Good morning. I am writing to express my disappointment and concern with

regards to the proposed increase of telephone service charges for rural

customers.

I live in Sackville, New Brunswick, a rural community, just 52 KM from the

City of Moncton. For years we had to pay long distances charges to call

Moncton, Port Elgin, etc. which are not very far from Sackville. NBTel

finally got smart and increased our local service to include these other

communities but they also increased our local service charge to reflect

that.

Now, they are once again trying to hit us with another increase just because

we don't live in the urban centre. This is totally unacceptable in my

opinion. There is no explanation available to justify their proposed

increase. It does not cost any more to service the customers outside of the

Moncton area as the infrastructure is and has already been in place. Where

everything is so automated these days, even the phone company doesn't have to

make the same types of service calls to these areas because most of the work

can be done via electronic means. If service has to be provided by an actual

service man, it doesn't cost anymore to have him service someone in Sackville

than it would in Moncton. He's either paid hourly or is on salary.

The cost of telephone service is already to high and just because the phone

company is losing money on long distance service due to the existence of

other long distance carriers, trying to offset these cost with increasing

local service charges is UNFAIR. If they were more competitive with their

long distance then perhaps there wouldn't be crying hard times.

Please take a good hard look at this proposal before you authorize any

increase. Thank you for your time and have a great day.

Sandra Melanson

Human Resources Development Canada

Moncton ITC

Tape Librarian

506-851-6844