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Bell's corporate double-speak Last Thursday, the CRTC happened to announce that Bell Canada would be allowed to raise local long distance rates; in Montreal, the increase will be in the order of $2.57 per month. Of course, the only thing that angers people more than the CRTC is the phone companies they have in their back pocket. And so it came to be that, also last Thursday, perhaps through a coincidence precipitated by the alignment of the heavens, Bell issued a news release announcing that the company would "proceed with a $200 million Customer Service Improvement Program." >> Then you think, well, at least I'm going to get better "customer service": more operators, fewer hassles, faster service response time, no more automated 411 machines and so on. `But no: what Bell means by a "Customer Service Improvement Program" is "network upgrades," i.e. more machinery. Nowhere in Bell's release do they give the impression that they might actually hire someone or create jobs with that $200 million. >> Bell promises that "as a result, all customers will have access to the services considered essential in today's information age such as the Internet, faxing and modems." First of all, those three items are essentially all the same thing. And second, if you're a Bell "customer," you already have a phone line; and if you have a phone line, you already have access to all those services. So where's the improvement? --Philip Preville
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