I live in Mexico for the winter. I thought some of your readers would find it interesting that they effectively have a second-class phone number. What I mean is that they cannot be contacted from most of Central America if they have certain prefixes assigned by Northwestel. I have found that if your phone number starts with 335, 336 or 385 then you cannot receive phone calls from south of the Rio Grande.
Northwestel blames the Mexican telephone system. The locals down here point out that you can make calls to the 668, 633, 667 and 334 plus out of Whitehorse numbers. They say that Northwestel has not done the necessary work to register the new prefixes. All I know is that the people given these prefixes were not informed of these shortcomings and pay the same rates as ratepayers who do get the full service.
How many other countries do the same customers not get? Will it take a loved one in an emergency in a strange country to discover the next hole?
Northwestel has long had an association with the largest carrier in Canada (Bell) and sucked enough money out of a monopoly to take care of administrative issues like this. I called a friend in Laos from here and they definitely have less resources than Northwestel.
Fortunately other avenues of communication exist, but unfortunately we have vested control of these in the same company that gave us this problem. I predict that sooner or later we will start losing access to the Web as this company forgets to do its homework.
PS: It costs .85 cents a minute to call the Yukon on a cell phone from here. Ask why it almost 10 times the rate for less service there.
Mike McLarnon
Whitehorse