecommunication services to more than 10 million Canadians and owns Canada’s most popular television networks and radio stations and employs more than 52,000 people nationwide, says it’s tired of being saddled with its reputation as a necessary evil, and wants more Canadians to appreciate all its hard work.

“We’ve heard all the jokes, all the complaints, all the stereotypes, but why aren’t more people talking about the billions — yes, billions with a B — of dollars we’re investing in our fibre-optic network to give Canadians higher Internet speeds?” asked CEO George Cope. “Why aren’t more people in Toronto and Montreal dropping to their knees to thank us for giving them competition in the cable TV space for the first time? We didn’t have to do all that.”

In that light, Bell has launched a new ad campaign starting today in which it encourages Canadians to “be more grateful for Bell” by doing things as simple as calling up customer service and saying thank you. “Or you could put another phone on a family plan, or subscribe to The Movie Network, because it’s really great content, and you love John Oliver, right?”

Bell says it expects its reputation boost to be equivalent to the one it got when it invested in improving its customer service department.