| Author |
Message |
T. K. Campling
Guest
| | Posted on Saturday, August 28, 2010 - 10:23 am: |   |
WITH regard to the letter entitled ‘Number crunching’, published on Friday 20 August, I suspect, as is common with most utility standing charges, the telephone line rental is a method of procuring investment in the business without having to give any reward, seemingly confirmed by the printed response.
The reply from Cable & Wireless of the rental charges being fixed by the OUR rather than controlled by them I find surprising. I also fail to see why a comparison of charges in other jurisdictions is relevant, especially as the self same question would, in all probability, equally apply.
I certainly think the author of the letter deserves support.
T. K. CAMPLING. |
Andy Bridson
Guest
| | Posted on Friday, August 20, 2010 - 02:58 pm: | |
I thank your correspondent for the opportunity to clarify our line rental charges.
Our line rental charges are fixed by the Office of Utility Regulation in Guernsey and at £7.99, they are among the lowest in Europe. Guernsey land line rental is 36% cheaper than in Jersey, for example, where basic land line rental costs £12.40 per month.
Revenue from rental charges maintains and improves the infrastructure across the island, which is used to carry not just telephone calls, but also now internet services. Despite a decline in landline usage, we have maintained low rental charges and continue to invest in upgrading our network to supply a service which is vital for many islanders.
We make every effort to ensure that landlines are as cost-effective as possible for our customers, with a choice of two home tariff packages available, including line rental and free calls. More information is available in our stores or on our website, www.surecw.com.’
Andy Bridson,
Chief commercial officer,
Cable & Wireless |
Anon
Guest
| | Posted on Friday, August 20, 2010 - 02:57 pm: | |
CAN anybody tell me why we have to pay rental charges every month of £7.99 to Sure Cable & Wireless when usage of phone was £1.75 (less 32p credit), making a grand total of £9.42? Are we missing something?
Name and address withheld. |
Ivan Roberts
Guest
| | Posted on Saturday, April 17, 2010 - 11:26 am: | |
I WAS very interested to read in the Guernsey Press of Saturday 3 April that we now have a fourth telecom company waiting in the wings, already holding a fixed-line licence and planning a wireless broadband service island wide, distributed by (by its own admission) a network of phone masts placed all over the island.
This so-called 4G service operated in a hilly terrain such as Guernsey, will, rest assured, result in huge numbers of stations as the system utilises the 2.6Ghz waveband, a band closely aligned with aeronautical radar systems worldwide and stringently monitored by Ofcom, for very obvious reasons.
Clear Mobitel says they want to 'shake up the broadband market', give us all faster and cheaper broadband service along with many other benefits, but let us never forget that nothing is without cost. Since the introduction of the 3G service, we already have three telecoms companies operating over a very small area and our island peppered with eyesore base stations carrying multiple installations.
What the long-term effects on the health of the population will be, nobody can tell us with absolute certainty, but while the OUR keeps inviting more of these companies in, we should all be asking ourselves, is more and more of the same really what we want?
The OUR clearly believes it has achieved some sort of miracle by promoting all this 'competition', however the promotion of a price war between four separate operators in an area of only 24 square miles can only lead to the eventual demise of probably two companies. This will lead to loss of jobs and major inconvenience for the consumer and finally the remaining two 'victors' increasing prices back to profitable levels.
Instead, the OUR could, and should, have spent its time and money on more basic, yet more important issues such as, for instance, the high costs of legal fees in Guernsey, and why have consumers in the island been subjected to price rises in the cost of gas, while their counterparts in the UK have seen three price cuts in 12 months, despite the fact that they were already paying significantly less than islanders?
The telecoms industry aside, they have interfered with the electricity and postal services, neither of which they appear to understand fully. High time, I think, that at the very least their mandate is stringently reviewed before they do any more damage.
IVAN ROBERTS. |
Anon
Guest
| | Posted on Monday, April 05, 2010 - 10:28 am: | |
HAVING been affected by the recent fog and needing to access the latest flight information, I have a question for our leaders:
How can Guernsey claim to be a business-friendly island when the airport's online arrivals and departures 'service' discriminates against Blackberry users?
anhabitant@ yahoo.co.uk. |
Alec Forty
Guest
| | Posted on Friday, January 29, 2010 - 02:21 pm: | |
CARLA MCNULTY BAUER has been expressing her enthusiasm for the privatisation of States utilities and the Office of Utility Regulation and she used telecoms as evidence of the improvements that these have achieved, saying 'We now have a world class, high capacity, highly resilient network of communication links with the outside world'.
But Carla, that's exactly what we had long before some politicians thought it would be a good idea to give the system away. Without any prompting by politicians or guidance from regulators, the management and staff of Guernsey Telecoms went to competitive international tender and created a digital switching system that was the first of its kind anywhere and an optical fibre submarine cable that was the longest in the world at that time. To coin a phrase, Guernsey then had a 'world class, high capacity, highly resilient network of communications links with the outside world'.
