I’m losing track of all the columns I’ve written on the efforts to which TELUS Communications will go to get its customers to drop their so-called copper landline connection once optical fibre comes to town.
My own municipality was the test case in B.C. for a city-wide installation of fibre. There was a lot to be critical of in that implementation. The initial notice to households carried both corporate and city logos, a major faux pas if you ask me.
Because the deployment in my area required access to various bits of city infrastructure, a vote was required by the municipal council. Exactly what was voted on, and which councilors voted for and which voted against, remains a mystery. I asked the city administrator and was told this information was blocked as it arose from an in- camera session.
To this day I still have my TELUS copper landline, not because I am a Luddite, but because at this point in time fibre connections still remain prone to power outages. A standard copper landline was designed to operate days in the event of a loss of electricity. Yes, the parts to maintain that aging infrastructure are difficult to get, if they even exist, but I’m keeping my $10 a month copper landline until the company switches it off.
Not only that but in a several block radius around where I live, TELUS mobile service is completely unreliable, dare I say it, almost unusable. The company has known this for almost two decades. I asked for, and now get, a monthly discount of around 20 per cent in return for this diminished service.
I should add that TELUS used to phone regularly over the past six years to say that my copper landline was shutting down imminently. The calls were usually from a call centre and followed a script. Switch now or you will lose access to the line. When pressed, the call centre employees could never provide an actual deadline date.
Recently the company raised the rhetoric a little. My own mother, who lives in a neighbouring municipality, received a letter in November saying that homes on her street would be receiving fibre installations. I suggested to her that she only allow the fibre installation to the outside wall of the house and not allow any access to the house.
Whether it was the contractor handling the installs for TELUS, or the company itself, one or the other began agitating for my mother to have the fibre installed inside. All through form letters. I checked with TELUS as to any possible deadline and was told, as I had been informed previously, that any line shutdown would be preceded by a three-month formal notification. Confident in that I told my mother to ignore any communication regarding fibre.
However, all that changed when my mother received a registered letter providing two weeks’ notice and an absolute deadline, Feb. 7.
This time I decided to go through the company’s communications department. I sent an email detailing my mother’s case. I explained that she is elderly and that I wanted a completely reliable phone service in the house. The copper landline has been completely trouble free for decades, through many a local power outage. Specifically I wanted a clear answer. Was the copper landline actually going to be shut down or was this simply talk to get the fibre into the house and then the company would be able to start the marketing calls for security, internet, and TV services?
Initially TELUS corporate PR used weasel words such as ”decommissioning.” The letter my mother received contained a phone number. When I phoned I was told that there was in fact no shutdown scheduled for her area. I insisted on a ruling from a manager and was told the same. That annoyed me immensely and I conveyed this back to TELUS corporate PR.
Corporate PR apologized in an email, noting they could understand why I felt misled, but they insisted the incorrect information was because “Our internal system had not been updated based on the information we were receiving from the (fibre) team.”
To underscore the TELUS position, the email contained this line, in boldface:
Your mother is slated to have her residential copper equipment decommissioned on February 7.
Just exactly what that meant is still a mystery to me. “Her residential copper equipment” will be decommissioned? Not the entire municipality’s?
No matter how I parsed it, I felt there was no choice. With just two weeks to go I didn’t want to chance my mother’s home being without a landline. Although she has a cellphone it is almost never used. The landline is her comfort. I reluctantly agreed to the fibre conversion. However I did add one demand, that the company also install a backup battery system, at no cost.
A few days later the conversion went through. The technician was most helpful and carefully ensured all my mother’s phones were working just as they did prior to the severing of the copper line. And the backup power supply was installed as requested.
Writing two weeks later I still harbour doubts as to whether copper service was in fact shut down in my mother’s municipality. Now I am waiting to hear from my mother that the upselling of additional communications services has started. Or that the monthly rate has gone up, despite assurances to the contrary.
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