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But even though his business happens to be a telecommunications consultancy, he decided against trying to bring his local, long-distance, Internet and wireless services home from the office by himself. Instead, he looked to other businesses to help him set up and run these services.

And yet, despite his knowledge of the industry and of its players, Mr. Hoey was unable to find a single vendor that could provide the kind of one-stop shopping he required.

"I find that outsourcing it all is probably the better way, but I haven't found the company I could do that with. It's very painful. [Vendors] say they can do it all. Well, they can't do it all. They overpromise on some things."

So, like most small business owners, Mr. Hoey buys his telecommunications and computing services and support à la carte, some from this company and some from that.

Price is an important consideration but the lowest price is not necessarily the best for the business, he said. His advice is to look at reliability and ease of use.

For example, a small business might be considering the purchase of a dozen cellphones. Most small businesses owners, he said, might be tempted to go with the provider that offers the cheapest air time but fail to factor in other costs, such as accounting for all that airtime across a dozen different handsets.

Another business might believe that cheapest is best when it comes to high-speed Internet service, until that owner spends five or six hours of his workday each month with slower-than-promised access.

"I've spent hours ripping my hair out trying to get some of this to work," Mr. Hoey said.

To their credit, telecommunications service providers in Canada -- be they national organizations such as Bell Canada or Telus Corp. or locally owned independents -- are competing hard once again for the accounts of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Canada. And they're increasingly trying to provide bundles of services that will make one-stop shopping easier and more affordable for small business managers.

"There is a very large opportunity here and a customer base that has really been ignored by the industry," said Karen Sheriff, president of Bell Canada's small and medium business group.

SMEs will spend an estimated $9.08-billion on information technology services and products and an additional $13.8-billion on telecommunication services this year, according to research firm International Data Corp. (Canada) Ltd. Half of that telecom spending still goes to traditional services, such as local and long-distance calling.

Small businesses -- those with 99 employees or less -- will spend $5.5-billion on telecom services, or 30 per cent of Canada's overall market for business telecommunications services, according to IDC.

"It's a major market for us," said Simon Vincent, vice-president of small business solutions for Telus. "And it's a market that shows consistent growth. But it is very diverse. It really takes a lot of effort to get inside the minds of small business owners."

Telecom service companies have been spurred into newly competitive offerings by a host of factors, but most of all by a quickly changing technology environment. New ways, for example, of routing phone calls cheaply over the Internet are eating away at long-distance and local calling revenue of large phone companies, two core areas where these companies have long been dominant.

Moreover, this kind of new technology has enabled new competitors to enter Canada's multibillion-dollar telecom services market.

Still, vendors of business-class telecom services in Canada have been relatively slow to respond to servicing the needs of small business owners in Canada., Mr. Hoey said. "There is a long learning cycle. The cost to get small business is quite high. Small business also tends to dissipate its buying,"

By that Mr. Hoey means, that small business managers tend to avoid putting all their telecommunications eggs in one basket, buying the various services from two or more vendors. "So this market doesn't really grab the attention of the vendor."

IDC Canada telecom analyst Lawrence Surtees agrees that Canada's major telecom vendors have yet to tap the SME market in a meaningful way. He believes there is untapped demand within the small business community for high-speed Internet services, wireless data and voice services, and some state-of-the-art services such as voice-over-Internet-protocol or VoIP, the technology that lets telephone calls be routed through an Internet connection.

"Still dominated by wire lines, small businesses in Canada remain heavily dependent on basic wire line services for their communication needs," Mr. Surtees said in a recent report. "Telecom vendors must clearly communicate the cost benefit of high-speed and business advantage of wireless."

Still, experts say it's not entirely up to the vendors to figure out the SME sector. It's up to the sector itself to become smarter about buying telecom services.

Mr. Hoey said small business owners and managers make plenty of their own mistakes when it comes to buying telecom and information technology services. "Small businesses tend to be nickel-and-dime punchers. This is an area where you don't want to do that."

David Akin is a CTV correspondent and a contributing writer to The Globe and Mail.