HAMILTON – Mountain Cablevision said Friday it will match the extended local calling area in Hamilton that city council has been urging telephone companies to implement.
Bell Canada has applied to the CRTC to extend the local calling area for the city so that certain phone calls across the city of Hamilton (such as from the Stony Creek area to Ancaster) would no longer be long distance.
Should the CRTC approve this application, Mountain Cablevision will also extend its local calling areas, says a press release from the cable company serving about 38,000 customers in areas in and outside of Hamilton. Mountain has offered voice over IP phone service in its regions for about two years.
"Mountain Cablevision will not raise its price by 30cents/month for residential local phone service to compensate for the bigger local calling zone – Mountain will pass 100% of the savings to its customers," says the release. "Should Bell Canada get the CRTC approval to extend the local calling area then Mountain Cablevision customers will automatically get the same benefit. There will be no change to customers’ phone numbers."
"If the local calling area gets bigger then we will make sure our customers get the benefit too – and we won’t increase the price of our telephone service to them. Customers have paid too much for too long for their phone service," said John Piercy, president, Mountain Cablevision.
