Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 10, 1991 TAG: 9104100463
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-7 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
New rules adopted Tuesday by the Federal Communications Commission are designed to guarantee that travelers and others making "dial 0" calls can use the long-distance company of their choice and avoid so-called operator-service companies.
Those companies sometimes have rates two or three times higher than those of a major long-distance company.
The operator-service companies and "aggregators" - such as hotels, schools, airports and federal executive agencies - would be prohibited from blocking callers from either 800 or 950 access numbers and require that equipment manufactured from April 17, 1992, and after be capable of providing equal access to long-distance companies through "10XXX" access codes.
Customers of MCI and US Sprint can use either 800 or 950 numbers. Or they can dial a 10XXX code - 10333 to reach Sprint, for example. AT&T depends solely on its 10288 access code and has said it would cost as much as $50 million to set up and $250 million a year to operate an 800 access number.
Congress, in last year's Telephone Operator Consumer Services Act, required the FCC to develop a plan to ensure that people using hotel and public telephones have access to the long-distance companies of their choice. In many cases, the aggregators route the calls to a single operator-services company, which has a contract with a long-distance company that actually carries the calls.
The phone owners usually receive a commission from the operator-services company for each call made, sometimes as high as 20 percent.
But customers have complained about the high cost of some of the calls and about not being able to use their pre-subscribed long-distance companies.
by CNB