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Back in January, Bell Canada and Bell Aliant filed a request with the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) seeking clearance to hike their payphone rates from 50 cents up to $1 and their pay-by-card rates from $1 to $2, a move that would make Canada’s payphones among the most expensive in the western world. The Post’s Tristin Hopper breaks down the proposed phone booth gouge.

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One dollar for a phone call? Really?

The loonie phone call is not yet a sure thing. As Bell Canada spokeswoman Jacqueline Michelis noted, the utility is simply asking for the option to hike their rates to $1. “The exact amount of the increase hasn’t been determined yet, whether that will be five cents, 10 cents — it hasn’t been determined yet,” said Jacqueline Michelis, a Bell Canada spokeswoman. In its CRTC submission, Bell admits that it probably won’t hike rates to the full $1, as it does not want to see a “dramatic drop” in payphone calls such as it saw after their last major rate hike in 2007.



But why? Isn’t 50 cents enough?

Bell claims that the increase is necessary to cover dwindling payphone revenue as more and more Canadians migrate to mobile phones. Also, Bell says they need retrofit their phones to recognize the new steel loonies and toonies being manufactured by the Royal Canadian Mint. Of course, you’ll have to trust Bell that all this warrants a rate hike: The utility refused to provide information on the annual cost of maintaining their phones, the unit cost of retrofitting their phones for steel loonies — or even the total number of phones they operate. “We’re a competitive business so I can’t share those numbers,” said Ms. Michelis.