Northern telephone customers will pay more for basic services starting next month. It's the first increase in telephone rates across the North in six years.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) approved NorthwesTel's request for the increase on Thursday.
Local residential service will cost $2 more a month. Business rates will increase $5 a month per business line.
NorthwesTel serves Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, Yukon and northern British Columbia.
When proposing the change in rates last spring, a spokewoman for the company, Anne Kennedy, said the plan is to eventually bring lower long-distance rates for customers.
"It depends on their type of long-distance usage," she says. "Some customers — in particular, business customers — we think will be very pleased with the rates we are proposing for business services."
The new rates are part of a larger proposal NorthwesTel is making in response to the CRTC plan to change the way it regulates NorthwesTel, by controlling the prices it charges rather than its profit margins — which would bring it in line with the way the system works in the rest of the country.
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