OTTAWA – Bell Canada, the private telephone company that dominates the communications industry of Eastern Canada, is promising thousands of Ontario farmers a ramp onto the information highway within a few years.
For more than a year, the Ontario farm lobby has complained that in many areas of the province, party line service denies farmers access to fax service and the internet.
Last week, Bell Canada announced a $180 million program to improve service in rural Ontario and Quebec.
It will not get rid of rural party lines, or give all parts of rural Ontario the same service available in provinces like Saskatchewan, but it is a start, says an Ontario farm lobby spokesperson.
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“They have given us a firm commitment that they will sit down with us next year and propose a way that is affordable to get rid of party lines,” said Gary Davison of Port Colbourne, Ont.
He is chair of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture rural affairs committee and has been involved in talks with Bell Canada.
He said it is ironic that in many parts of Ontario, Canada’s largest and richest farm province, farmers are unable to use the communications tools for their business that farmers in other provinces can use.
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He said many government services, marketing information and communications from marketing boards are carried on the internet or the fax.
“If you have a party line, you cannot use those and we could see last year this was going to be a problem, a growing problem,” he said.
The OFA has been a leading voice in pressuring governments and Bell to correct the problem.
“We have talked to the government of Saskatchewan and note that they, through a publicly owned telephone company, made a commitment to make the new technology available in rural areas,” he said. “That has not happened everywhere here yet but this is an important step.”
With support from the farm lobby, Bell has applied to the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission for permission to raise rural rates by an average $1.11 per month to pay for new switching equipment in many rural areas.
The company says by next year, 490,000 rural customers in the two provinces will have modern equipment that will allow them to have many of the telecommunications services available in urban areas, including a wider area for local calls.
Bell official Marilyn Koen said about 30,000 rural Ontario homes still have four-party lines. The total in Quebec is roughly the same.
She said it will cost the company $225 million in both provinces to install private lines.
A major part of next year’s negotiations will centre on deciding how much extra rural customers will have to pay.
Davison said Bell has promised that distance charges will be dropped for rural residents.
