Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Jan 31/00) - Northerners will continue to pay the highest long-distance rates in North America until the year 2001, if a phone company plan is accepted.

NorthwesTel has filed an application with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) which outlines a proposal for increased service, local rate hikes and a subsidy provided by southern phone companies which will allow long-distance competition.

Competition, and reduced long-distance rates that come with it, likely won't happen until 2001, a year later than planned, said Marguerite Vogel, the CRTC's regional director for Western and Northern Canada.

"The schedule hasn't rolled out the way we thought it would two years ago," Vogel said. "So competition probably won't roll out until early next year."

Vogel said the CRTC determined that the vast service area is much more expensive to cover than in southern jurisdictions where there are large concentrations of population. The company currently services 68,000 phone lines in four time zones.

Ray Hamelin, chief financial advisor for NorthwesTel, said the proposal should come as good news to all customers.

"We in the North are about to make a breakthrough and create a national fund that will feed the North in order to bring the North services that do not exist today," Hamelin said. "This is extremely good news for Northerners."

Hamelin said the rates offered in the south just aren't feasible in the North.

"It's impossible for us to offer you guys 10 cents a minute," he said.

The solution to the high cost of long distance is to get help from southern telephone companies, Hamelin said.

"The only way we can do this, is by having the southern industry send a subsidy to NorthwesTel," he said. "The southern (telephone companies) are going to be paying us, on average, about $35 million a year."

The subsidy program has worked for people in Alaska, Hamelin said. The telephone companies in the lower 48 states pay into a pool which subsidizes the Alaskan telephone market. That plan has been in place for 20 years.

NorthwesTel also plans to upgrade existing service throughout the North with features like call waiting, call display, access to local Internet, as well as upgrading all old analogue phone lines to digital.

"We will be upgrading all of our transport lines," he said. "We're hoping to get this all completed over four years."

It's all expected to cost $168 million, up from the $100 million NWTel originally planned to spend.

Northerners have also seen monthly phone bills rise over the past two years. The first increase came Aug. 1, 1998, when local rates were boosted $4 per line. The second increase came one year later, when rates were hiked an additional $6.

The CRTC said the increases were approved as long as they would be offset with lower long-distance rates.

Hamelin said NorthwesTel has proposed that local rates be increased a further $5 on Jan. 1, 2001.

The public is invited to participate in regional consultations in Yellowknife, Iqaluit, Fort Nelson and Whitehorse on June 12, 2000.

As well, written submissions can be faxed to the CRTC at:

(819) 953-0795 or mailed to: Secretary-General, CRTC, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0N2.