Just ask yourself, Carla, how else would the finance sector have been able to flourish long before C&W and OUR arrived on the scene? You may like to know, incidentally, that C&W is still using that same digital telecoms system that the States gave to them - its software was designed to be 'future-proof' for some considerable time. To support your case, you also compared us with Jersey Telecoms, but we didn't need to do that because our telecoms charges were the lowest anywhere.
You mention that Guernsey Telecoms was 'first commercialised briefly'. That was when the Advisory and Finance Committee was ill-advisedly accepting that GT wouldn't be able to cope in the future and, as an interim step, eminent local business people temporarily replaced GT's political board. They quickly realised Guernsey had a first-class telecoms system and asked to be allowed to continue and so avoid AFC's mad rush to give telecoms away to outsiders, but those local business people were forbidden, under severe threats, to make their views known.
That sort of politics was monstrous because, had they been allowed to speak out, it would have influenced the decision by the States.
As Guernsey Telecoms was self-financing, it was possible to take the initiatives I've described and we also de-regulated ourselves to allow competition. Commercialisation with a non-political board would have made that even better, so I'm in favour of it, but the high costs involved with OUR wouldn't have helped and anyhow, in the end we were answerable to the people of Guernsey.
I could go on, Carla, but I'm probably boring you with all these facts, so I'll call it a day as a result.
ALEC FORTY |
Matt Waterman
Guest
| | Posted on Friday, January 22, 2010 - 02:11 pm: | |
REPORTEDLY John Curran and Carla McNulty-Bauer think the 2002 sell-off of Guernsey Telecoms worked. Perhaps they need reminding that:
* A year or so before the sell-off, GT slashed the prices of calls because they had more money than they knew what to do with.
* Before the sell-off, the landlines used to be considerably more reliable than they are now.
* Before the sell-off, GT billed us quarterly, not monthly, and did not bully us with payment deadlines and their preferred methods of payment.
As a result of the competition arising from the sell-off, we now have one of the, if not the highest, density of phone masts in the world. Many other jurisdictions are banning the types of masts which we have here on health grounds.
Not only do we have the environmental and health issues surrounding the masts, but we also have the ugly spectre of the private sector's commercial advertising battle in our faces all the time. It doesn't help that Sure, Airtel-Vodafone and Wave do not include Guernsey green in their corporate colours, and it is absurd that a small trader can't leave a sandwich board outside his shop when Wave are able to surround the old harbour (one of the most traditional parts of Guernsey, which, over the years, had probably appeared on more of our island's postcards than any other part of the Bailiwick) with their flags.
In addition, it seems that the arrival of at least one of the private sector's telecommunications companies here has resulted in an influx of non-locals taking up residence in the island. The decision to sell off GT has contributed more to the erosion of traditional Guernsey than any other single decision, something which seems, perhaps unsurprisingly, of little concern to Deputy McNulty-Bauer, Mr Curran and some members of the IOD.
MATT WATERMAN |
James McEwan
Guest
| | Posted on Monday, December 28, 2009 - 11:14 am: | |
IN HIS column of 14 December, Peter Roffey raises a number of concerns regarding the move to monthly billing for customers of Cable & Wireless. I'd be grateful if you would permit me to respond to his concerns.
One reason that Sure has moved to monthly billing is to respond to our customers' requests for a more simplified payments procedure.
Now that all residential customers pay their bills monthly, we will be able to provide a single bill listing mobile, landline and broadband accounts in 2010.
Peter's dislike of payment by Direct Debit actually stands contrary to our own experience.
Currently 90% of Sure mobile bills and 80% of home phone bills are paid for by Direct Debit.
At Sure, we do encourage payment by this method as our customers find it provides peace of mind to know that their bill will always be paid on time and that the payments are protected by the Direct Debit guarantee which is far better than any guarantees that come with cash, cheque or credit card payment.
Another interesting benefit of Direct Debit payments is that it reduces the length and number of queues in store by enabling us to free up store staff who would otherwise be occupied taking payments.
I hope this explanation helps Peter and our customers understand the reasons for the changes we have made to the payment process.
We believe that monthly billing and Direct Debit payment are favoured by our customers and will continue to find new ways to meet our customers' demands.
JAMES McEWAN,
Head of Billing,
Sure. |
Andrew Lee
Guest
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 16, 2009 - 03:25 pm: | |
HOW very unfortunate that the States has applied for, and then granted itself, permission to put up yet another 18m high communication mast with two Tetra transmitters at the beauty spot on the cliffs overlooking Petit Port.
It will go next to the two other 18m masts already present, both bristling with transmitters. The States says the new mast is a necessity, but we seemed to have survived pretty well without it up to now.
