Telephone directory dispute pits citizens’ interest groups against TELUS

Aserious dispute concerning telephone directories has pitted a collective of six citizens’ interest groups, collectively known as BCOAPO et al., against residential telephone service provider TELUS Corp., in British Columbia. According to a complaint filed with the CRTC, the groups seek an official confirmation that TELUS is violating the general terms of service applicable to residential carriers, since it has failed to provide its customers with a district-wide alphabetical directory. The dispute began in 2003, when TELUS subcontracted Verizon Information Services Inc. to prepare, publish and distribute the telephone listings in the Greater Vancouver Area through its Superpages subsidiary. Shortly after that, Verizon announced that the white pages directory will be split into five separate directories, each one fully alphabetized, and containing both residential and business listings. The decision has angered the six citizens’ groups, representing mostly seniors, who retained the services of the British Columbia Public Interest Advocacy Centre (BCPIAC) to fight the telephone company. For BCPIAC’s James L. Quail, the issue at hand is TELUS’ refusal to comply with clearly established legal obligations. TELUS maintains that a single directory would have been too large to be practical, pointing out that the older 2002-2003 white pages volume had more than 2,100 pages and weighed over five pounds. In a letter to the CRTC, which responds to the citizens’ complaint, the carrier says that it has maintained full compliance with current regulations, and that its own customer research and feedback data backs up the measure of the five-region split. "A 2002 research study," TELUS wrote to the CRTC, "... revealed that, on the average, Lower mainland residents...used the white-page directory to reference residential listings outside of their respective municipal districts a mere four times a year." But the pertinence of this information is put in doubt by Quail, who explains that the five-directory system is seriously flawed. Under the new system, customers now receive only the listing of the region they live in. If they require the other four directories, they have to order them from TELUS, and only receive them after several weeks. And the telephone customers who don’t have all the directory listings are left with alternatives such as directory assistance calls, billed for 95 cents each. "If they think that a single white pages book is too large, then they can make two instead, one from A to L, the other from M to Z", says Quail, adding "Everyone I know in Vancouver still uses the 2002-2003 directory, and even the two volume version would still be much smaller than the one for Metro Toronto, for instance." In its defence, TELUS says that GVA is not a traditionally defined area, and that the yellow pages directory had been split in five different geographic sets for the last 17 years, without any complaints from the residents. "How do you define an area, when it expands from one year to another?" asks TELUS media and public relations officer Charlie Fleet, echoing the official response letter to the CRTC. Fleet also denies any breach of compliance, and says Superpages should be contacted instead. "I believe it’s simply a question of cost-cutting and maximizing profits," suggests James Quail, whose advocacy firm wrote in its complaint that the relationship between TELUS and Verizon is "invisible" to the CRTC. "When people complained , what they heard from TELUS was ‘we’re not producing them anymore’," he adds. What the BCPIAC proposes to end the feud is an amended terms of service document, which will take into consideration the citizens’ complaints, and follow the white pages model currently offered by TELUS in Alberta. Meanwhile, TELUS states once again that it is in full compliance with current regulations, and refuses to make additional comments outside its official position, as expressed to the CRTC, that BCOAPO et al.’s request is ‘without merit."

Telephone directory dispute pits citizens’ interest groups against TELUS

News | 07/20/2004 4:00 am EDT

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