To: Secretary General

      CRTC, Ottawa, Ont.

RE: Telus proposal to increase monthly service fees to subsidize unserved and underserviced communities.

The notice about this subsidy proposal came enclosed with my August telephone invoice.  Before writing this e-mail I looked around the CRTC website hoping to find a much better description of what this subsidy plan is supposed to accomplish.  However, except for several legal sounding letters between CRTC and various phone companies, all I found were several dozen letters, mostly from rural subscribers in Eastern Canada, objecting to rate hikes on the basis their service is bad already and they don't want to pay more.

I have several objections about the Telus notice.

FIRST, about the amount of the subsidy Telus is proposing-

As I understand the Notice To Customers, Telus wants to be able to increase my monthly local service fee per account by $3 per month this year, $6 a month next year and continue this progression until my monthly local service fee reaches $35.   With my monthly service fee presently at $24, this will take four years and represents an 81% increase during that period, plus 14% GST/PST.  This is an incredibly high increase and Telus should be telling its residential and commercial customers about it with full disclosure.

Telus says the subsidy charge won't be reduced after expanded infrastructure has been built.  Instead, the company says it needs the money for maintenance costs to the expanded phone network and that monthly service fees to remote communities need subsidizing in purpetuity.

If Telus proposes to increase my monthly service fee by up to 81% to improve service to unserved and underserved areas, I'm supplying the capital to put in infrastructure with Telus taking ownership of it and then making a profit.  Really, the company should be issuing a debt instrument to do it and a hard look should be made as to what level of service is reasonably appropriate in rural and isolated areas.  Let's be realistic, while the Internet and e-mail are wonderful inventions, they're not essential services and they don't justify urban Canada being hit with massive rate increases.  Use of existing satellite phone systems would be much cheaper and the people using the system could pay for it themselves.

SECOND, about the lack of information on the scope of proposed infrastucture upgrading across Canada-

Some time ago the Liberal government said it wanted all Canadians to have Internet access.  Is this proposal a camoflaged way for the Federal government to achieve this goal?  Neither the CRTC website nor Telus tells me the extent or cost of what upgrades are being proposed, who is pushing for the service and what justification there is to do it.   I sympathise to some extent with poor communications services in rural areas but if this is a grand political plan to give everyone in Canada the same level of sevice as I have in Victoria, I want no part of it.  I have good service only because the customer density makes Telus a profit.   

THIRD, residents of unserved and underserved communities aren't paying much of the cost-

Telus says residents of unserved communities would pay up to $1000 of the first $26,000 per household for getting new service; residents of underserved communities would pay nothing, the cost being paid entirely by subsidy.   In other words, residents getting these new services would pay only 4% or less of the cost, those of us in urban Canada would subsidize them forever and get absolutely nothing in return.  

In conclusion, this whole proposal is nothing less than a massive cash/tax grab to provide a service of questionable value.  Canadians deserve straight answers about why such a subsidy is being considered and the whole proposal should be scrapped until this information is widely available.

D. Mellor

Victoria