Telecommunications giant Bell Canada is being hit with a record $1.3-million administrative penalty for breaching Canada's Do Not Call List.

The CRTC is levying the penalty for unauthorized telemarketing practices.

Between January and October of this year, third-party telemarketers hired by Bell Canada, which is in talks to buy CTV, called Canadians whose numbers were on the National Do Not Call List or Bell's internal list, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) said in a press release.

The unsolicited calls were intended to promote and sell Bell Canada's television, telephone, wireless and Internet services.

No violations were committed by Bell-operated call centres, the company said in a statement.

Bell Canada and the CRTC agreed to a settlement announced Monday.

The penalty serves as a reminder that every telemarketer must respect the wishes of Canadians who register on national and internal lists, said Andrea Rosen, the CRTC's chief telecommunications enforcement officer.

It's up to Bell and other companies to ensure the third-party telemarketers they hire are following the rules, Rosen said.

She said the $1.3 million penalty is the largest handed out so far.

"I think you can say from the quantum of the penalty that Bell recognized the seriousness of what was happening," Rosen said.

Bell, the country's largest communications company, reacted swiftly by cancelling contracts with two telemarketers who didn't follow the rules and suspending several others.

The company said it has also implemented remedial measures to make sure its independent telemarketers don't call Canadians who don't want to be bothered by telemarketers.

Bell said it co-operated with the CRTC's investigation and takes the Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules and the National Do Not Call List seriously.

Meanwhile, Bell Canada was also accused of using automated calling devices without consent.

The automated calling devices called prepaid mobile phone customers without their prior consent, the CRTC stated.

Customers received automated calls as their prepaid minutes were set to expire to encourage them to buy more airtime.

Bell hasn't admitted fault but, after learning of the CRTC's concerns, voluntarily ended the calls and took steps to give $266,000 to Concordia University's Institute for Information and Systems Engineering.

The CRTC has received about 300,000 complaints of alleged Do Not Call List violations and conducted more than 100 investigations since the registry was implemented in September 2008. Fewer than 30 penalties have been issued but the federal agency insists it is cracking down.

But some people who added their names to the registry complain telemarketers now call them more than they did when their names weren't on the list.

"I signed up for it last April and I'm getting two, three, four calls a week instead of one call a year," said Mike Thomas, who has blogged about the calls.

Thomas is happy the CRTC is dishing out penalties.

But Mel Fruitman, a consumer advocate, has a word of caution. He said small telemarketers are hard to catch and big ones can afford to pay the penalties.

"It's a drop in the bucket, it's not going to stop them at all. What might deter them is a bit of embarrassment," Fruitman said.

Earlier this year, Bell Canada's parent company, BCE Inc., agreed to buy the 85 per cent of CTV Inc. it didn't already own for a price of $1.3 billion.

With a report from CTV's Roger Smith