Um, what’s the #1 way a phone company can communicate with its customers?
Something you receive in the mail every month…
The City also has periodic mailings.
Interesting reading. Must be why the new name is City West Telephone and Cable. Heres a blurb…
[quote]We are counsel to the Canadian Alliance of Publicly Owned Telephone Systems (“CAPTS”). This is an association of Canadian independent telecommunication common carriers which are owned and operated as part of municipal corporations. This group comprises five of the six municipal telecommunication common carriers in Canada, being Bruce Municipal Telephone System, Dryden Municipal Telephone System, ICenora Municipal Telephone System, The Corporation of the City of Thunder Bay – Telephone Division, all in Ontario, and Prince Rupert City Telephone, in British Columbia. Cochrane Public Utilities Commission, the sixth municipal telephone system, also located in Ontario, is not a member of CAPTS.
These are the comments on behalf of CAPTS, in response to the above-captioned Canadian Gazette Notice published by the Department of Canadian Heritage.
According to the Gazette Notice, the purpose of the proposed amendments is to complete the implementation of the Government of Canada’s convergence policy of August 6, 1996 in which the government declared that all telecommunications common carriers that meet the Canadian ownership and control requirements would become eligible to hold broadcasting licences, in particular licences for broadcasting distribution undertakings.[/quote]
For me, it’s finding the right balance of pricing and services. If txtmsg = $50 fee per month, that’s hard to justify for a subscriber. I hate not having 1x and text messaging, but I’ve rarely gotten a “network busy” signal, and the coverage within the city is decent.
However, the coverage out to Digby is spotty, and don’t get me started on the total lack of coverage between here and Terrace.
Speaking from experience, I’ve had cellular services with Cantel (now Rogers), Telus, Fido, Clearnet & Mike (now part of Telus), and for a few months in Toronto, Bell. Their customer service ranged from crappy (Cantel) to non-existant (Telus), and their service ranged from excellent (Fido) to tons of dropped calls (Clearnet).
Citytel has been the best I’ve had for service so far. The only part I hate are the roaming charges once you’re on “the mainland”.
Let’s just drop a couple 'mil and switch to GSM. Then we can get all the really cool phones, and the German tourists can use their Nokias here. 
ISP-wise, Citytel is pretty good. Granted, I’ve been spoiled with 24-hour, “15-minute guaranteed response time” service from major ISPs before. But I rarely have to wait for a long time for a callback when I’m at a client’s from Citytel, and very rarely has a connectivity problem been Citytel-equipment related.
And yes, having no d/l, u/l caps is very very nice. Unlike the 4 emails a week I got from Shaw back in the day.
It sounds like a win-win situation to me - if they make money, the city profits. If they lose money, the city isn’t affected. What concerns me is the “board of directors” - sounds very political to me. Any thoughts on who they’re going to pick?
But yes, we should have the opportunity to vote on this as a community.
Right now CityTel lags far behind other telcos in provision of services to large businesses and organizations - services such as large internet pipes with QOS at competitive pricing, state of the art VOIP systems, capacity for video streaming with QOS, and 1X cellular (in particular Blackberry type services). In order to provide these services CityTel needs to invest large sums of money (in the million dollar range) for infrastructure upgrades. The only way CityTel can raise these funds is as an incorporated entity. The City of Prince Rupert cannot provide these funds given it’s financial state and “poor” credit rating. Hence the need to incorporate - no choice! A referendum is pointless - basically it is incorporate or die for CityTel.
Already my employer considers the lack of services available from CityTel when we locate staff across the north. We are starting to locate staff in Terrace rather than Prince Rupert - and if things don’t start improving soon Prince Rupert will be left in the dust when large organizations decide where they will set up shop in the NW. I realize that part of the problem is the Telus links to Terrace but without a volume of business to push through the pipe and therefore negotiate lower pricing from Telus things will continue to deteriorate.
[quote=“JJR”]Right now CityTel lags far behind other telcos in provision of services to large businesses and organizations - services such as large internet pipes with QOS at competitive pricing, state of the art VOIP systems, capacity for video streaming with QOS, and 1X cellular (in particular Blackberry type services). In order to provide these services CityTel needs to invest large sums of money (in the million dollar range) for infrastructure upgrades. The only way CityTel can raise these funds is as an incorporated entity. The City of Prince Rupert cannot provide these funds given it’s financial state and “poor” credit rating. Hence the need to incorporate - no choice! A referendum is pointless - basically it is incorporate or die for CityTel.
Already my employer considers the lack of services available from CityTel when we locate staff across the north. We are starting to locate staff in Terrace rather than Prince Rupert - and if things don’t start improving soon Prince Rupert will be left in the dust when large organizations decide where they will set up shop in the NW. I realize that part of the problem is the Telus links to Terrace but without a volume of business to push through the pipe and therefore negotiate lower pricing from Telus things will continue to deteriorate.[/quote]
wow… i have been in van and seen different types of adsl and cable. there… i can stream video just fine on my adsl and i live on PRB. i hit speeds of 500 kbs and i know guys who r higher. I love citytel…lol…no caps…haha
Incorporated or not, don’t let Citytel go! Keep it in your hands and don’t sell it out. Take an hour to check out voices-for-change.com to see the alternative.
But yeah, you have to sink a boatload of cash into infrastructure every 5-10 years and the City is in no shape to do it.
Check out what a lot of places in the North have. We have text messaging, but the damned cell doesn’t even reach 2 miles to the sawmills.
Way to go team anti-development! A whopping 51 people signed in opposition of CityTel’s incorporation. One point for City Hall and evil corporations!
Well i guess someone had to put belsey to work…