Earlier this year I received the first of three odd phone calls from the telecommunications giant Telus. “Your landline, your copper line,” the caller said, “will soon be disconnected. You need to have a fibre connection installed.”
Like many of you, no doubt, I tend to take any call from a telecom services provider that has the slightest hint of pressure with a dose of skepticism. I fired back with a question. “Do you have a date when that disconnection might occur?” There was no date, no month, no year. “Fine,” I said, “you phone me back when the disconnection is about three months away.”
Two weeks later my phone line began to crackle, and a few minutes after I noticed that behaviour our 30-year-old copper landline went dead. At first I thought back to the disconnection call, but it didn’t make sense. I phoned the repair service and was assured that there were no such intentional cuts, and that there was no broad outage in my area. A repair technician was assigned, and on the following morning, a Sunday, my three-decade copper line was repaired. A failed “sock,” in the underground vault just outside my front wall. Within the hour the line was back in perfect shape.
However, as part of that quick repair, I also agreed to have a fibre line run from the vault to the outside of my house. The technician who repaired the landline agreed with me that I should do whatever it took to keep that copper connection. He noted that fibre connections function for only an hour or two in the event of a power outage, whereas copper landlines have a robust backup solution that will keep running for at least a couple of days.
Fast forward a few months. I now have a fibre connection at the outside of my house. However, I’ve had two more phone calls suggesting I abandon my copper landline, as the end is supposedly nigh. Again, in neither case could the caller offer a definitive date when such landlines might be disconnected.
I believe such calls are simply a pressure tactic to get fibre into the house and to then begin the selling of high-markup components such as TV, security, and even online medical services. My purpose here is not to malign fibre as a means of offering telecommunications services, but I do object to the approach being used by Telus.
In speaking with others who’ve received such calls and have subsequently agreed to the installation of a fibre line, a few common themes have emerged. Almost no one talks of a noticeable improvement in the performance of their internet service. Some comment that the phone jacks they previously had and used across their home no longer work, something they weren’t made aware of when agreeing to the fibre installation.
For now, I have no need of a fibre connection. My coaxial cable connection is doing just fine for internet and TV. My copper landline is probably good for another 30 years. I never need to reboot it. It always works, well, except for the occasion of that failed “sock.”
I say 30 years, but at some point the industry regulator will surely spell out an actual end-of-life date for copper service. By the way, if you still have that old-school landline, make sure you aren’t paying too much for it. It should be around $10 a month. For years Telus has played rate creep with landlines, adding a dollar or two every year. At one point that meant the effective going rate had become around $30 a month.
Recently the company even slipped an unrequested add-on service, three-way calling, to some landline bills for an additional dollar or two. When I inquired why this had occurred, I was told, if you can believe it, “Oh, we thought everyone would want this.” And to think I thought the days of negative option billing were behind us.
Have you experienced pressure to give up your copper service in favour of fibre to the home? I suspect the answer depends on where you live. Not all municipalities in Metro Vancouver have come to terms with Telus on access agreements for the installation of fibre.
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