The States assures us that the electro-magnetic emissions from masts are perfectly safe, while the evidence on the web tells a different story.
For Tetra masts, there is a lot of anecdotal evidence associating them with dizziness, sleep disturbance and other issues. Tetra masts are used by the emergency services and are transmitting 24/7. They give out a pulse similar to the beta wave found in our brains, which is connected with waking up.
Is it not suspicious that so many people who live close to Tetra masts report sleep disturbances?
The States abides by the International Commission for Non-Ionising Radiation Protection guidelines, which basically states there is no threat to human health from mobile phone masts radiation, except for the small heating effect. This is why the safe distance around masts in Guernsey is only two metres.
It's a pity we don't live in one of the more advanced countries in this respect, who consider ICNIRP too lax, such as Russian, China, Switzerland, Italy, Sweden, Vietnam and Taiwan, where putting up a mast so close to a residential area would be illegal, require protective screens, or fail planning permission.
Many scientists have found evidence that masts do adversely affect human beings and nature.
Even the chairman of the Health Protection Agency, Sir William Stewart, expressed concerns over the safety of masts (in 2007).
We should be using the precautionary principle and taking measures to remove some masts, not erecting more.
Unfortunately, the precautionary principle cannot compete with the sheer amount of money that the mobile phone industry contributes to the economy - in 2004, £22bn to the UK economy.
In a residential area in Beer Shev, Israel, in 2006, residents destroyed antennas and equipment from a mast installation, they said to safeguard their children - many people had become very ill. In 2002, in Northern Ireland at Dungannon a 150ft mast was destroyed by residents because of similar concerns; in 2002 Hampstead residents destroyed a 10m mast; also Berkeley Precinct, Sheffield 2006; Marple, Stockport 2002; and many others, all because people had the conviction that masts were not benign.
And on far more occasions there has been earnest objection to planning application. In Guernsey, however, it seems very few people are bothered.
ANDREW LEE |
T. I. Martin
Guest
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - 12:19 pm: | |
I WAS walking through Trinity Square recently and I noticed that the public telephones have gone. Where and why?
T. I. MARTIN.
GP Editor's footnote: Justin Bellinger, commercial director of Sure, replies:
'Thank you for giving Sure the opportunity to respond to your reader's letter concerning the telephone boxes at Trinity Square.
The telephone boxes were situated on public land next to Trinity Church. When this land was sold, the boxes were removed to allow the construction of a new community centre and there was no longer adequate space to allow for replacements to be installed.
Sure has a public service to provide phone boxes in convenient locations around the island and we have a dedicated budget to maintain these to a high standard. I can confirm that there are telephone boxes in Church Square, St John Street and at the top of the Grange, which are all within a short walk of Trinity Square.' |
Ivan Roberts
Guest
| | Posted on Friday, July 17, 2009 - 02:26 pm: | |
IN THE Guernsey Press on Friday 10 July, you published an article regarding the alleged safety of mobile phone masts throughout the island.
I feel that this statement is very misleading on several counts.
Firstly, all the results are based on the ICNIRP scale for non-ionising radiation protection.
This is a benchmark, which is widely recognised throughout Europe and Asian countries as being far too liberal, and in many cases being scrapped completely as more and more scientific test results on health issues become available.
Secondly, it states that there are 60 'masts' in Guernsey, which is perfectly correct, but what it does not make clear is that all these masts, be they rooftop sites, lattice towers or monopoles, carry multiple antennae for mobile phone use in addition, in several cases, to multiple Tetra repeater transmitters.
Thirdly and most importantly, it states that there are two 'masts' mounted on water towers. I can personally vouch for the fact that the Forest water tower site carries over 20 antennae of various types, including four Tetra (the maximum allowed on any one site). This site is eight metres from our permanent living accommodation, something that would never be allowed in Europe.
The second water tower site eluded to is, I presume, the St Germain watchtower. This site, too, carries over 20 antennae of all types including Tetra and is 240 metres from a primary-school playground and classrooms. Sites such as this have been forbidden both in the UK and Europe due to the known risks of radiation, especially on the very young.
Nobody, I repeat nobody, will give you a 100% written guarantee that mobile phone base stations are safe, and all the ongoing research urges that great caution be exercised.
In Guernsey, however, the people responsible just go marching on at will. I notice that in the last two sets of applications to Environment, there are applications to put up 'masts' in various disguises at Petit Bot and on or about two of our west coast hotels.
During the last two weeks, the nine-metre high monopole at Barker's Quarry has grown into a 15-metre lattice tower, which will, no doubt, be suitably loaded despite letters of protest from residents in the surrounding area.
What have we let these people do to our island?
IVAN ROBERTS |
|
Closed: New threads not accepted on this page
