ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, October 31, 1996 TAG: 9610310040
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BOSTON
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
``Dropping a dime'' is about to become a mere figure of speech.
Federal regulators are drawing up rules that are sure to end 10-cent pay phone calls in Massachusetts and three other holdout states where a dime still gets you connected, just as it has since the Eisenhower administration.
``As it stands right now, there's no question: The 10-cent call is going the way of the 15-cent loaf of bread,'' Jack Hoey, a spokesman for Nynex Corp., said Wednesday.
Pay phones began charging 10 cents for local calls in 1954, when five-and-dimes were still accurately named and a brand-new Chevrolet cost $1,700.
Over the years, regulators in Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Arkansas kept the price of a local call down to a dime by ordering phone companies to subsidize pay phone service with other profits.
But a Federal Communications Commission order that is set to become final Nov. 8 essentially will deregulate the pay phone industry nationwide by the end of next year and end such subsidies. Instead, the free market will set the price.
The FCC rules, prompted by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, don't actually require pay phone operators to charge more than a dime. But the last time Nynex did a cost study, in 1993, it figured it was spending 19 to 21 cents a call to provide service at its 50,000 pay phones in Massachusetts.
``The world is a-changing, and we're changing with it,'' Brian Luciano said as he took a break from his job at Copy Cop in Boston.
LENGTH: Short : 38 linesby CNB