
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, February 14, 1991                   TAG: 9102140163
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: C6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

FCC PROPOSES NEW RULES FOR LONG-DISTANCE ACCESS

The Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday proposed new rules to guarantee travelers easy access to their long-distance telephone companies.

The panel also decided to seek public comments on possible compensation for owners of pay telephones from which such calls are made.

Congress, in last year's Telephone Operator Consumer Services Improvement Act, required the FCC to design a plan to ensure that people using hotel and public telephones have access to the long-distance carriers they choose.

In many cases, coin and hotel phone owners, called aggregators, block access to all long-distance companies but one. They usually receive a commission, which can be as high as 20 percent, from that company for each call made.

But customers have complained about the high cost of some of the calls and about not being able to use their usual long-distance companies.

The commission could force all long-distance carriers to set up either 800- or 950-prefix phone numbers for a customer to use to gain access to their systems. Or it could require that public phones allow a customer to dial the "10XXX" access code assigned to his company.

The proposed rules would give aggregators a year to unblock access to 10XXX numbers at pay phones. Hotel and other internal phone systems would be given three years to allow access to 10XXX numbers.

MCI and USSprint customers already can use either 800 or 950 numbers or dial a 10XXX access code.

by CNB