Is it last call for the public payphone?
Faced with pressure by Bell Canada to either let the telecom giant jack prices on its remaining payphones or allow the company to rip the money-losing equipment out of public spaces altogether, regulators have opted to open a consultation on the payphone’s future.
But with more than three-quarters of Canadians toting a cellphone now, the outlook may be doubt for the once-vital link between parents and adolescents stranded at the mall as well as bar partrons in need of a taxi alike.
“This trend is likely to continue,” the commission’s chair, Jean-Pierre Blais, said in a statement.
The CRTC wants Canadians to “share their views” with the regulator in order “to reassess the role of payphones” in individual towns and communities.
The CRTC is also looking at whether it would be “appropriate” to stop Bell from removing the last remaining payphones from communities until the conclusion of the consultation.
Comments specific to whether the remaining payphones should be allowed to be removed before the full review is complete are due to the commission by Aug. 13, it said.
Those wishing to comment on the broader question of whether regulation should continue to support payphone services at all are due Oct. 22.
Interested parties can write the CRTC directly here.
The commission also denied on Tuesday a request from Bell and its affiliated companies, including Bell Aliant and Telebec to lift the price of a payphone call to $1 for cash calls and up to $2 for calls charged to a credit card or calling card.
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