AT&T Canada Long Distance has turned up the competitive heat on the Stentor Alliance of phone companies with the recent addition of international access to its calling card.

Carol Ann Horvat, director of consumer advertising, says AT&T Canada customers used to have to carry the calling card of one of the Stentor companies when traveling outside of North America if they wanted to call home or elsewhere from international locations. (The Stentor Alliance comprises the provincial and territorial phone companies that were previously in a monopoly position in the Canadian long-distance marketplace, such as Bell Canada, BC Tel and NBTel.)

Horvat says adding international access to its calling card gives at&t a chance to gain a share of this lucrative market from Stentor. It also helps at&t gain an advantage over the third big player in the long distance marketplace – Sprint Canada, which does not offer international access on its own calling card.

at&t card users can now call from over 70 countries to more than 100 different countries and can either place their calls directly or be connected to an AT&T Canada operator by dialing ‘0’.

at&t launched the international access service to its customers in late May and is now promoting it heavily in a new national television campaign by advertising veteran Gary Prouk.

This is the first work from Prouk since becoming creative consultant on the AT&T Canada business on a contract basis at Young & Rubicam in May.

On the team with Prouk was copywriter Al Moran, group creative director at y&r, and Jeremy Carr, art director. Martin Shewchuk, of Toronto-based Radke Films, directed.

The commercial shows a hockey scout, played by Canadian actor Ron Lea, on a problem-plagued trip in Eastern Europe. Not only does his car break down, but he still hasn’t found the next Wayne Gretzky.

The only parts of the trip that go smoothly are his dealings with Joan, the at&t operator who helps him connect to his Toronto head office.

The payoff comes at the end when he’s on the phone with Joan and finds himself in hockey scout ‘paradise’ – a small village populated by old women carrying hockey skates and young boys able to knock cans off a fence with their precise puck shots.

Thirty- and 60-second versions of the commercial are running.

While the spot has the look and feel of Eastern Europe, it was, in fact, shot at locations throughout Ontario, including an old hockey rink in Weston that was dressed with Russian signage.

Horvat says it was important to have a filmic quality to the commercial so it would jibe with the high-quality work the company imports from its u.s. parent.

She says viewers can identify with the commercial because hockey is so close to the hearts of Canadians.