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

DATE: THURSDAY, February 14, 1991                   TAG: 9102140543
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: C-5   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

FCC PROPOSES NEW RULES FOR LONG-DISTANCE ACCESS

The prospective rules, unveiled at a commission meeting Wednesday, would guarantee travelers easier access to the long-distance company they use at home.

That means anyone making "dial 0" calls could avoid using so-called operator services companies that have rates that may be two or three times what major long-distance carriers such as American Telephone & Telegraph Co., MCI and US Sprint charge.

The agency also invited public comment on a plan to compensate owners of pay phones from which some long-distance calls are made.

The commission also:

Proposed either changing or eliminating rules that prohibit companies offering cellular telephone service from also selling equipment. The companies could not require customers to purchase equipment to receive service.

Decided to consider whether it will pre-empt some local statutes that outlaw mobile scanners. Some cities and states forbid mobile scanners because they can pick up police, fire and ambulance channels. But some FCC-licensed ham radio operators have been fined and their equipment confiscated for violations.

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, route all calls to a single operator services company, which has a contract with long-distance carriers that actually carry the calls.

The phone owners usually receive a commission, which can be as high as 20 percent, from the operator 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 presubscribed long-distance companies.

"Even as we speak, there are people in the Atlanta airport beating on the walls and banging on telephones trying to figure out how to get access to their long-distance companies," Commissioner Ervin Duggin said.

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

US Sprint's access code, for instance, is 10333.

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. If they replaced their equipment before then, they would have to make the change at that time.