OTTAWA - The price of placing a call from pay phones will go up for the first time in years as part of new CRTC guidelines that will give Canada's major phone companies more flexibility.
The new rules, to go into effect on June 1, will ensure that residential customers in urban areas won't see a rate increase for basic local telephone service.
However, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission will allow the major phone companies to raise the price of residential service in rural areas, where the lower population density makes the cost of providing services higher on a per-customer basis.
In addition, the CRTC said it is granting the phone companies' request to increase the price of calls from pay phones. The new cash ceiling will be 50 cents, up from 25 cents, and the non-cash ceiling will be $1 per call.
It's the first time since 2002 that the federal agency has revised its so-called price-cap regime.
However, since that time Canada's phone industry has undergone rapid change, particularly since the country's large cable companies and a host of other companies have entered the local phone markets with Internet protocol voice services.
The CRTC, which had opened up the local phone market to competition in the late 1990s, has been slow to loosen restrictions on the large, incumbent phone companies that continue to hold the largest share of the residential phone business.
The new rules apply to Bell Canada and its affiliate Bell Aliant, both part of the BCE Inc. group, Telus Corp., Manitoba Telecom Services and SaskTel, which is owned by the province of Saskatchewan.
