TeliaSonera price hike angers land-line phone customers
Company wants to encourage subscribers to switch to mobile phones
The telecommunications service provider TeliaSonera wants to encourage its customers in sparsely populated areas go give up their land-line telephone subscriptions. The company recently imposed considerable increases in the fees paid by the about 100,000 phone subscribers living in sparsely-populated areas, who get their local land line services from Sonera. Maintaining land line services in rural areas is a considerable financial burden for TeliaSonera.
Local phone service subscribers of TeliaSonera who live in the countryside now pay a monthly fee of between EUR 11 and EUR 16 for their service. As of September, they will face an average increase of about four euros. For some the hike will be as much as EUR 10.
Many subscribers were angered further by a letter from TeliaSonera that came in Monday's mail.
"There aren't many alternatives here. Of course we'll cancel the subscription", huffs farmer Jukka Heinonen from Oripää near Loimaa, after finding out that his basic monthly fee is to rise to EUR 21.50. Now it is just over eight euros.
The Heinonens live in an area where the average increase is about six euros. Heinonen wonders why the telephone company does not want to make full use of its existing cables, considering that TeliaSonera is promoting its broadband services.
"Subscriptions are available for other service providers. It will be quite common for people not to want Sonera subscriptions any more", Heinonen says. He is especially concerned about his elderly father who lives a kilometre away, as he is not sure that the old man will get used to using a mobile telephone.
"I don't understand this at all", says Aune Erola, for whom her land-line connection is the way that she keeps in touch with her daughter, who lives in Vienna. "Now we can talk for a long time, as the daughter can choose the cheapest phone line", Erola says.
"I don't really know what to do. The connection is necessary because of my daughter", laments Erola, who lives in the rural community of Polvijärvi.
With some amusement, Erola shows a Sonera advertisement promoting a table-top model cellular phone.
In Ryönä, Elsa Heikkinen tried to reach Sonera's customer service number. She ended up listening to soft muzak while on hold for half an hour. The same was repeated on the next morning.
"I just wanted to ask them why the cable is already in the ground, considering that the fee is rising so much at one go", Heikkinen complained.
"That Sonera is amazing. It isn't so many years ago that it went and put those cables in the ground, digging up all of the beautiful side roads." Heikkinen calculates that the flat monthly fee for her connection will be more than EUR 20.
Toini Airaksinen in Riistavesi is upset, even though she already has a mobile phone. She notes that all of her friends have land-lines, and her children also feel that their mother should not give up hers.
Simo Paronen lives in Vantaa, in the Helsinki region, but he has a cottage on the shore of a lake in Puumala. He points out that his cottage is far away from the nearest GSM base station, which means that he does not get good mobile phone reception, and a land line is the only connection that will work during a storm.
As an electric company employee, Paronen understands that the maintenance of unproductive lines is expensive. However, the perceived inequality upsets him. The fees are not rising in the nearby main village of Puumala.
He says that he plans to send a letter demanding monetary compensation.
Janne Yli-Äyhö, the head of sales and marketing at TeliaSonera, says that there was a surge in calls to customer service, but no more than had been anticipated.
It is no secret that the company wants to get rid of the 100,000 land line connections it has in sparsely-populated rural areas. The situation is worst in the east and north of Finland, and in the archipelago.
Yli-Äyhö admits that the existing cables will still have to be used for broadband services.
"That's right. The next step will be to bring wireless broadband outside heavily populated areas", he says, noting that the company is working on a commercial agreement that would use the 450 frequency that was left unused when the NMT mobile phone standard was phased out.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 2.8.2007 - TODAY |
 TeliaSonera price hike angers land-line phone customers |
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