ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 2, 1996 TAG: 9603060013
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
AT&T has proposed lowering its rates for regional long-distance calls in Virginia communities where it competes with Bell Atlantic Corp., the long-distance carrier said.
Also beginning March 21, AT&T said, it will significantly increase the rates of all of its Virginia customers to pay for operator-assisted, calling-card and pay-phone calls.
Lowell Connor, an AT&T spokesman, said Friday the company is able to reduce its regional long-distance rates because Bell Atlantic is charging AT&T less for access to its local telephone systems.
AT&T and other long-distance companies only recently have begun competing with local phone companies in Virginia for the regional long-distance business, that is, calls between communities that are close but not within the same local-calling districts.
The State Corporation Commission opened Virginia's regional calling areas to competition last October. Previously, long-distance calls within those short-distance markets - such as calls from Roanoke to Radford - were provided exclusively by local phone companies such as Bell Atlantic.
According to notices that AT&T advertised this week, the rate cuts for the regional long-distance calls apply only to customers whose local phone company is Bell Atlantic. Overall, the new rates are about 15 percent below current rates but vary depending upon the distance that a call covers.
For example, AT&T has reduced the daytime rate for the Radford-to-Roanoke call, a distance of roughly 32 air miles, from 26 cents to 22 cents per minute, a 15.38 percent cut.
For the same daytime call, Bell Atlantic now charges 33 cents for the first minute and 20 cents for each additional minute. That means for calls of two minutes or less, AT&T now offers a cheaper rate than Bell Atlantic but for longer calls Bell Atlantic is cheaper.
AT&T says, however, that anyone who is not a regular AT&T long-distance customer will have to pay an 80-cent service charge for each regional long-distance call they make through AT&T. The charge is an incentive for customers to sign up for AT&T long-distance service, Connor said.
Currently, a telephone customer who wants to use AT&T for regional long-distance calls must dial AT&T's access code - 10-288 - to connect with AT&T before dialing the long distance number. The other two major long distance companies, Sprint and MCI, also offer regional long-distance service in Virginia. The access number for Sprint is 10-333 and for MCI, 10-222.
Bell Atlantic has not responded to the AT&T rate cuts, but the company's spokesman, Paul Miller, said Bell Atlantic has already cut its rates for the regional long-distance calls over the past two years.
Currently, Bell Atlantic is setting up a program of lower long-distance rates between specific Virginia communities, such as between Richmond and Petersburg, called "Community Choice," Miller said.
Although no Community Choice calling rates are planned in the Roanoke area, Don Reid, Bell Atlantic's regional manager, said the company plans new extended local calling areas, in which customers pay a slightly higher basic monthly bill in exchange for a wider toll-free local calling area.
The rate increases that AT&T also announced this week were necessary to bring prices in line with the costs of providing the services, Connor said. Operator-assisted calls, in particular, are costly to provide, he said.
Although some of the price increases that AT&T announced for credit-card, operator-assisted and pay-phone calls run from 15 percent to 20 percent, average customers with normal calling patterns should see their AT&T bills increase by only $2.04, or less than 1 percent, a year, Connor said.
AT&T has filed the rates for the Virginia corporation commission's review, but the commission does not have to approve the new rates for them to take effect.
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