In what can only be called a stunningly generous and sensible move, Aliant is making all residential calls to 13 tsunami-affected areas free until February 28, 2005. Here’s their news release; they’re also running ads to this effect.
Regular overseas long distance rates to these countries are expensive: Thailand is $2.29 a minute, India is $1.69 a minute, Burma is $5.69 a minute. Even Somalia, with Aliant’s most expensive per-minute rate of $5.79, is covered under this offer. Bravo Aliant!
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Comments
I’d like to join in the
I’d like to join in the applause.
Fine, Aliant goes and gives
Fine, Aliant goes and gives free long distance. It’s a noble gesture and it is a one-time disaster, hopefully.
But what if someone (ie. a refugee) needs to call home to Darfur (assuming there are phones on the receiving end)? I don’t see corporate Canada worrying too much about the thousands of other humanitarian time-bombs out there.
I don’t like belittling events where there has been wide-scale human suffering but the way companies/individuals have jumped on the bandwagon for the Asian tsunami of 2004, hyped by the media no doubt, is starting to get pretty irritating.
And now to have idiots like G.H.W. Bush and W.J.Clinton on TV begging for dollars from the Yanks, and P.E.P.Martin crying crocodile tears at home while we face glossy professionally printed corporate ads begging for dollars in every store and shop we enter… it smacks of something, and I can’t place my finger on it.
They wanted to do something
They wanted to do something tsunami, this is what they could offer, and it is nice of Aliant to do it.
It reminds me of a thought I had about economic development right here in PEI. Would island wide local calling make PEI a better place to do business? We’d be the first Province/State to banish long distance charges for call within the province.
Aliant would only take part of the hit on this, since there are many other long-distance providers out there.
In fact, if you don’t have your long distance service with Aliant, I guess you can’t take advantage of the free calls to Asia. You’d have to switch to Aliant first, right?
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