Dear Mr. Premier, Mr. Stoffer and Mr. Gaudet,

after reading Mr. Gaudet's article in the Chronicle-Herald (October 1,

2001) and hearing that you will make presentations at the upcoming

hearings I felt that I should write you to give you my personal

experience with the rural telephone service. Since I could not obtain

the e-mail address of the leader of the provincial NDP I am directing

this letter to Mr. Stoffer instead.

I live in Elderbank in the Musquodoboit Valley. We are within a 50 km

radius of Metropolitan Halifax/Dartmouth. Until the 911 emergency was

introduced province wide a couple of years ago we could only get party

lines. I was repeatedly told by MTT that there were not enough lines

for individual service, even when I offered to pay for any difference in

cost. All long distance calls were intercepted by an operator who would

ask for our telephone number so that the call could be charged to the

correct telephone. You can imagine the checking we had to do to make

sure we only paid for our calls whenever the monthly bill arrived.

But worst of all was the fact that on a party line we could not use any

computers or even an answering machine. That put me at a severe

disadvantage professionally. Without computer access at home I could

not work as effectively as my colleagues.

Even now my internet access is always very slow and at times not at all

working. There are certain times on certain days when I simply cannot

connect at all. When I asked for a conversion to a high speed

connection I was told that this was impossible and won't happen for many

years to come.

This is the nature of the service we receive in the rural areas. And

for this Aliant has the nerve to want to charge me 5 dollars more each

month than people in urban areas pay for their much superior service?

I hope that you can impress upon the CRTC that the application for a

rate hike affecting the rural residents is simply scandalous. After

all, the telephone today is a necessity just like the mail system, and

all letters within Canada cost the same postage regardless of where the

letters are coming from or are going to.

Thank you for taking on this issue.

Lothar Schluter