I was most interested to read your Cable and Wireless Watch pages, as I was until very recently (3 months ago) a Videotron subscriber, with all the free local off-peak call benefits. As my business at the time was an online service (working on a very large MUD game run by AOL) I was on the internet almost constantly, and my bills were substantial (regularly £600 a month).
I find it unbelievable that CWC would remove their most influential way of gaining new subscribers and keeping their existing ones in such a stupid way. At the time I was using them, I worked out that I was actually saving approximately £400-500 a month by using their free calls (over what I would pay to BT).
What annoys me the most, however, (and working on AOL, this was rubbed in the UK users' faces) is the state of phone charges in the US. I'm not sure how much you know about the US phone companies, but it seems that all of them can offer free local calls to all local numbers at all times. I find it insulting to think that people in the US are paying $0.00 a month on phonecalls to the Internet, whilst I break my back working to pay the phone bill.
I realise that I have moved off the subject of your page a little here, but it seems to me that if the phone companies in the US can offer free local calls and make such a huge profit ($1.202 billion last year for MCI) it shouldn't be too hard for companies in the UK to do the same.
I did in fact leave Videotron just as they were taken over by CWC, not through disagreement with them, but purely because I moved out of their area. I am afraid that makes me ineligible to take your pledge. But, if I were still a subscriber, I would certainly sign on the dotted line. CWC are wrong in attempting this, and I have no doubt that in the end they will lose out.
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