I am against the proposed increases, for the following reasons:

Firstly, in our service area we have no competition for telephone service.  If you want a telephone in your home or office, NBTel is the only choice you have for a hook-up or for local call service.

Secondly, telephone service is no longer an "extra" or a discretionary luxury.  It is an essential.  It is particularly important to have telephone service if you live in a rural area, where it is often the only method of rapid communication in times of emergency.  Your nearest neighbour may be miles away.

For this reason, telephone service in rural areas should not cost any more than service anywhere else.

It should, in fact, cost less because of its essential nature.

My third point is that, in the past, long distance service has subsidized local service.  Since competition has been allowed in providing long distance service, companies providing local service as well as long distance service have had to reduce their long distance rates in order to compete with the new long distance providers, thus drying up their source of subsidy for local service.  Some way should be found to insure that all long distance providers contribute to the subsidization of local telephone service.

Stanton Hart